http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/local/7526367.htm

Fri, Dec. 19, 2003

Store clerk shoots, kills would-be robber By Sharon E. Crawford
Telegraph Staff Writer

Uzair Khan looked at the end of a pistol and thought his life was over
Wednesday night.

It was just like the story he’d read in the newspaper hours earlier
about a fatal armed robbery – except this time it was his store.

Khan was closing up Dani’s Food Mart on Williamson Road in Macon shortly
before midnight when Melvin Dugger, 17, walked in waving a gun and
demanding money.

Although Khan quickly handed over the cash drawer, Dugger refused to
leave.

“I begged him not to shoot me,” Khan said. “But he was looking around,
looking around. He wouldn’t leave.”

Those were the last seconds of an armed robbery that seemed like an
eternity to Khan.

Before it was over, Dugger would be dead, and Khan would be thankful for
pulling out his weapon.

“I prayed every day that I never had to kill nobody,” Khan, 33, said. “I
never wanted to do anything like that.”

Macon Police Lt. Jimmy Barbee said Thursday that Khan will not face any
charges in the shooting, and the store video appears to show that he
acted in self-defense.

The 33-year-old Pakistani native said he had no choice.

“I have watched many videos where the outcome is different,” Khan said.
Working in a convenience store, he said, “is the most dangerous job. It
only takes seconds to end your life.”

Wednesday’s armed robbery was the second time in less than 48 hours
someone had died during incidents at two Macon convenience stores.

Dugger died from a gunshot wound minutes after he was shot, officials
with the Bibb County Coroner’s Office said Thursday.

State law allows a person to carry a weapon inside his business or
vehicle without a permit.

Tuesday morning, Macon convenience store owner Sunil Ninan was gunned
down inside his Mini Market store on Houston Avenue. Bernard Myrick, 16,
has been charged with murder and aggravated assault with the intent to
commit armed robbery in that case.

“Both of these cases are really sad,” Barbee said. “In one case you have
a family man who was killed while his family was in India and a teenage
boy is in jail for the crime and in this case you have a family man who
killed a teenage boy to protect himself.”

Police said Khan and two other store employees were closing the store
about 11:40 p.m. Tuesday when Dugger ran into the store with his face
partially covered and waving a gun in front of him.

A video camera inside the store captured Dugger looking around him while
Khan crouched down behind the counter. It shows
Khan begging Dugger to leave the store with the money and Dugger wildly
looking around the store.

When Dugger failed to leave, Khan pulled a pistol out of his pocket and
shot at Dugger through the glass display counter.

“(Khan) thought he was about to get shot,” Barbee said.

Dugger ran from the store, dropping the cash drawer and gun before
falling to the ground behind an apartment complex next door. He was dead
when police arrived.

Khan said he didn’t think he’d shot Dugger at first.

“There was no blood,” Khan said. “I just thought I had scared him, and I
didn’t know if he was coming back and if he would bring his friends. I
was very shaky, nervous and scared.”

Khan was not injured in the shooting.

“He knows it could have easily been him that was killed,” Barbee said.
“(Wednesday) night, the clerk was lucky because the chips fell his way.
It doesn’t always happen like that though.”
Barbee said the store was robbed at gunpoint about three months ago, but
that case was never solved. He said there was no evidence Dugger was
involved in that case.

Khan moved to Macon a month ago after working on and off in convenience
stores for more than eight years. He is engaged to be married in a few
months.

“I’m very remorseful about what happened here,” Khan said. “This isn’t
what I wanted to happen.”

In the Tuesday incident, Ninan was killed just a few hours after he
opened his store.

Prosecutors said Myrick admitted to walking into the door, brandishing a
gun and demanding money. Investigators said Myrick shot Ninan twice, but
left the store with no money. He was arrested a few hours later at his
grandmother’s house a block away.

A prayer service for Ninan will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at the
Roswell Funeral Home in Roswell.