At around 11:25 p.m. Thursday police received a 911 call from an apartment above the store at 120C Main Street.
Arriving firefighters found a smokey blaze inside the rear of the store, then made a startling discovery in a back alley.
"The owner of the store had been found outside, in back of the store, where he had been bound and apparently he had been rendered unconscious," said Capt. Rocky Melendez of the Pleasantville Police.
The victim, 25-year-old Ali Ghazanfar, told police he has only a hazy memory of being confronted and then waking up in the alley.
Yasir Kahn owns the shop next door. He flipped through his surveillance video to see if it offered any clues to what occurred. However, it shows only dense smoke.
He says he can think of no reason why anyone would attack his neighbor and set fire to store. He did confirm there had been some scuffles outside the store in the last few months.
"He got into a couple of incidents with some people. Once he was fighting outside with one guy," Kahn said.
It is unknown of any of those incidents are connected to Thursday night's attack.
It is also unclear what was taken in the robbery because the inside of the store was so badly damaged by the flames.
