Police: store owner shoots, kills burglary suspect

HAMILTON — A store owner who shot and killed a man attempting to rob his Main Street business Saturday has faced robbery attempts on at least two other occasions, employees at area businesses said Sunday.

Hamilton police officers responded to Mazagan Urban Ware, 201 Main St., at 8:34 p.m. on a report of a robbery attempt that ended when the owner shot the suspect, according to a news release from the Hamilton Police Department. When police and fire units arrived, they found the robbery suspect lying outside the store with an apparent gunshot wound, the news release said.

The suspect, whose name was not released by authorities over the weekend, was transported to Fort Hamilton Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. No charges are pending against the store owner, whose name also was being withheld by police.

Hamilton police and the Butler County Coroner’s Office are continuing the investigation, according to the news release.

The store, which didn’t open for business Sunday, still showed signs of the robbery, including a cash drawer, change and a smattering of $10 and $20 bills strewn across the floor.

Priscilla Abulencia, 24, of Hamilton, who works at The Shop at Main across the street from Mazagan Urban Ware, said the store’s owner is “a well-respected businessman” who often is joined at the business by his wife and young son.

“If our store ever needs anything, it’s nothing to walk over there and say ‘Can I get change for this or can you lend us some bags,’” Abulencia said. “We look out for each other. He’s a good guy.”

Mazagan, a clothing store that opened in spring 2011, has been robbed at least twice before , Abulencia said.

William Young, 25, of Hamilton, a clerk at nearby Tom’s First Ward Cigar Store, said that Tom’s was robbed at gunpoint in February 2011 by two men who ordered an employee and her manager to hand over the store’s money.

One of the men pulled out a handgun, aimed it at the employee and pulled the trigger, but the gun didn’t fire. When the man lifted the gun to investigate and pulled the trigger again, it went off, firing a shot into the ceiling. The would-be robbers fled the store when they heard an ambulance siren. Police arrested the men about 15 minutes later.

“I’d say having a weapon or a gun might be mandatory,” he said. “It doesn’t feel safe. Even if you were to give the money over, who knows what would happen to you?”

Bobby McWhorter said he heard a single gunshot Saturday evening while at his home near the corner of North “C” Street and Park Avenue and came outside to see at least eight police cruisers.

McWhorter attributes criminal activity in their area, including multiple break-ins at businesses on the block, to a rising number of heroin addicts. He said the store owner’s actions were justified.

“He’s got every right to protect his family and his business,” he said. “I woulda done the same thing.”

Lori Rogers, 41, who lives several doors down from Mazagan Urban Ware, said it is “a busy little store” that sees increased business on evenings and weekends.

“On Saturdays, you can’t hardly ever find a parking spot out here,” Rogers said as she stood on the front steps of her South “C” Street home.

She said she didn’t know the neighborhood well enough before moving there in February from Hamilton’s Lindenwald neighborhood with her children, ages 6, 13, and 18.

“You have alcoholics and drug users … down on this end,” she said. “My kids aren’t actually allowed out by themselves.

“...a rising number of heroin addicts...”

Expect to see this phrase a lot more often in the future.

Opiate and synthetic opiate drugs have become some of the most abused drugs in the US. There has been about a 400% rise in their prescriptions since 2000. As of 2010, estimates are that some 12 million or more Americans have at some point abused these drugs. Addiction rates are high.

This matters, because the drugs are being reformulated to make them much harder to abuse. This will not stop the addicts.

Heroin is about the same as many of these drugs, yet costs as little as a quarter of their price. A single black market Oxycodone pill may cost $100, but a single dose of heroin, from $20-25. And the supply of heroin, mostly brown heroin from Mexico, is increasing.

Opiate drugs are particularly popular in the region from Kentucky to Virginia, sometimes called “Hillbilly Heroin”, so it is being watched to see how many addicts were going to move to heroin, by counting overdoses in emergency rooms.

