The clerk was really shaken up. It's the first time he's had a gun pointed at him and he just fumbled trying to open his cash register. He couldn't even speak to dispatchers when he called 911 after the robber shot his brother.
Paramedics wheeled Wadah Yaqoub out of his family's central Fresno store Thursday morning after the robber nearly killed him.
Fresno police officers dug one bullet hole out of the store's wall for evidence, but doctors can't remove the fragments that are stuck in Yaqoub's lung.
The 25-year-old had come to his brother's defense, after the suspect barged into the store about an hour after it opened.
"I was doing some paperwork and a guy walks in with a mask on and pointed a gun at me," said Maeen Yaqoub. "'Give me the money. Give me the money. Give me the money.'"
Yaqoub says he tried to open his cash register for the robber, but he was so nervous, he couldn't open it.
"I tried like three, four, five times," he said. "Somehow it's locked, so he got nervous."
Police are using the store's surveillance video and the video policing cameras on Palm and McKinley to identify the suspect. They say he's a Hispanic man in his late teens or early twenties. He's about 5'6" or 5'7", weighing about 150 pounds. He was wearing a black, hooded sweatshirt at the time of the crime.
The Yaqoubs have owned the store near Fresno High School for about eight years and they say this is the first robbery attempt. Maeen Yaqoub is already trying to wipe it from his memory.
A reporter asked him what went through your mind when the robber came in with a gun pointed at him. Yaqoub couldn't finish a sentence before he broke out in tears.
Police have told the victims they found the getaway car, but it was stolen. They're following up on other leads to identify the man.
