Howard told police that the man who intended to buy the cocaine was holding it in his hands and had asked Howard whether he would be able to “cook” the cocaine. Howard said as he spoke with the man he had a 9mm semiautomatic handgun in his waistband, under his shirt.

Howard said the man “bolted” toward the front door, and that he simply reacted and shot the man, who was by then close to the door. Howard said he never saw the man with a weapon.

Asked by police what happened as he lay on the ground outside, the man said, “Dude shot me in the back” after he had “tried to take a kilo from the dude.”

The man admitted he was at the gas station to buy a kilo of cocaine but didn’t have the money. He said he made it to the door when he heard a bang and felt pain in his back. He told police he stumbled out to the parking lot when he realized he had been shot.

When he fell, he said, he feared that Howard was going to “finish me off and kill me.” He said he threw the bag of cocaine onto the ground, and Howard picked it up and went back into the store.

The man said the incident had started in a back room, where Howard had retrieved the cocaine from a cabinet or small refrigerator. He said Howard weighed the cocaine on a scale in front of him.