An armed security guard fatally shot a man at a Fairmount gas station after a dispute over grill

A man was shot to death by an armed security guard inside a Fairmount gas station after a dispute over a barbecue grill turned violent.

Surveillance footage shows that, about 7 p.m. on Tuesday, a man entered the Phillips 66 gas station on the corner of College Avenue and Poplar Street. The man was asked to leave by a contracted security guard, who pushed him back, video shows.

The man pulled a Glock pistol with an extended magazine from a holster, which prompted the security guard to “fire in self-defense,” police said, using his sidearm to unload more than a dozen rounds. The man, 39, then shot back, police said, wounding the security guard in the thigh, and the guard responded with six more rounds from a shoulder-carried shotgun.

The man was identified by police sources as Don Harrison Jr. of Brewerytown. He was taken to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Autopsy records show that he was struck multiple times in the face and torso.

» READ MORE: In Pa., private security companies make their own rules. Some say they’re above the law.

The security guard, 30-year-old John Santiago, was in stable condition at Temple.

Santiago works for Pennsylvania SITE State Agents — a company run by Andre Boyer, a fired Philadelphia police officer who has become a national media personality for carrying assault-style weapons on private patrol. Boyer has also faced — and beaten — criminal charges three times, including for shocking a person with a Taser during a citizen’s arrest.

Police records indicate that shortly before the fatal encounter, Harrison had pulled his SUV into the gas station parking lot, along with a commercial barbecue smoker attached to a hitch. He “attempted to begin barbecuing” and was asked to leave by Santiago.

Instead, Harrison followed the guard inside, where the gunfight ensued.

Sunpreet Singh, who owns the station, said he heard from his staffers that they had asked Harrison to move away for safety reasons.

“Since it was a gas station and he was doing barbecue, it’s not allowed on the premises,” Singh said. But he wasn’t sure how the situation escalated.

Singh said he began hiring armed guards about nine months ago because “there was a lot of stealing. The guys coming in with guns. ... The Philadelphia police, we kept on calling them, and they come late, and they told us to hire private security.”

Nathan and Yuliya Cottrell, who have lived across from the gas station since 2011, said they saw Harrison selling barbecue near the gas station that evening. They had not seen Harrison before, but the armed guards, sporting tactical vests and assault-style rifles, had become a familiar — and polarizing — presence on the block.

Yuliya Cottrell said that the family was about to move to another part of the neighborhood, and that issues at the gas station were a reason why. The armed guards patrolling the place, she said, “felt very intimidating and strange.”

After Tuesday’s shooting, bullet casings were found both inside and outside the store, police said. A stray “shotgun slug” flew through the window of a home across the street. No one in the house was hurt, police said.

Santiago is a former armored-car driver and a father of three, including a newborn, according to Boyer.

Boyer said Santiago, like all of Boyer’s armed staff, is certified by the Pennsylvania State Police as an armed guard, under a 40-hour training program. Boyer has been able to maintain his state certification and continue running his armed protection company even though Philadelphia authorities have revoked his license to carry a gun and denied him an agency license.

He said Santiago, who had been on his staff for about a year, acted according to his training when confronted with a threatening person carrying a “large-caliber handgun with an extended magazine.”

“The guy pulled a gun in a store. Is he supposed to wait to be shot first and then take action?” Boyer said. “[Santiago] told me he was in fear for his life.”

A recent Inquirer investigation exposed a chaotic and virtually unenforced regulatory system for private security in Pennsylvania that has allowed thousands of guards to work without any training at all. According to security experts, the state is also an “extreme outlier” for failing to set limits on the types of weapons guards can carry on the job, clearing the way for people such as Boyer to wield AR shotguns while patrolling gas stations and car washes.

Boyer said it was the first time one of his staffers had been injured on duty. However, it’s not the first time one fired a gun on duty. In September, a Pennsylvania SITE State Agent guard working at a different gas station in North Philadelphia fired a shot at a man who was throwing rocks at him, according to news reports. No one was injured, and the rock thrower was arrested for assault.