Police: Gun store clerk shoots robber

Waukegan police said a clerk at a guns-and-ammunition store appears to have shot a man who was trying to rob the establishment this afternoon.

Officers responded at about 1:45 p.m. to Mike Schrank's Smoke 'N Gun, 2010 Washington St., to a call of a person shot, according to a police news release.

There they found a man who had been shot twice in the chest and once in the leg, and a shop clerk who had a gun trained on him, the statement said.

Witnesses told investigators that the injured man went behind the counter and argued with the clerk.

The confrontation turned physical and the clerk pulled a handgun and shot the other man, witnesses said. During the struggle, the clerk also shot himself in the hand accidentally.

The man was taken first to Vista West Medical Center in Waukegan, then to Advocated Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, where he was taken into surgery. The clerk was taken another local hospital for treatment, police said.

Police believe the man was trying to rob the store, the statement said.

In October a 20-year-old man who held up a Waukegan grocery with a pellet gun was shot and killed by a clerk who fired at him after the robbery, as he pedaled from the scene on a bicycle. A Lake County grand jury later declined to indict the store clerk in the killing.

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