On February 27, 1980
There was once a convenience store near Hillcrest High School in front of the Pepper Tree Apartments called the Kwik Chek Food Store. It was a strange place for a convenience store, or any store for that matter, being several hundred feet off Raines Road, by some trees at the back of the baseball field across from the high school. It’s seclusion caused it to suffer more than it’s share of robberies until 1980 when the manager used a baseball bat to ward off several would-be robbers. Frank Carimi was a tough fifty eight year old ex-Marine who was reminiscent of a popular movie star of those days, Robert Conrad. The manager’s zeal gave the store a reputation as a place for thieves to avoid, so local robbers looked for an easier target, but on February 27th, a lone male bravely entered the story brandishing a pistol. Rather than being deterred by the manager’s heroics, the young man considered the store a challenge to be conquered. He pointed his pistol at Carimi, but the manager was undaunted.
Carimi, unwilling to let any punk rob his store, raised his bat, but the robber took careful aim and pulled the trigger. Somehow the robber kept his pistol on target through the chaos and sent a bullet through the barrel, striking the manager a fatal blow. Frank Carimi dropped, never to rise again.
The robber turned his pistol on a teacher from a nearby school who was shopping and fired a second time. The weapon hit its mark again, but this time the wound was not fatal. In a room filled with smoke and the smell of powder, the robber deftly took the money from the till, then robbed five other customers of their cash and got away.
He was unmasked, and there were multiple victims, so the Memphis Police did a quick composite drawing. Within days they identified the armed robber as nineteen year old Phillip Dorrough who lived across the street in Graceland subdivision. Dorrough was a recent graduate from Southern Baptist Educational Center and a member of Graceland Baptist just down the street on Raines and Milbranch. The police wrote a first degree murder warrant for Dorrough. Unable to find him, they interviewed his 17 year old girlfriend in nearby Germantown. When they found out she lied about his whereabouts, they arrested her for accessory after the fact. Later, Dorrough turned himself in and was convicted of first degree murder. He served his time and was released from jail several years ago.
