NEW ORLEANS — Surveillance video from a gas station in New Orleans shows an employee fight back as two men try to rob him at gunpoint.
Key's Fuel Mart is a 24-hour store on N. Rampart Street. Ameer Karakra, a private bodyguard and Uber driver, said his cousins own the store.
"I always come over here and visit my friends all the time," he said.
He was outside the store around 3:30 Sunday morning when he saw two men walking inside.
"I thought they were going to buy something, but then I saw them come out running, and I saw the bullets going out from their weapons," Karakra said.
Both men were wearing bandannas and hats. In the surveillance video, you can see them standing inside the store for about 20 seconds until one of them pulls out a gun. According to NOPD, the men demanded money.
"He refused to give them the money," Karakra said about the clerk who he spoke with after the incident.
In the video, you can then see the clerk pick up a chair and chase the two men out of the store.
"He is a very, very tough guy," Karakra said.
The clerk followed them outside and threw the chair as they ran off. You see one man stop and shoot, missing the clerk.
"The bullets never came to him, they came to the wall, so I think God gave him a new life, a new chance," Karakra said.
Karakra said this is the first time something like this has happened at Key's Fuel Mart, but it's a concern for people who come to the U.S. from the Middle East to make a better life.
"People get shot in the stores for $100 dollars or $50 in the register, and they have a family to support. That's the problem. They come over here to support their family, and they get killed to give them money," Karakra said, frustrated with the violence.
NOPD reports the suspects fired a total of three shots. According to Karakra, they did not get away with any money.
"They didn't get (anything), nothing," he said.
Karakra couldn't stop the men, but he says he is always ready and his goal is to work in law enforcement to protect the community from incidents like this.
"That's what I do for a living, I protect people," he said.
The two suspects ran off and have not been identified. We have not spoken with the gas station clerk, but according to Karkara, he was unharmed and is okay.
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