Dorian Harris was already on his way out when store clerk, Anwar Ghazali, grabbed his gun and shot and killed the seventeen-year-old, according to the Washington Post.
Tennessee teen Dorian Harris was shot to death over a $2 beer. https://t.co/QeXJ1cslr1 pic.twitter.com/kJNVVqV0jV
— AL.com (@aldotcom) August 16, 2019
On March 29, 2019, Harris, dressed in purple pants and a hoodie, walked into a busy Top Stop Shop grabbed a $2 beer from the shelf in plain view of Ghazali, turned and left as the Ghazali ran behind the counter to grab a gun.
The clerk searched the parking lot before spotting Harris running down the block. When he finally caught up Harris, Ghazali fired his gun and killing the young man before going to the store.
As Ghazali walked back inside he said, “I think I shot him,” according to an arrest warrant, and returned to the cash register to ring up the next customer—he never called 911.
Two days later, Harris was found dead on the same block, collapsed in a man’s backyard.
Harris was shot in the left leg, and the bullet severed a major artery, Fowler said during the trial. A neighbor who lives four doors down from the convenience store told the jury that two days after the shooting, he noticed a trail of blood in his yard, WMC-TV reported. He followed it and found Harris’s body.
Beverly Loverson who was one of the many witnesses there took the stand this week to recall what she remembers of the incident. Stating, “and as he passed me I said, ‘don’t kill him. Don’t kill him. It’s just a beer’. ”
“This defendant took it upon himself to be the judge, the jury and the executioner over a $2 beer,” prosecutor Lora Fowler told the jury, according to footage of the trial from WMC-TV.
On Thursday, Ghazali was convicted of second-degree murder.
This case has sparked protests and boycotts and racial tensions in Memphis as hundreds mourned the African American teenager.
Ghazali is set to be sentenced next month, facing between 15 and 60 years in prison.
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