For Richard Salvia, it was a new job: carting Chinese food around northern Staten Island in his Chevrolet Impala. For the restaurant he worked for, it was a relatively new spot for deliveries — a dead-end street of scattered homes that had, in the past, been deemed too dangerous for regular visits.

The area had a reputation among police officers, too, who had made drug arrests on the street, Grandview Avenue, and in the surrounding area. It was, in short, not a pleasant part of the borough’s north shore to be taking $60 worth of piping-hot food to on a Tuesday night.

When the order came, Mr. Salvia, 50, got in his car and drove to the street. He headed past a pair of tow truck yards and a scrap metal yard to a ramshackle home by an overgrown chain-link fence marking the avenue’s end. There, before he could make his delivery, an armed robber emerged and fired a single shot that struck Mr. Salvia in the head.

Police officers found Mr. Salvia’s body slumped on the ground by the back of the car about 8:45 p.m., the contents of his food bags strewn across the Impala’s trunk and on the pavement around him.