DETROIT (AP) — A clerk was charged with murder Thursday in a second recent middle-of-the-night fatal shooting at Detroit gas stations related to disputes with customers.
“This simply cannot continue to happen,” Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy said.
Anthony McNary, 25, was shot through the door after the clerk had kicked him out of the gas station and locked the door Monday, Worthy said.
Moments earlier, Moad Al-Gaham had removed a beef stick from McNary's pocket and then refused to let him pay for it, the prosecutor said.
Al-Gaham was in a “place of safety on the other side of a locked glass door and pulled the trigger,” Worthy said, adding that the clerk was in no "immediate danger.”
But defense attorney Doraid Elder said Al-Gaham may have been threatened, adding it's not clear if the door was locked.
“That will be one of the issues at stake here. We’ll have that door examined,” Elder told The Associated Press. “This is a loss for both families.”
Al-Gaham, 40, was ordered to jail without bond.
On May 6, at a different Detroit gas station, a customer fatally shot another customer. A clerk, who was behind security glass, had remotely locked the door during an argument over a failed electronic purchase.
Worthy charged clerk Al-Hassan Aiyash, 22, with involuntary manslaughter, alleging that his actions contributed to the shooting. He has pleaded not guilty.
“If you had told me that two cases involving gas stations, early morning hours, locked doors and shootings would happen here in Detroit in the span of a month — I would not have believed that,” Worthy said.
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