This message was originally delivered at Richmond First Friends on August 11, 2019.
The year is 2001. Rais Bhuyian works 13 hour-days at a Texaco gas station in Dallas. He does that so he can save money to bring his wife from Bangladesh to the United States. On September 21, he wakes up to fill in the morning shift because his co-worker had quit earlier that week. At about 12:30, a middle-aged white man walks into the store with a shotgun in his hands. Rais - trying to avoid conflict - begins pulling money out of the register and says, “Please don’t shoot me.”
The man with the gun ignores Rais and asks, “Where are you from?”
When Rais says “Excuse me?” in response, the gun fires.
According to a news story shortly afterward, “At least 38 pellets hit Bhuiyan. One broke out a tooth. A few went through the bridge of his nose. Several pierced his cheek and forehead and his right ear. And one pellet went right through the center of his pitch-black pupil, stopping millimeters from his brain.”
The year is 2001. Rais Bhuyian works 13 hour-days at a Texaco gas station in Dallas. He does that so he can save money to bring his wife from Bangladesh to the United States. On September 21, he wakes up to fill in the morning shift because his co-worker had quit earlier that week. At about 12:30, a middle-aged white man walks into the store with a shotgun in his hands. Rais - trying to avoid conflict - begins pulling money out of the register and says, “Please don’t shoot me.”
The man with the gun ignores Rais and asks, “Where are you from?”
When Rais says “Excuse me?” in response, the gun fires.
According to a news story shortly afterward, “At least 38 pellets hit Bhuiyan. One broke out a tooth. A few went through the bridge of his nose. Several pierced his cheek and forehead and his right ear. And one pellet went right through the center of his pitch-black pupil, stopping millimeters from his brain.”