HOUSTON – Surveillance video from a shooting at a gas station in southeast Houston shows the clerk was punched in the face before firing his gun.
The shooting happened outside the Valero gas station on Martin Luther King Boulevard at Bellfort Street about 3:30 a.m. Monday.
According to Houston police, Alexander Calloway III, 21, went to the convenience store and asked for cigarettes. When the clerk, Akrem Azzam, unlocked the doors to try and get him to leave, he said Calloway threatened to kill him and hit him in the face.
Surveillance video shown by a store employee to Local 2 shows Azzam was punched in the face before the shooting.
"It is about really seeing the fact of what happened, and that is all of what we care because for the sake of the community. We want them to know this is really what went down, not what everyone else is saying," store employee George Halihel said.
Calloway was shot in the stomach, police said. Azzam then ran back inside the store and locked the door, according to police.
Investigators said the two men who were with Calloway ran up to the security window, and one of the men fired shots into the store.
A friend took Calloway to a firehouse in the 11000 block of Cullen for help. Calloway remained in the hospital Wednesday after undergoing surgery Tuesday. His parents said he may have to have a leg amputated.
"Y'all know that's wrong," said Calloway's father. "My son come to that store every day. The store clerk, I feel like he should be charged."
Detectives said Calloway was not armed when he was shot.
Azzam said he fired his weapon in self-defense.
Community activist Quanell X disagreed.
"This store clerk had in his mind and in his heart that he was going to shoot this young man," Quanell X said.
Quanell X said he believes Azzam should be charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon or attempted murder.
"I believe both parties have responsibility for what happened, but, at the end of the day, the store clerk never had to come outside," he said.
One of the men who was with Calloway, Kenneth DeWayne Bogan, has been charged with aggravated assault. Police said he was the one who fired shots into the store.
According to court records, Azzam once walked outside the store and fired a shot into the air after having an argument with relatives.
This was not the first shooting at the store. Last fall, two clerks were helping a customer when two masked men stormed in and immediately started firing. A clerk was wounded in the leg.