A gunshot went off when a clerk fought with a person who was trying to rob a store in Hartford Thursday night, according to police, and the clerk managed to take the suspect’s gun and hit him in the head with it.
Police said officers responded to a store at Westland and Martin streets at 10:11 p.m. after receiving reports of an armed robbery and possible gunshots and they found one suspect who was bleeding from the head and fighting with the store clerk.
Officers secured the suspect and learned that the clerk had taken a semiautomatic firearm away from him and hit him with it to fight him off, police said.
Two other people had run from the store and had another firearm, police said, and officers began searching for them.
A witness from a nearby store told police that two shots had gone off in the store. One shot was fired from a flare gun and the other was fired from the suspect’s 9mm semiautomatic handgun during the struggle with the clerk, police said.
After securing the scene, officers found evidence in the store, including six live .38 special rounds on the floor, an orange flare gun, a spent flare gun cartridge, fragments of a projectile, a spent 9mm shell casing and blood spatter. Police also recovered the 9mm semiautomatic handgun the clerk took from the suspect.
Outside the front door of the store, police also found one black Nike sneaker.
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A K-9 unit was called in, the sneaker did not lead to any other suspects.
Police arrested 19-year-old Noah Ryan, of Springfield and he was transported to Saint Francis Hospital to be treated for a laceration to his head.
He was later discharged and transported to Hartford Police detention facility.
Police said he was charged with criminal attempted robbery in the first degree, criminal attempted assault in the first degree, two counts of reckless endangerment, carrying a pistol without a permit, third-degree assault, second-degree breach of peace and unlawful discharge of a firearm.
