Albany, New York

From Albany’s WALB.com of April 5, 2006

Customer shot in store scuffle

A man was shot today inside an East Albany clothing store. He was a customer, who apparently tried to intimidate the store owner into selling him a shirt at a discount.

But he ended up paying full price for the shirt and leaving the store with a bullet in his abdomen. A crowd gathered outside the Shackleford Shopping Center as this strange shooting unfolded.

Thirty-year old Jahwar Harris walked into the High Dollar Fashions store, and offered the owner $15 for a shirt. The owner told him it was $25, so Harris laid a pistol on the counter and asked the owner 'how much he'd take for it now?'

"He asked for a shirt, placed a weapon, a handgun up on the counter, the part-time owner took the weapon and put it in his pocket," said Lt. Tracey Barnes of the Albany Police Department That's right. With the customer's gun now in his own pocket, store co-owner Damien Gardner continued with the checkout.

"There was a discussion about the price of the shirt," Barnes said. "He bought the shirt. As he was walking out he turned and asked for his gun back." But the store owner refused. "When the owner declined to give him his gun back, there was a struggle over it and the gun went off and struck the individual in the side."

A next door business owner, who didn't want to go on camera, was the first person who realized something was wrong. "I just heard the scuffle and I ran out the back door and when I ran out the back door, the guy told me to call the police, because someone has been shot," she said.

Shot in the abdomen with a gun he, himself, took into the store.

"There is a videotape inside and it does confirm everything that the owner has said," Barnes said.

The store owner wasn't seriously injured, but was taken by ambulance to a hospital because he apparently hurt his wrist during the scuffle.

Jahwar Harris spent the afternoon in surgery and remains hospitalized. Police haven't decided what charges will be filed.