Note: I’m sure there are countless facts we don’t know, so this is speculation. Mods, if this isn’t acceptable for the forum, please remove. We are discussing a potential criminal situation here.
This guy was a gas station clerk. A man couldn’t pay his bill and the situation got escalated. Clerk was behind the bullet proof glass, but no evidence exists to suggest he thought the customer had a gun. Anyway, he pressed the button to lock the door and other customers had entered. They got in an argument and what do you know? The disgruntled customer shot and killed one.
The clerk who pressed the button is about to go on trial, but I feel like he just kind of did a thing at work and he could hardly be blamed for what the gun-user did.
Now, company policy may be to leave the door open and he could be fired. But he made a quick decision and it ended up with someone else causing a fatality. I feel like a judge would let that off and most likely, a jury will. Proving that he suspected the guy had a gun is almost impossible unless camera footage shows otherwise.
Here is the news story:
Edit: The actual shooter has a forthcoming murder trial. That is a whole heck of a lot clearer, I assume. I think the camera footage shows him pulling a gun and shooting three people, killing one.
I see no evidence to support any racism, though I am not denying it exists in the criminal system. To be honest, they run the risk of a lawsuit if this is found to be absolutely ridiculous. A judge let this get to trial…so I guess they think there is a real potential crime. I just can’t see it unless the camera footage shows something truly different.
Killer customer’s $3 purchase is declined, killer threatens to leave with unpurchased items. Clerk (behind protective glass) locks door, but also locks in 3 bystander customers. Killer shoots all three bystanders, killing one.
The only part that gives me pause is from another linked article:
“The allegations of the defendant locking the door of the store and not heeding the pleas of the men to be released led to tragic consequences in this case,” Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said in a statement.
If the clerk kept everyone imprisoned for any significant length of time before the shooting started, with the killer making threats before pulling a gun and the three bystanders pleading to be released, that would obviously put a different spin on things. Presumably there is video footage that will clarify this.
I can definitely imagine ways this could have gone where charges for the clerk are appropriate. Like, if the guy is getting more and more violent, and the bystanders are trying to leave to leave an increasingly dangerous situation but the clerk won’t unlock the door for them, then yeah, charges might be appropriate. If he’d locked the door, and the guy immediately started blasting, less so.
It can’t be legal to have a situation where a store has doors that lock and cannot be opened from the inside, can it? That’s got to be a violation of fire codes, if nothing else.
When I enter a store, I am never consenting to being locked in the store against my will, ever. Is that part of the story legal? Like, say someone is shoplifting a $500 game console, and I just want to leave: can the store manager prevent me from leaving? For how long?
And if I’m prevented from leaving and am killed by someone because I wasn’t able to leave, I damn sure want the person who stopped me from leaving charged.
How about kidnapping charges? If I’m locked in a store against my will, because someone else tried to steal $3 worth of stuff, I’d be pissed, even if I wasn’t being shot at.
Hell, he’s lucky he isn’t up for Felony Murder, since this person died while the clerk was committing this kidnapping.
Doesn’t strike me as obviously manslaughter, but it really depends on how much of a boneheaded decision this guy made in the actual circumstances.
The idea behind involuntary manslaughter is that you were really negligent, not that you did anything on purpose (thus involuntary). So it’s not really a question of whether he had specific reason to know the guy had a gun, it’s a question of whether he had reason to believe that if he locked this guy in the store for not paying his three dollars, something terrible might happen.
But then why do they have a remote locking device, specifically designed to trap their costumers in the building, installed? I mean if he wasn’t meant to use it when someone is about to leave without paying, under what circumstances was he meant to use it?
The issue I have with this is the fact that its the presumably minimum wage clerk that is on trial here (I realize probably a lot of garages are run as franchises but I assume the fact he is called a clerk in the article means he was just an employee not an owner) not the corporate suits who decided they should install a device to lock their customers in the building (knowing full well there is a good chance of locking random bystanders with a violent thief)
There are a lot more details needed to evaluate this. The problem with an involuntary manslaughter charge is that the clerk may not have had any reason to believe anyone would be harmed in this situation. However, he could possibly be charged with other crimes like kidnapping or something similar for keeping people locked in for no reason. Maybe he should lose his job for violating company policy also. Lots of details have be known for a good decision on this one.
