YORKTOWN, Ind. — Security video shows the overnight clerk at Yorktown Food Mart just sitting on a stool behind the counter about 1:30 a.m. on April 8 when two men dressed in black burst in and start beating him over the head with a metal baseball bat.
The clerk was struck three times before the man with the bat punched a few keys on the cash register. When it wouldn’t open, the two suspects ran out of the Marathon gas station convenience store empty-handed.
The clerk was left bleeding from a large gash on his head.
"It was a very quick, graphic and brutal thing to happen to him,” said Detective Brooke Barnard with the Yorktown Police Department. “It only lasted about 15-20 seconds. It was a very quick thing and there was just no hesitation at all with it."
"This is like a surprise because this is a nice community over here,” said Ravinder Singh, who also works behind the counter there. “Everybody likes us and no problems, no issues."
Another angle of store security video shows what looks like two young men, one wearing a bandana and another a ski mask, who run into the store and immediately attack the clerk without warning or provocation.
Singh says his co-worker is resting at home with seven staples in his head.
"The guy was almost going to die,” said Singh. “If the cops don’t come here and they take him to the hospital, he could die over here, because it's that much deep in his head, the injury."
A security camera across the street shows the men approach the store and also take off on foot around the dark side of the building.
New Castle police are investigating a similar crime that happened just a couple of hours later last Thursday.
Police believe a gold SUV may be involved. Call Yorktown or New Castle Police if you have any information that can help solve these crimes.
Detective Barnard started a Go Fund Me account for the victim, who has no health insurance.
"We say that this is a nice, small town,” said Barnard. “We take pride in it kind of being quiet and things like this not happening, so we take it personal when things like this happen to one of our own community members."