Friend helps shop owner utter final prayer before he died in shooting

YOUNGSTOWN

As he lay dying on the floor of his South Avenue store Wednesday from a bullet to the head, Abdullah Nagi Mahdi was able to pray to God one last time.

Sana Hamayel said she knelt next to the 29-year-old Mahdi and helped him to say, “Allah is the highest,” just before police and paramedics arrived at his 2068 South Ave. business.

Mahdi, who had been shot by a robber during an exchange of gunfire, later died.

“I did have a chance to do that,” Hamayel said. “I prayed with him.”

As Hamayel was praying with Mahdi on the floor, others were on top of the man suspected of shooting him, 19-year-old Larry McDonald, trying to hold him until police arrived.

Police said McDonald was wounded by Mahdi just before Mahdi took a bullet from McDonald’s gun.

When she was done praying, Hamayel, who worked in the store for Mahdi, yelled at McDonald.

‘Do you know who you took away from us?’ This whole community lost a wonderful person,” she said to him.

Read more about the situation in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.