The 5 a.m. shift is typically a quiet one for a cashier at an all-night pharmacy. The drunks have mostly gone to bed while the sober haven't yet roused themselves for the new day. But for whatever reason, that wasn't the case on Wednesday at the CVS at Central Expressway and Meadow Road. (Note: The address listed in the police report we're going off covers that entire shopping center and doesn't list a specific business. But the Tom Thumb doesn't open until 6, so we used our Holmesian powers of deduction to conclude this happened at the 24-hour pharmacy.)
Russell Lewis, 33, was working as a cashier that morning when police say a 24-year-old Dallas man named Craig Ellis walked in. It's not clear from the police report what exactly transpired inside the store, but Ellis was apparently doing something he shouldn't have, and Lewis had to physically remove him from the store.
That probably should have been the end of things, but, as he was driving away, police say Ellis hurled a racial slur at Lewis. Lewis got in his own car and briefly gave chase, then returned to his post in the store.
Things could have ended there as well, but they didn't. Forty-five minutes later, police say Ellis returned with a large rock, which he used to smash Lewis' back window.
This time, Lewis wasn't going to let Ellis just drive off. He got into his car once again and trailed Ellis out of the parking lot and down the Central service road, ramming the car until, in front of a Shell station a few blocks away, it was completely disabled.
Police say that Ellis bailed out at this point and took off on foot, with Lewis following in his car. Lewis caught up with him midway across the parking lot, knocking Ellis down and running over his legs. Officers arrived 10 minutes later and arrested Lewis, who's now in Lew Sterrett on a charge of aggravated assault with a motor vehicle.
Update at 4:38 p.m.: A Friend of Unfair Park reader who was at the CVS this morning writes to clarify what led up to all this:
The black CVS employee was clearly insane and was hurling racial comments to the customer who had stepped on the floor he had just mopped. The customer did get quite mad when the employee insulted his girlfriend. No excuse, but I feel sorry for anyone mentioned publicly in this article because it paints a much worse picture of the customer than what happened. If you think "doing something he shouldn't be doing" includes taking one step onto a wet floor so he could get some allergy medicine, I would hate to live in your world. This employee was clearly either on drugs or insane from the second the conflict started. I was personally afraid of him and I was uninvolved!!!
