Armed robbery charge dropped in September gas station shooting, others still pending
A man accused of stealing an orange juice from a Hardeeville gas station in September shouldn’t be accused of armed robbery, a judge determined, dropping that charge on Wednesday.
But the man, Marcus Gordon, 36, of Hardeeville is also accused of shooting the gas station clerk several times. The clerk was airlifted to a hospital and treated for wounds to his chest, abdomen and legs, his lawyers have said.
Gordon will still be tried on charges related to the shooting — attempted murder, armed robbery, possession of a weapon in the commission of a violent crime and possession of a firearm by a felon — according to the Jasper County Detention Center jail log and Hardeeville Police Chief Sam Woodward.
Gordon also faces second-offense possession charges for drugs that police said they found when he was arrested, Woodward said.
The armed robbery charges were dropped because the judge “didn’t feel stealing the orange juice was enough to charge him with the armed robbery,” he said.
“We feel different,” Woodward said. “It doesn’t matter if you steal an orange juice or $10,000. It’s still stealing.”
The police department plans to ask the Solicitor’s Office to directly indict Gordon for stealing the orange juice, Woodward said.
The shooting
The alleged shooting took place on Sept. 7 at the Octane gas and food mart between 9:30 and 10 a.m., according to a Hardeeville Police Department alert that went out after the shooting.
A clerk at the gas station was shot multiple times, according to the alert, and airlifted to Savannah Memorial Hospital. At the time, police were investigating whether it was an armed robbery, the alert said. Gordon took the juice from the store without paying, Woodward said.
About 1 p.m. on Sept. 8, police stopped Gordon when he was driving down a road in Hardeeville, Woodward told the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette at the time of the arrest. When he was pulled over, “he was found to have narcotics on him,” Woodward said. Gordon was taken to the Jasper County Detention Center without incident, Woodward said.
The clerk, who has not been identified by police, filed a workers’ compensation claim in October after not receiving benefits, his lawyers told the newspapers at the time. The clerk has not been compensated as of Thursday, according to one of his lawyers, Dylan Bess from Morgan & Morgan, a personal injury law firm. The clerk’s attorneys are seeking workers compensation benefits from the state’s uninsured employers fund.
“He is still slowly recovering and unable to work at this point,” Bess said.
The 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office declined to comment because it is an ongoing case, according to Community Relations Liaison Erinn McGuire.
Gordon’s public defender, Carolyn Carmody, said that she could not comment on the dropped charge because the rest of the case is still pending.
As of Thursday, Gordon was in custody at the Jasper County Detention Center.
