“The next thing I knew, I was in the hospital.”

A Bronx convenience store employee recalls how a pair of shoplifters dragged him to the sidewalk and beat him unconscious before fleeing. – leaving him bloodied on the ground.

Sam Balfour, 63, was behind the counter of the Mobil gas station where he has worked for 13 years when the two thugs entered shortly after 12:30 a.m. Saturday to rob the store, he told the Post.

“I didn’t know they were together,” Balfour said Monday, still reeling from the attack. “One of them came up to the counter and asked me if I had any Newports. I told him we didn’t. Meanwhile, the other one was stealing from the refrigerator.”

Surveillance footage shows the second robber emptying the store’s Ensure supply into a freezer in the back, filling a backpack with the protein-rich drink while Balfour was distracted.

“When I saw they were stealing, I tried to lock the door to protect my stock,” the salesman said. “But I didn’t realize the two men were together. One of them kicked the door open and they started dragging me out of the store.”

“I grabbed the backpack and tried to pull it off,” Balfour said. “And all of a sudden, they pulled me out, and one of them hit me in the neck and ripped the backpack off me. I fell and hit my head on the concrete. I passed out. The next thing I knew, I was in the hospital.”

Store footage captured the attack and shows what appears to be a store employee and a second person checking on the unconscious salesperson after the robbers fled.

Balfour was transported to Montefiore Medical Center and was in stable condition.

Balfour, a hard-working Ghanaian, said he now suffers from dizziness and pain in his head, neck and shoulders as a result of the cowardly attack.

Photos released by the NYPD show one suspect wearing a “Super Mario” cap and a black T-shirt with a Game Boy logo, and the other in a black cap and a black long-sleeved shirt with a photo on the front.

“It’s not fair,” he said. “These are young people. They can go and get jobs. If I steal someone’s business, the business collapses and I don’t have a job to feed my family. I’m trying to protect my job, you know?”

He said Saturday’s horror was not his first encounter with crooks in the store.

“One time, about eight months ago, a guy came in and tried to take the whole register,” Balfour said.

“So I called the police. I didn’t let him do it. He was shooting at me and I was holding him back, and he ran away before the police got there,” he added. “Eventually, they found him and arrested him.”