Store is trashed after customers refused booze

HOLLYWOOD – The clerk was suspicious. Two men who got out of a pick up truck and staggered into the store seeking to buy alcohol appeared “already intoxicated,” he would later tell police.

Surveillance video from the Chevron gas station and convenience store, 2730 Sheridan St., released by Hollywood police Thursday shows what happened Aug. 1 about 9:45 p.m.

The video shows a burly man wearing a ball cap and a second man — in a Hugo Boss T-shirt and a cigarette dangling from his mouth — in what seemed to be a heated exchange with the clerk behind the counter.

According to police, the clerk “refused to serve them additional alcohol.”

The burly man then goes on a rampage. The video shows him knocking all sorts of merchandise off the shelves and then emptying a display case of Red Bull drinks onto the floor.

The two men leave the store, but when the clerk leans out the door trying to get the truck’s tag number, the burly man jumps out of the passenger side door and comes at him with fists flailing. As the two men tussle, the attacker’s ball hat falls off. After seemingly landing a few punches, he tosses more merchandise and display cases, including the entire Red Bull cooler, to the floor and finally leaves.

Damage totaled more than $1000, police said.

Clerk Lawrence Marable, who wasn’t seriously hurt, told WSVN-Ch. 7 he didn’t want to do business with the two men when they came into the store because they both seemed to be drunk.

The men were seen fleeing the store in a silver Ford F-150 that had a paper license tag.

Information can also be given, anonymously, to Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-8477(TIPS) or www.browardcrimestoppers.org.