Paul Bass Photo
The morning after surviving the second attack in three months by a gun-wielding robber, Johnny Jimenez was back behind the counter at Eliu’s Mart. He has no plans to quit.
A masked intruder shot Jimenez —a popular figure known as “Papi” in the surrounding Dwight/ Kensington neighborhood — as Jimenez dialed 911 for help in the rear of the Chapel Street convenience store at 6:22 p.m. Monday.
Jimenez got lucky; the bullet grazed his side but didn’t enter his body. (He displayed the spot in the photo above.) He was released from the Hospital of St. Raphael by 11:30 p.m. He returned to Eliu’s, a block from the hospital, to serve customers on Tuesday.
“I have a family,” he explained.
He recounted the episode Wednesday morning in between selling cigarettes and snacks to a steady stream of customers inside the convenience store. A Spanish-language Univision talk show played on a set near the front counter.
A bilingual regular (pictured) who gave his name as “Junior” translated Jimenez’s remarks into English. “He’s a good guy,” Junior said. “I don’t know why people do that bullshit.”
Police don’t have any suspects in the shooting, one of a rash of attacks plaguing the city this week. Jimenez doesn’t have a lot of info to offer them. “I saw only the masks,” he said.
Jimenez, who’s 37, moved here two years ago from the Dominican Republic with his daughter and son, now 11 and 6. They moved in with his sister Altagracia and her two children in Hamden; Jimenez’s wife stayed behind in the Dominican Republic with his mother.
Jimenez found work at Eliu’s, where his sister works, too. He opens the store around 8 or 9 a.m. each day. She goes home around 5; he stays on until closing, around 9 p.m.
Convenience store clerks have been in the news lately as targets of random robbers along the lines of cabbies and pizza deliverers. Robbers shot to death clerks in West Haven and Manchester this month.
In February Jimenez was working at Eliu’s when a robber bashed him in the head with a gun. He’s kept a photo of the robber on his BlackBerry ever since.
The two robbers who entered Eliu’s Monday evening wore masks. Each carried a gun, he said.
Jimenez’s nephew was working the front counter. One of the robbers cleaned out the cash register and stole the nephew’s laptop computer and cellphone.
Meanwhile, the second gunman pointed a gun at the head of a customer standing by the Maruchan Instant Lunch noodles, Goya black beans, and Barilla Piccolini Mini-Wheels in a nearby aisle.
Jimenez was in the back of the store at the time, cooking Spanish rice in the kitchen behind the deli counter. He pulled out his BlackBerry to dial 911. The second gunman saw him. Jimenez ducked down behind a wall. The gunman fired two bullets at the wall.
The bullets passed through the wall above and next to a display of red onions in blue Pepsi-Cola trays. As Jimenez dialed, “I felt a pain,” he recalled. He’d been hit.
The robbers fled out the door and down a side alley. Jimenez finished making the 911 call.
Police rushed to the scene. They had Jimenez sit on the floor near the front of the store. Medics put him on a stretcher and transported him to the hospital emergency room across the street.
Fortunately, the bullet didn’t hit any internal organs. Jimenez was in good enough shape to return to work.
He appeared surprised to be asked whether he plans to continue working at the store. He said he likes the job. And he has a family to feed.
The entrance to Eliu’s.