Clerk shot during robbery

ST. PETERSBURG (FOX13) - A convenience store clerk in St. Petersburg was recovering in the hospital Monday, less than 48 hours after he was the victim of a violent armed robbery.

At about 10:30 Saturday night, a suspect with his gun drawn burst through the doors of the Easy Stop 2 store on 16th Street North and demanded cash.

Surveillance cameras recorded the incident, in which the clerk, identified by family as Ripon Miah, 21, did everything the gunman asked. But the suspect fired a shot as he ran out of the store, hitting Miah in the arm.

"I was working at my other store and he called me [and said], 'I got shot.' So I just come here and I find him on the outside," said Farid Miah, the victim's brother, whose family owns two Easy Stop businesses. "I can't even believe that he got shot."

Farid Miah said the bullet actually passed just inches from his brother's heart.

"The only thing I can tell you, thank you God, he is alive," he said.

"If it had been just a few inches this way or the clerk had been angled a little bit differently, it could have fatally injured him," said Yolanda Fernandez, a spokesperson for the St. Petersburg Police Department. "It's clear [in the video] that he is complying and doing everything that the gunman is asking him to do. He's not offering any resistance. He's not antagonizing and there was really no provocation to shoot him."

Police are looking into whether the same suspect is responsible for another robbery. Detectives are hoping the surveillance video helps someone recognize him. Anyone who has information is asked to call police.