‘Please don’t kill me:’ Witness begs for life as South Fulton convenience store clerk gunned down

SOUTH FULTON, Ga. — Police are searching for two people they say shot and killed a convenience store clerk during a robbery on Tuesday night.

The City of South Fulton Police Department is investigating a homicide at the Quick Pick Food Mart on Welcome All Road in South Fulton.

Police say when they got to the store, they found the clerk had been shot several times. He was pronounced dead on the scene.

The Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the clerk as 44-year-old Anatoli Zanabe.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]

Sayed Buhari, the store owner and Zanabe’s brother-in-law, was holding back tears as he tried to make sense of the senseless killing of his co-worker and loved one, whom his family knew as Tony.

“Why you kill him? Why you kill him?” he wondered aloud. “You could have shot him some other place...He has a family.”

Surveillance video captured two masked men come into the store and rob the clerk before shots rang out.

Police said the same two men robbed a Dollar General down the road before robbing the Quick Pick.

TRENDING STORIES:

• Atlanta’s federal penitentiary poses threat to entire southeast, report says
• DPH confirms first case of monkeypox in female in Georgia
• Traffic stop leads to massive drug bust in several metro Atlanta counties, 4 arrested

A witness, who did not want to be identified, told Channel 2′s Candace McCowan that she walked in on the robbery as it was happening. She says the gunmen were shouting for the clerk to open the door to get behind the counter.

“Next thing I know, the guy had the door open and they was telling him, ‘Give me the money! Give me cigarettes!’ just asking for all types of items and stuff,” she said.

She says the clerk handed over everything, but it wasn’t enough.

“Just shot him like eight times,” she explained. “I just dropped down because I thought maybe they would kill me too.”

That’s when the witness said she began begging the gunmen for her life.

“I threw my hands up and I was like, ‘Please, don’t kill me. Don’t kill me.’ He was like, ‘You alright, ma,’” she said.

[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]

Detectives say each suspect was wearing just one glove.

The men could possibly be traveling in a newer-model Bronze Chevrolet Malibu, police say, but they have not been identified.

IN OTHER NEWS:

14-year-old water boy arrested after officer left seriously injured after assault

©2022 Cox Media Group