A clerk at a Northwest Side convenience store says what started as a simple request for a cigar turned into a terrifying knife confrontation, made worse when he accidentally locked himself inside with the armed man while reaching for a panic button. Ali Shaikh was working at Sherry’s convenience store on Wurzbach Road near Timberhill Drive when the ordeal unfolded, leaving him scrambling between doors as he tried to get away and call for help.
According to KSAT, the man first approached Shaikh with a casual ask: “Oh, can I get the cigar?” But the interaction quickly escalated. Shaikh told the station the man then tried to grab hundreds of dollars’ worth of scratch-off lottery tickets, and when Shaikh tried to distract him, the man threatened him with a knife.
In the chaos, Shaikh reached for what he thought was a panic button but hit the wrong key instead. “I just pressed this one. The door locked automatically,” he said, describing the moment the store’s front entrance sealed shut with both of them still inside. Rather than calming the situation, the lockdown seemed to set the suspect off further — Shaikh said the man became even more violent once he realized he was trapped.
A Frantic Escape Through the Back
With the front door locked and the suspect growing more aggressive, Shaikh said he ran from the front of the store to a back door, trying to put distance between himself and the knife. He eventually managed to unlock a door, allowing the man to leave the building, and then called 911 once the immediate danger had passed.
Shaikh told KSAT he had also noticed the man on the store’s surveillance cameras earlier, placing a bicycle behind the building and seemingly trying to cover his face before coming inside — details that suggest some degree of premeditation, though the evidence does not indicate what, if anything, investigators have made of that footage. By the time San Antonio police arrived a few minutes later, the man had already pedaled away on his bicycle, leaving the case unresolved for now.
Crime Stoppers Seeks Tips on Suspect
Crime Stoppers has asked anyone with information about the suspect’s identity to call (210) 224-STOP (7867). No further detail on the man’s identity, age, or whether he has since been located has been released.
The incident lands amid a broader downward trend in San Antonio crime. Police data cited by the San Antonio Express-News showed overall crime fell 13% from January through November 2025 compared to the same period a year earlier, with robberies dropping from 1,693 in 2024 to 1,285 as of last November. Still, Assistant Chief Jesus Salame told the paper that over half of all business robberies stem from shoplifting that turns violent, and that just under half of those incidents happen at discount and convenience stores — a pattern that echoes what Shaikh described happening with the scratch-off tickets.
Convenience Stores Have Been Targeted Before
Knife and weapon threats at San Antonio retail counters aren’t new. In January 2025, a clerk at a pharmacy near East Houston and Navarro streets confronted a 34-year-old man after spotting him stuffing merchandise into his clothing; the man pulled a knife and waved it at the clerk before fleeing on foot, according to FOX San Antonio. Police said officers located and arrested that suspect nearby shortly afterward.
Other Northwest Side stores have faced similar scares. Back in 2019, KSAT reported that a man armed with a tire iron tried to rob a Circle K in the 3500 block of Wurzbach Road around 5:40 a.m. on a Sunday, only to be fought off by the cashier and a customer before fleeing in a black, four-door car. That same year, police said they were investigating a string of overnight robberies that may have connected as many as seven stores, including one in which a clerk was pistol-whipped and a newspaper delivery man was shot at but not hit. A separate South Side case at Stanley Ice Station, reported by News 4 San Antonio, involved a suspect who pointed a pistol at a clerk, locked them in a back room, and fled on foot. None of these earlier cases has been tied to the Sherry’s incident, but they illustrate how often clerks on the city’s convenience-store front lines find themselves facing down armed strangers alone.
