A loitering customer, apparently angered by a clerk's request that he leave a 7-Eleven store on the 16th Street Mall, returned and shot the clerk in the forehead before casually walking from the scene in broad daylight.

The brazen violence late Sunday afternoon stunned pedestrians who were crowding the mall after a Colorado Rockies game. But the onlookers also made for plentiful witnesses, some of whom may have followed the man from a distance, helping police quickly locate the suspect.

The victim was in critical condition at Denver Health Medical Center Sunday night. Though shot in the head, he was moving when help arrived minutes after the shooting, witnesses said.

The suspect had been loitering in the store in the Symes Building at 820 16th St. for 10 to 15 minutes when a clerk asked him if he was going to buy anything, according to a co-worker who was in the store at the time of the shooting. The Rocky is withholding the co-worker's name because he is a witness.

"The guy got mad and said 'I'm not taking nothing,' " the co-worker said.

The man then approached the register and asked about speaking to the store manager. The clerk asked him to return Monday.

"The guy was like, 'All right, fine.' Then he left, then 15 or 20 minutes later, the guy comes back to the store and was walking down the aisles again and (the same clerk) said to him, 'I asked you to leave the store if you're not going to buy anything.' The guy turned around and shot him."

"He didn't say anything. He just turned around and pulled out a gun and shot him," the co-worker added. "He walked out, he walked down Champa Street, he walked to 19th Street, to the Greyhound" terminal.

Police arrested the suspect at 19th and Arapahoe streets.

The co-worker said he believes some customers followed the suspect from a distance and contacted police on their cell phones.

Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson declined to comment on the co-worker's version of events. Jackson did confirm that police got excellent descriptions of the suspect from witnesses.

Police weren't prepared to release the identity of the victim and the alleged shooter Sunday night. "We've got to make sure we know who we're talking about in both cases," Jackson said.

The co-worker said the victim had worked at the 7-Eleven for just under a year, including several months on the overnight shift.

He said the suspect had been in the store before in recent months, and that he'd typically come inside, walk around, then leave. He didn't think the victim had had a previous run-in with the man, but said clerks sometimes have trouble at the store.

"There's a lot of people from the streets that come in. We have a lot of theft at the store, so sometimes it causes friction between us and the customers," the co- worker said.

Witnesses, including a couple of children who were in the convenience store at the time of the shooting, were seen afterward in police cars and outside the store giving statements to officers.

Luis Aguilera, 40, who just moved to Denver from Kingman, Ariz., was at a nearby Good Times Burgers & Frozen Custard restaurant when he saw the aftermath of the shooting, which happened just after 4 p.m.

He said the victim was moving when he was brought out of the store by emergency personnel.

A pool of blood was visible through the store window, and it appeared that a shot had been fired through a beverage cooler.

A store manager who showed up after the shooting declined to comment, saying she was too "anxious."

Allen Williams, 37, spent the afternoon at the Rockies game before visiting the mall. He stopped at the 7-Eleven just after the shooting.

"What struck me was you've got thousands of people (on the mall) and there wasn't even a line in the 7-Eleven," Williams said.

He quickly learned why.

After watching employees hustle one lingering customer out of the store, he saw the wounded clerk on the floor.

Jackson called a shooting on the 16th Street Mall "highly unusual." He said the mall is "very well patrolled" with officers on foot and on bicycles. "This is one of the safer places you can be," Jackson said.

poppenj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5176

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