ATLANTA — A mother is furious at owners of a local convenience store and she's calling for customers to keep away.%
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The woman says an employee locked her 11-year-old son inside the store and held him at gunpoint.
Police say a clerk used a remote lock to keep Dylan Curate, 11, in the store and held him at gunpoint Saturday morning because the clerk believed the boy was there to steal.
"I was extremely saddened and disheartened by it. That was my son, my baby," said mother Deangela Terriquez.
Witnesses ran to tell Terriquez about the incident.
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Atlanta police reviewed the surveillance video and arrested the clerk, Abhishek Dubey, and charged him with aggravated assault.
"He didn't do anything wrong. He just came -- he just came to the store," Terriquez said of her son.
Channel 2’s Carl Willis spoke with a co-worker who defended the clerk's actions saying they've recently had issues with a robbery and with kids stealing.
"It was a mistake, but it was a toy gun. It wasn't a real gun," clerk Atul Dwibedi told Willis.
The co-worker showed Willis portions of the surveillance video in which Dylan is trying to open a locked door, but wouldn't show him the part in which the clerk pulled the gun.%
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Police say it was not a toy, but rather an unloaded and broken .22-caliber revolver.
"The fact that young man didn't know whether he would be able to come back out of that store -- he wasn't literally kidnapped because he was locked in that store," said Nicole Borden, with the DeKalb County chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Police said the clerk, Abhishek Dubey, is charged with aggravated assault.
Store employees say the child shouldn't have been out at 1:30 a.m. but the boy's mother says he was there with adult relatives and didn't deserve this.
"We would like for the clerk to be held accountable in a court of law," Terriquez said.
Cox Media Group