A judge on Tuesday ordered a Detroit gas station clerk to stand trial for involuntary manslaughter, saying his decision to lock the door and then taunt an angry customer contributed to the fatal shooting of a bystander.
and
Al-Hassan Aiyash “continued to pour gasoline on the fire,” said Judge Kenneth King, who found enough evidence to move the case to trial.
Gunman says he’s gonna shoot the bystanders if the door isn’t unlocked and the clerk allegedly taunted the gunman - seems like enough to go to trial to me.
That’s my thinking as well. Doubtless, the store is thinking “We are justified in doing this to protect our property.”
But… come on. You’re not just locking the suspect inside, you’re locking innocent people inside. To me, that sounds a lot like false imprisonment, a crime in and of itself.
Maybe there’s a “defense of property” defense in there, but it just seems really unreasonable to lock a bunch of people into a store like that over goods valued at $3.80.
Throw in the threats from the shooter and the taunting by the accused attendant on top of that, and I am less troubled by the charges here. But frankly, even having the gall to lock a bunch of innocent people into a room over something so small is pretty outrageous to me, and I think should warrant some kind of charges on its own. It’s capitalism run amok, like some kind of black satire dystopia.
Because he also has a glass screen protecting him. He can apprehend a thief by locking the outside door and calling the cops, at no risk to himself.
The existence of this protective glass implies awareness that anyone locked in with a thief is at risk until the cops arrive. So common sense (and probably company policy) dictates that you don’t do this when it entails locking in unprotected bystanders.
If only a few seconds had passed, perhaps the clerk might have acted instinctively in locking the door and not processed the fact that their were bystanders also trapped inside. But if, as the prosecutor claims, the bystanders were begging to be let out as the killer became more angry - then the clerk made a much more serious error of judgment.
As for the switch that locks the door…I’m going to make a blind guess:
Could it be that the purpose of the lock is not to keep people confined inside the store, but to prevent people from entering?
Maybe the ideas is that if the clerk sees someone suspicious outside, he can just press the switch, to protect himself and the store from a potential robber.
But its still an obvious outcome of having a device to trap your customers in the building. Sure it sounds like he behaved in a particularly unreasonable manner. But the higher ups who installed this device are just as to blame IMO. I mean you have installed a device specifically designed to trap your customers in the building, it was used and people were trapped in the building. Given the fact its only likely to be used when a criminal is in the building, the obvious outcome is that people are going to be trapped in your building with a criminal.
If it was used on some random customers without anything criminal happening they could claim “hey we couldn’t predict the clerk would act all crazy”, but even with the extreme behavior of the clerk this is using the door locks in exactly the way they were intended to be used, with the predictable result.
This is a gas station, not a supermarket. There are surely times when only one customer is inside.
Assuming that company policy is that the door should not be locked if any bystanders are present, company liability would presumably depend on whether such a policy is sufficient, given the foreseeable risk that an employee might disregard the policy under stress and nevertheless (deliberately or inadvertently) trap bystanders inside.
the gas station has been closed since the shooting “out of respect for the families and community,” Dagher (the owner) said.
Detroit’s Buildings, Safety, Engineering, and Environmental Department closed the business because the city said it was unlicensed.
And apparently, locking customers in against their will is a thing, since they’re now looking into a law to prevent it:
In response to the shooting, Detroit City Council President Mary Sheffield has requested the city’s law department to review if an ordinance banning businesses from using electronic doors or locking patrons inside would be lawful. If not, she requested they provide other policy alternatives.
Yeah. It may be stupid, but if it is 100% legal, I dont see how they can charge the guy, A suit vs the business- sure, but criminal charges for the minimum wage clerk? Nope.