A manhunt for a suspected robber came to an abrupt end last weekend after the perp was shot by an armed convenience store clerk who decided he wasn’t going to be just another victim.
It all started in Palm Coast, Florida, when a thief reportedly barged into a Circle K gas station store around 3:30 a.m. on Friday and demanded all the money in the register - about $90 - before lifting a bunch of merchandise from the shelves and demanding the clerk hand over a pack of cigarettes, a tank’s worth of gas, and change to put air in his tires.
The incident sparked a cross-state manhunt on I-95 involving Florida Highway Patrol, the St. John’s County Sheriff’s Office, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, and the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office, later transferring to the Camden County Sheriff’s Office once the suspect - later ID’d as Qwinntavus Kwame Jordan, not kidding - hit the Georgia state line.
Eventually, officers with the Kingsland Police Department managed to blow out the suspected thief’s tires with a stop stick, and Jordan took off on foot, finally ending up at another nearby gas station where he pulled out a gun and demanded the clerk hand over his car keys. The clerk did, and Jordan took off in the car - only to crash it through the convenience store door moments later.
Whoopsie.
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Jordan then reportedly got out of the car and attacked the clerk and a customer who had the poor fortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was just one problem: in the time it took the thief to crash the car and run back into the building, the clerk had grabbed a gun of his own - and he used it.
According to police, Jordan was transported to the hospital in critical condition. Oh! And it turns out he was already wanted for armed robbery in Coffee County, Georgia.
The moral of the story? First, don't be a garbage person who robs convenience stores. But if you happen to be in one when an idiot like this shows up, make sure you can defend yourself.