A Memphis store clerk pulled out a gun and fatally shot seventeen-year-old Dorian Harris as he was walking out of the Top Stop Shop with a beer he didn’t pay for.
On March 29, 2018, around 10 p.m. the unarmed teenager went into the busy store and blatantly walked out after he grabbed a $2 beer from the shelf in plain view of the clerk, Anwar Ghazali.
According to the Washington Post, Ghazali immediately went behind the counter and grabbed a gun and proceeded to follow Harris out of the store in front of bewildered customers.
He went into the parking lot looking for the teen, who had begun running away and started chasing him. When he caught up to Harris, the clerk fired his gun three times, then went back to the store as if nothing happened.
Harris was found dead two days later, further down the block where he collapsed in a man’s backyard.
Beverly Loverson, an eyewitness who was shopping in the store testified that she saw Harris and the beer, and Ghazali and the gun, “and as he passed me,” she remembered while testifying on the stand this week, “I said, ‘Don’t kill him. Don’t kill him. It’s just a beer.’ ”
Yesterday, Ghazali was convicted of second-degree murder, marking the end of a case that had sparked many protests and boycotts and inflamed racial tensions in Memphis as hundreds mourned the teenager, outraged by how he died.
Harris, who lived with his grandmother at the time, was enrolled in an alternative high school after finishing a vocational training program administered by the Department of Labor. He was shot in his left leg, and the bullet severed a major artery.
A curious neighbor, who noticed a trail of blood on his property, followed the trail and discovered Harris’ lifeless body, days later.
Ghazali’s attorney argued that he never called the cops because he didn’t realize he had actually hit Harris, calling his client’s gunfire a “shot in the dark.”
The attorney, Blake Ballin, argued that Ghazali was firing warning shots and that it was possible the clerk fired into the air and the bullet fell from the sky and struck Harris in the thigh, the Commercial Appeal reported.
He said Ghazali’s behavior immediately after the shooting was a good indication that he didn’t believe he could have killed the teen, asking the jury to consider by saying “Think about what you expected somebody to do after they have chased down and executed a person,” Ballin said. “Would they go back to work?”
The jury deliberated for less than four hours and found Ghazali guilty. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
He is set to be sentenced next month and is facing between 15 and 60 years in prison.
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