Jackson, Mississippi

From the Jackson Clarion-Ledger of February 6, 2007

Auto repair shop robbed for 29th time

Owner says he fired shots, may have hit one robber early Sunday

Maybe he hit the guy when he fired his .38, maybe he didn't, but Eugene Miner is fed up either way.

On Sunday, the longtime Jackson business owner was burglarized again, the 29th time that has happened to his auto repair business, he said.

It was the second time in two days. He can't take it anymore.

"I think I hit one of them," he said Monday morning. "He was limping when he was going up that hill there."

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, someone broke into Miner Auto Repair on Fortification Street just east of State Street.

Eugene and Linda Miner had moved back to that location in August after less than a year on South Street. Their shop had been broken into 27 times there, they said.

And so it was sometime between 2 a.m. Saturday and dawn that someone broke into the new shop and made off with tools, a computer, dozens of purses that had been for sale and more.

They ate food in the cooler, left forks and soda cans on the floor, even took off with a trash can.

The Miners figured whoever did that was not finished. The place looked like they'd left in a hurry.

So at 3:30 a.m. the next day, Sunday, the Miners went to the shop, expecting trouble.

"We hadn't been in here 30 minutes when it happened," Linda Miner said.

What happened, according to both Miners, is this:

Two skinny guys in a white 1991 Ford Crown Victoria backed up to the same bay door that had been broken into the day before.

Eugene Miner said he'd fixed the door with metal and wood, and that he knew it was a 1991 Crown Vic because he's in the auto business and knows cars.

A short black man with light skin and a taller black man with dark skin broke through the door with a 2-by-4.

The Miners said they watched all this from the shop's office, adjacent to the repair bay where the burglars were but separated by thick glass.

Eugene Miner said the tall guy crawled on the floor next to an undamaged bay door. The other guy stayed where he was.

"That's when I started shooting," he said.

On that piece of glass between the office and the repair bays are now two small bullet holes with cracks leading from them like streams from a mountaintop lake.

After the gunfire, the men ran. The tall guy up the hill on Fortification, the short guy to the Crown Vic, which he drove away to where he could pick up the tall guy.

Jackson police detective James Cornelius is investigating the case.

He said Monday afternoon that he'd checked the area's hospitals and hadn't found anyone with a gunshot wound who fit the burglar's description.

Still, he said, that doesn't mean the man was not shot. Perhaps it was a minor injury, or maybe he went far away for treatment.

Cornelius said he had no leads he wanted to discuss publicly on Monday but might have some news today.

Either way, Linda and Eugene Miner are getting sick of this.

They said they appreciate the police and didn't want to sound like they were complaining, but something has to be done about crime.

"Right now," Linda Miner said, "we are at our breaking point. We feel like the city should step in and do something. ... We have just got to have some help. We deserve some help.

"You know it's gone too far when we have to take up arms to protect ourselves."