Police hold getaway car for store robbery probe

The man threatened the clerk with a shotgun.

STAFF REPORT

YOUNGSTOWN — Police have impounded a vehicle used in a daring daylight robbery on the North Side that injured a store clerk.

The suspect, who is still at large, was witnessed getting into the vehicle after fleeing the scene on foot Friday afternoon.

Officers responded to a robbery in progress at J D Super Market on Belmont Avenue at 12:20 p.m., where store clerk Ahmed Dayem told police he had been robbed of nearly $300 by a man in a ski mask carrying a rifle.

After Dayem gave the man the money, the suspect fired his weapon into the floor twice, dislodging fragments of floor tile and bullet casings toward Dayem that struck him on his right arm and right leg. He sought medical attention for the wound, and later returned to work.

The robber then fled south on Belmont, where two city street department employees saw him get into a Cutlass Supreme along with two other people.

Using a K-9 unit, the police located the unoccupied car behind a Madison Avenue home, in the direction the street crew indicated the suspects drove.

Dayem and a witness from the street department said the robber was a black man, around 6 feet tall, wearing all black with braided hair.

A friend of Dayem’s explained that Dayem, who has been robbed before, gets taken advantage of because he doesn’t speak English well.

The friend, relating what Dayem said happened, said the man came into the store with the shotgun at his side, not concealed. A woman clerk who had been near the coolers by the door got scared and ran out.

The friend expressed outrage over the boldness of the crime — daylight on one of the city’s busiest streets near St. Elizabeth Health Center. He said the robber approached despite at least 10 people milling about outside the store.

Police are holding the car for evidence, including fingerprints, and 9 mm shell casings found at the market have been logged.

Dayem’s brother owns the small convenience store.