DETROIT – A group is demanding action this week after a Detroit gas station clerk fatally shot a 35-year-old man over the weekend.
The gas station clerk is in custody after allegedly shooting a customer Sunday at the Citgo gas station near the intersection of McNichols Road and Southfield Freeway.
The case is causing tension in the community because the victim was an unarmed African-American man. With so few grocery stores in the city, residents often use the local gas stations for quick shopping. That has created a difficult and tenuous relationship between employees and customers.
Police said the clerk and the customer had some kind of dispute in the store when the clerk came out from behind the glass with a gun and shot the man, killing him. The gas station has been closed since the shooting.
Rev. David Alexander Bullock said in a news conference Monday that enough is enough.
"It's our hope it will remain closed," Bullock said. "It is our intention if it opens we will shut it down. The community will close it to show our disapproval for this kind of behavior."
He said all lives, not just black lives, matter. But he called out one group in particular at the heart of the relationship.
"We're calling on folks who represent the gas station owners like the AFPD, Associated Detroit Dealers, to not just suck the currency, cash and credit out of an urban community and ride to the other side of Eight Mile," Bullock said.
Neighborhood resident Myron Carter said he's never had trouble at the gas station.
"I've never gotten into any trouble here, personally," Carter said. "But to hear that an African-American, a black person, was shot here? No, I'm not surprised. (It) doesn't surprise me at all."
Association of Food and Petroleum Dealers President Aday Arabo, whom Bullock called out Monday, said the association condemns the criminal act. Arabo said it doesn't represent any gas stations in the city of Detroit.