Zip-tied and doused with gas, NC gas station clerk escapes fire. Arsonist learns fate
A gas station clerk was doused with fuel, bound with zip ties and watching the store burn around him as two men made off with cash from the register and more than $1,000 in tobacco products, according to court filings and media reports.
Now, nearly a year-and-a-half later, one of the perpetrators has been sentenced.
A federal judge in North Carolina ordered David Curtis Smith, 59, to spend at least 26.5 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to robbery, carjacking, brandishing a firearm and arson, the U.S. Department of Justice said Tuesday in a news release.
Criminal proceedings against his alleged co-conspirator Cody Lee Long — who was 25 at the time of his arrest in 2018, the Greensboro News & Record reported — are ongoing, court filings show.
Prosecutors said Smith and Long arrived at the Stop and Shop Mart in Clemmons, North Carolina, just outside Winston-Salem, shortly after 9:30 p.m. on Oct. 20, 2018. The clerk, who had never seen the men before, was reportedly preparing to close for the night.
Smith held him at gunpoint while Long snatched cash from the register and other items, according to the news release.
The clerk, who is not named in court filings, was then bound with zip ties, tossed into the back office and doused with diesel fuel, prosecutors said.
“One of the suspects then lit a paper towel with a lighter and threw it onto the fuel,” the release states.
Both men then poured more fuel onto the floor and “attempted to set the store on fire,” according to prosecutors. They reportedly took the clerk’s car keys and locked the store’s security gate with a chain and padlock on their way out, stealing the clerk’s 2011 Ford Pickup truck in the process.
The clerk managed to break through the zip ties and shimmy between the door and the security gate to yell for help, the news release states.
The 56-year-old clerk told WXII that he didn’t want to “die in a fire.”
“It’s been my biggest fear all of my life and I think it was put in front of me.,” he told the TV station. “I asked for strength and I feel I got it because I’m here today.”
On the night of the robbery, the clerk had just returned to work after six months of cancer treatment — which made him thin enough to fit in the tight space between the front door and the security gate, WFMY reported.
“Smoke was covering everything. Fire was everywhere,” he told the TV station nearly a year after the incident. “I told God I wasn’t going to die today, not today. And He gave me strength to fight and break the straps.”
The clerk’s truck was found the day after the robbery, abandoned on a ramp to Interstate 40 “soaked with diesel fuel,” prosecutors said in the news release. There was also “material smoldering on the front seat and in the gasoline fill pipe.”
Investigators caught up with Smith and Long almost two weeks later in Virginia.
According to court filings, security footage from a nearby gas station showed the two men filling up with diesel fuel the day of the robbery. An investigator with the Forsyth County Sheriff’s office then interviewed employees at a hardware store where Long was observed shoplifting a package of zip ties while Smith paid for more of them.
The employees had written Smith’s name down and his license plate number, court filings state.
Investigators then tracked down Smith’s employer, a transport service in Statesville, North Carolina. The owner showed them an app that tracks his employees’ movements when they’re on the job, saying many forget to disable it when they’re off the clock, prosecutors said in court documents.
“When the owner went back to October 20 at 9:30 p.m., it showed Smith at 6641 Styers Ferry Road, the location of the robbery and arson,” the document states. “The app appears to have been turned off after Smith arrived at this location.”
The pair were arrested at 3 a.m. on Nov. 2, just over the Virginia border in Wythe County, according to court filings. Once in jail, Smith requested to speak with agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
“After some questioning, Smith stated, ‘We’re guilty of it… We’re guilty… It was planned,’” court filings state.
He told investigators they planned the robbery a few days in advance and chose the store “because it seemed like an easy target,” prosecutors said in court filings.
During phone calls recorded from jail, prosecutors said Long told his grandmother the charges were “souped up” and “bogus.” His trial date was delayed in November, court filings show.
In addition to Smith’s prison sentence, the judge ordered him to pay $366,989.07 in restitution. Media outlets reported damage to the Stop and Shop totaled at least $200,000. It has since been rebuilt.
