Store clerk, once beaten with bat, now shot in robbery

ROCK HILL — A store clerk is recovering from a bullet that went through one leg, and lodged in his other leg.
 
Tea Young Jin, 38, was shot when two men robbed park grocery on East Main Street late Tuesday night.
 
Rock Hill police said Jin's injury is not life-threatening, but he's the same clerk who was sent to the hospital when a man struck him in the head with a baseball bat in late May.  In that incident, an unruly customer was told to leave and not come back, and he hit Jin with the bat.
 
Park Grocery was closed all day Wednesday, and customers stopping by and pulling on the door handle had no idea why.
 
"That's sad that it happened to them, they're real nice," said Lia Mack, who shops there three or four times a week.
 
Lanya Perry lives two doors down from the store, and saw all the police cruisers there Tuesday night.    She said the employees there treat customers well, and know many of their regulars by name.
 
"I know good and well I'm not going over there now," Perry said.  "That could've been me."
 
 Derrick Beard has lived in front of the store for 14 years, and has seen a lot happen.
 
"Two or three shootouts over there. People trying to rob the store.  It's scary, because you just don't ever know," he said.
 
Beard remembers when the store's previous owner ran outside with a gun, firing down the street at armed robbers who had just been inside.
 
 Police said the robbery Tuesday was the seventh since 2005.
 
Surveillance video shows one of the two men in the store.  The video shows him point a pistol at two men behind the counter.  They eventually remove the cash drawer to give it to him, and he shoots Jin in the leg.

RAW: Surveillance of Rock Hill gunpoint robbery
 
Police believe the second man stood at the door as a lookout, as he is not visible on the surveillance video.
 
A passerby, Jimmy Hawkins, told Channel 9, it's got to be hard to run a business here.
 
"You're taking your life into your own hands right there. You never know who's going to come in that door," he said.
 
There is only a vague description of the two men.  The clerk said they were black men.  One was short and muscular, and the other was over 6 feet tall.  There was no clothing description given.

WSOC