It spread overnight. Heroin is now all over the region.

Addicts generally say that they will either snort or smoke heroin, not inject it, but in just a few weeks they are injecting it. And while $20-25 a dose is a lot less, they still have to have it. If they don’t have it, they generally will commit crimes to get it.

As often as not, this means armed robbery.

Store owner: “I didn’t kill him; he killed himself”

Prosecutor sends case to grand jury

By Eric Schwartzberg

Staff Writer

HAMILTON —

Smail Gueddari was working in the back room of his store, Mazagan Urban Ware, around 8:30 p.m. Saturday when, suddenly, he heard his wife, who had been manning the cash register, screaming from the front of the shop.

Gueddari rushed from the back room to find a robber, with the lower part of his face covered by a makeshift black bandanna, pointing a handgun at his wife and motioning with it for her to empty the store’s cash register. When the robber spotted Gueddari rounding the corner, he fired a shot at the store owner, but the bullet narrowly missed him and instead struck two mannequins before lodging into a nearby wall.

Gueddari said that’s when he pulled his firearm and shot back twice, hitting the robber once in the torso. The robber, identified Monday as 26-year-old Jeremy Scott Irvin of Fairfield, tried to escape with some of the stolen money after being wounded, but collapsed on the sidewalk just outside of the store located at 201 Main Street. Irvin would be pronounced dead shortly afterwards at Fort Hamilton Hospital.

Gueddari, in his first interview since the incident, told the Hamilton JournalNews that Irvin’s actions caused his own demise.

“Anybody in my place would have done what I do,” Gueddari said on Monday. “ I didn’t kill him; he killed himself.”

While Gueddari described the encounter as a classic case of self-defense, Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser said Monday that evidence would be turned over to a grand jury to determine whether or not charges would be filed against the business owner.

“The parameters with respect to the use of deadly force and fire arms, and the protection of business property only, had to be laid out clearly so people don’t get the wrong idea of what they can do and they can’t do,” Gmoser said.

For example, Gmoser said someone coming into a piano shop and smashing up the pianos with a hammer does not warrant the use of deadly force simply to protect their property. But if the person turned the hammer on the shop keep, “that’s different,” he said.

Gmoser has sent similar cases before a grand jury before. In 2012, he sent a case involving a homeowner who shot a man for tearing up his home to a grand jury. While the grand jury did not indict the homeowner, Gmoser said then that he wanted to make it clear that the “Castle Doctrine” — a law which provides certain protections from prosecution to those who use deadly force when they reasonably fear imminent peril, serious bodily harm or death to himself or another person — is not meant as a free pass to execute intruders.

Irvin attended Hamilton High School until 10th grade, according to the Hamilton City School District. He had no prior record of criminal activity in Hamilton, police said. Irvin has a minor criminal record in Fairfield for an OVI charge and two probation violations in 2007 and a seatbelt violation in 2013, according to court records.

Family members who answered the door at Irvin’s house Monday afternoon declined to comment.

Gueddari, who said he came to the United States from Morocco 11 years ago, opened Mazagan Urban Ware in 2011. He said his wife often works the register in the evenings, and the couple’s 2-year-old son was sleeping in the back room when the robbery occurred.

“I’m glad my family’s OK,” Gueddari said. “I don’t want to kill him, it was just in defense.”

Contrary to previous reports, Gueddari said his store had never been robbed before Saturday.

“I hope this is the last time,” he said.

Gueddari, who kept the business closed Sunday, said he plans to operate his store as usual moving forward.

“Business is business,” he said. “What are you going to do? Shut down? You have to open. You have a lot of overhead.””

Gueddari said he planned to show the store’s video footage from the robbery and shooting to the news media once Hamilton police returned it. He said police told him it would be about a week until the digital surveillance unit was back in his possession.

Denise Callahan contributed to this story.

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/store-owner-i-didnt-kill-him-he-killed-himself/nXMwP/

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