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Grocery store owner survives shot in thigh
By AMY HERDY © St. Petersburg Times, published May 11, 2001 TAMPA -- Felix Morel was enjoying his morning cup of Lipton tea and watching a small television Thursday when two men wearing ski masks entered his West Tampa grocery store. One of them had a gun and pointed it at Morel as they demanded money. Seated behind the counter, Morel found himself thinking of death. "In my mind I was saying, "Do something! Sit up! Defend yourself,' " Morel recalled. "I knew he was going to shoot me." The 45-year-old grandfather reached for the 9mm pistol he keeps under the counter. He never got to use it. "When he saw my gun," Morel said, "he fired." The bullet hit Morel in the left thigh. He tried to return fire, but his gun had no bullets. The two masked men fled to a white car parked outside the store at 2745 W Chestnut St. They had not been found as of Thursday night. Morel was taken to St. Joseph's Hospital and later released, the bullet still lodged in his leg. As he relaxed at home Thursday afternoon with his wife and family, Morel thought back to the morning's events and of his certainty that he was not going to live. "Everything happened so fast, you don't have time to think," he said. Had he not made the sudden move for his gun, he said, the bullet would have hit him in the chest instead of the leg and killed him. It's hard to say whether the man would have fired had he not seen Morel's gun, he said. After being shot, Morel ran after the men, trying to get a license tag number. He called police and waited for help. As police searched for the suspects, people from the residential, working-class Hispanic neighborhood came by Morel Grocery to shake their heads and exchange details. "Everybody knows and likes Felix," said Jose Mendez, 34, who lives nearby. "Felix is good people to everybody he knows." This is not the first time there has been trouble at the store for Morel, who owns the grocery with his wife of 25 years, Zoila, and runs it with his three sons. In 1995, an armed robber took a shot at Morel, missing him. In January of this year, a man wearing a ski mask and brandishing a knife entered the store and demanded money. The man fled after Morel reached for his gun. For at least one of his sons, 19-year-old Omar, who is in his second year studying business at Hillsborough Community College, the shooting is enough to discourage him from following in his dad's footsteps. "I plan to be in business, but more like a corporate level, so stuff like this won't happen," Omar Morel said. A native of the Dominican Republic, Felix Morel moved to Tampa from New Jersey seven years ago to escape the crime. For now, Morel said, he will continue to work at his grocery -- and keep his gun. "If I didn't have a gun, I'm sure I'd be dead right now," he said. -- Amy Herdy can be reached at (813) 226-3386.
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