Darren Jackson told ABC13 that the incident started when the worker from the United States Postal Service (USPS) bumped into him inside a Chevron outlet on Fannin and Rosedale streets, near Flower Row, in Houston, Texas, where they were both getting gas.
Jackson, a medical transport driver, said that he decided to “talk to him and make things right” hoping that as he was a youngster, he could teach him to “try to respect people.”
“It didn’t work,” Jackson said and the confrontation on Thursday morning escalated outside the store. He said he thought that as a postal worker in uniform, he would be more amenable to a calm conversation.
Houston Police said that the postal worker pulled out a gun, according to the network. After he was shot, Jackson thought that he was being pursued and so ran to a flower shop on Rosedale.
He showed ABC13 his two wounds, one in his arm and the other in his chest. He said that the bullet had narrowly missed his heart.
“I have a big hole in my chest. It went through,” Jackson said. At least one bullet shattered the store’s door.
After he was treated at Ben Taub hospital, he walked the mile and a half back to the gas station to get his vehicle.
The unnamed shooter faces a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, Houston Police said, according to ABC13.
The USPS issued a statement which said it was “assisting the Houston Police Department in an incident that occurred on Thursday, September 16, 2021.”
Newsweek has contacted the USPS and Houston Police for comment.
Earlier this month, there was another violent altercation involving a shooting at a gas station. The incident took place in Metairie, just outside of New Orleans, following an argument between two people waiting in a long line.
The spat between the victim, Dwayne Nosacka, 36, and the suspected shooter, Walter Sippio, 20, broke out while they were waiting to fill their cars. The argument escalated and Sippio went back to his vehicle, pulled out a weapon and shot Mosacka in the chest, police say.
In July, a man fatally shot a 22-year-old at a gas station in Caledonia, Wisconsin, in what Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling described as an execution.
