Customers Come Together To Raise Money For Slain Convenience Store Clerk

There's a saying about diamonds and roughs. If Gi's Corner store, now Sam's Corner is the rough, then there was no more brilliant diamond than Salman "Sam" Tahir. 

“Sam would just, he'd make your day. You'd come in and he'd say 'good morning beautiful,' and you'd be thinking 'you're so full of it' and say 'thank you,'” Kris Bray said in front of the convenience story Saturday morning. 

Bray and many others were regulars at the store. She said it was mostly because of Sam who made the store feel like home. 

“It's hard we all had to go through walking through that threshold but we will. We're not going to not come here because of this idiot kid who ruined it,” she said.

She was talking about 17-year-old Samuel Myers who Midwest City police say is shown in this surveillance video here holding up the store and eventually shooting Sam over the $200 in the till.

Saturday afternoon, both Oklahoma City police and the Midwest City police Chief Brandon Clabes said Myers had been caught and was taken to the Oklahoma County jail for first-degree robbery and murder.

“It is a huge sigh of relief that Myers has been apprehended," Clabes said.  "This was a team effort and special thanks goes to the United States Marshals task force, Oklahoma City Police Department, our investigators and street crimes unit, the media and the public in bringing this violent offender to justice." 

“Now, that he's gone, he's brought us all together. We're all friends we're like the same community it's awesome,” Bray said.

Sam was a Pakistani immigrant who arrived in Oklahoma several years ago, according to several people at the store Saturday morning. He'd been working in the store to bring his wife and daughter to the U.S. and just three weeks ago he did, only to have that joy cut short. 

They added his family had decided to stay in the country and said if they could help it “Sam’s community” would make sure they would be taken care of. 

So on Saturday, customers turned friends were selling what they could to raise money to keep them in the community that Sam helped make shine, like a diamond in the rough.