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Gas station clerk has an important message and viral video about his near-death experience

Posted at 6:22 PM, Apr 19, 2019
and last updated 2019-04-19 18:22:00-04

DETROIT (WXYZ) — Tarek Salah has a message and a video he posted online that has gone viral.

He’s going public now because he watched as another gas station clerk was stabbed over a candy bar in River Rouge within the last week. Tarek’s confrontation was with a man literally gunning for him.

“He walked up behind me and said, what’s up, what’s up," Salah says. "And that’s when I saw him reaching for something. As he kept lifting up his jacket I saw something chrome. And I instantly knew that was a knife or a gun.”

This started inside the gas station when Tarek says the man was asking for free things and throwing stuff around. Kids were inside.

Tarek asked him to leave and he was obviously not happy.

The video shows Tarek was outside talking with a friend when the guy came back and the fight for life breaks out.

“Man, all I kept thinking was damn was that how I was going down today. I just did what I had to do to make it another day,” Salah said.

You can see a friend of the man with a gun runs up, grabs the gun and the two run off into the night.

Salah says his message for clerks, stay behind the counter.

At the Sunoco at Plymouth and Greenfield, bullet proof glass protects the clerk. Salah says try to calm a situation and call police. They were not called in his case.

It happened two years ago but he posted it now because of the River Rouge case. Tarek has also changed jobs.