Wednesday, April 29, 1998 | 10:02 a.m.
Marilyn Howard had been on the job six months the night it happened, working the graveyard shift in a deserted 7-Eleven on Las Vegas Boulevard North, near Lamb Boulevard.
She turned toward the door the second she heard the buzzer, but, seeing no one, went back to shelving cigarettes figuring the cold winter wind probably set the buzzer off.
And then she heard him cock the shotgun, call her name and shove the barrel in her back.
"He was a regular customer -- he'd been in the store a lot," said Howard, who, unlike many less fortunate local convenience store clerks, lived to tell about the encounter which made her quit.
"After he got the money, he went across the street and watched me call the cops. He stood there until the cops pulled up and then he ran. I think he did it because he needed a warm place to sleep that night."
And he got one -- inside the Clark County Detention Center, booked on an armed robbery charge after being caught a block away.
Could the situation have been avoided?
Maybe, Howard said, if she wasn't working the graveyard shift alone that night.
Increasing staffing during high-risk periods like the graveyard shift is one of several tips U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexis M. Herman released Tuesday as part of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's recommendations for preventing violence in late-night retail establishments.
"The statistics are shocking," Herman said in a prepared statement. "Forty-eight percent of all homicides in the workplace occur in retail. The risk is apparently greater for those who work at night in convenience stores, liquor stores and gasoline stations."
The most dangerous jobs include those where money is exchanged, employees are repeatedly in contact with the public, work alone or with a few employees, and keep late-night or early-morning hours in high crime areas, according to OSHA's studies.
OSHA recommends investing in adequate lighting, mirrors, video surveillance, silent and personal alarms, and bullet resistant enclosures for clerks. OSHA also suggests reducing store hours, closing portions of a store, posting signs showing that little cash is kept on hand, and training employees on handling robberies.
The tales of late-night hold-ups in Las Vegas are seemingly endless, and more importantly, many of the victimized stores already had in place prevention efforts OSHA is recommending.
The 7-Eleven at 4158 Koval Lane, south of Flamingo Road, had more than one employee working, a surveillance camera going and at least 18 people in the store March 11 when a gunman popped off several rounds at 10:50 p.m., killing one clerk and narrowly missing a second and a milk delivery man.
A surveillance camera was on and little cash in the drawer at a convenience store at 3501 E. Bonanza Road near Pecos Road on Feb. 14, 1996, when gunmen dressed in women's clothing raided the till and then murdered a 19-year-old pregnant woman sitting in the slot machine area as she waited for her husband to get off work.
Two clerks on duty at an AM/PM convenience store at 3885 E. Charleston Blvd. were murdered during a hold-up in January 1995.
"In this day and age, you can't avoid it," said a clerk working the high-traffic and high-crime area near Flamingo and Koval who declined to give her name. "You can try to be safe and follow the precautions, but if someone wants to rob you, they're going to rob you.
"We have video surveillance, we keep our windows clear, every six or eight months the employees go through training on what to do in a robbery. We have counseling for employees who do get robbed. We have alarms, mirrors, and we lock the doors we don't use. And still, we get robbed."
Several sheets clipped to a board behind the counter of a local Green Valley Grocery list seven management-approved tips to staying alive if robbed.
Included are suggestions like "try to remain calm," "do exactly what you are told," "don't make any sudden moves," and "don't assume the robber isn't armed, even if you don't see a weapon." Yet the last one perhaps, is the most effective: "Don't be a hero -- most heroes are dead."
"They're just doing it to have something to do," clerk Donnieta Merkes said when asked about the criminal element that targets convenience stores. "Life doesn't mean anything to them."
Although she felt OSHA's suggestions were a step in the right direction, Merkes wasn't confident that such would necessarily prevent a robbery. A customer overhearing the conversation was adamantly against OSHA's idea of walling a clerk behind bullet-proof glass.
"Take the taxi cabs in New York, for example," said the customer, who goes by the handle "New York Kevin." "The drivers' tips went down tremendously when they put glass between the driver and the customer. When you get in a cab, you want to talk, especially to New York cabdrivers. I've given cab drivers a $20 tip just because they were friendly, especially when you're stuck in traffic. They tell you about their kids. If they're not friendly, they get the standard dollar.
"With the girls here, it's the same thing. You put them behind glass, and it ruins the ambiance. How can you cage them in and make customers feel comfortable? When we come in here, the girls wave to us, they're friendly. They talk" -- elements that if lost, he said, would detract from business.
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