NEWS: Blood for Oil: Gas Station Owner Killed in Price Fight

CULTURE: Blood for Oil: Gas Station Owner Killed in Price Fight

Rising gas prices are stressing a lot of us out. Not just drivers, but station owners, too. The challenge and pressure to win customers is perhaps greater now than ever before, and in one Detroit neighborhood, a price fight recently led to death. The two stations in question were a BP and a Marathon. Apparently they had competed fiercely for years.

Dearborn, Michigan, where the murder occured, has been called "America's Muslim Capital" and the "de facto Arab-American capital of the United States." Jawad Bazzi was Lebanese. Now police are worried about a retaliation on the part of Bazzi's crew. To try and quell the animosity between the two stations, a local Islamic scholar stepped up to preach peace.

Other things capable businessmen should do? Not lead their bat-weilding employees into combat against other gas stations. Yes--he's dead--but not blameless. No one should have fired a gun, that much is obvious, and Bazzi, a 45-year-old husband and father of four, certainly didn't deserve to meet this horrendous fate.

The creepiest, most callous part of this story? After the Marathon owner was arrested, and his station closed, someone at the now-dead Bazzi's station raised the price per gallon to $3.09.

Just FYI, many Lebanese are Christian. There are Lebanese Jews, as well.

The Marathon owner did what he had to do. If the gun was legal he should have no problem claiming self-defence. Bazzi should have thought of that before he went over to start trouble. What about the friend with the bat ? I hope he was arrested also.

How is it obvious that no one should have fired a gun? That vague description leaves enough latitude for it to have possibly been a reasonable reaction.

I'm not privy to all the ins and outs but last I check you don't have to point a gun DIRECTLY AT A PERSON. I think firing it at the ceiling would be enough...or even just cocking it.

what if they're swinging the bat at your head?

or your brother's head?

as you said, you're not privy to all the details, neither am i ... so i'm choosing to withhold my judgment until all the facts are in, i'd recommend doing the same to you

Attacking someone with a baseball bat could be classified as self-defense, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon or attempted murder, depending on circumstances. It would be wise to let more facts come to light before judging who was right or wrong here.

hmm if someone came to my door swinging a baseball bat and if I felt my life was in danger (and if I owned a gun,at I will settle with a combat grade sword) I would A call the cops,if there wasn't time I would B, shoot them.
Even though some people think guns are evil and wrong and defending yourself with or without guns is even eviler and wrong I don't care. When it comes to keeping yourself safe,if a person attacks you without provocation they forfeit there right to be safe from bodily harm.
Seems the only common sense thing my state has done in years is pass a Law that enables people to use what ever force they(the person being attacked) deem is needed to defend themselves and those around them.

You might be right, but if someone came to my business, started a fight, and then beat someone with a bat, I might not be so clear headed to think of such things at the time.

While I don't know the details of the situation, and while I think a gun probably didn't need to have been used... I couldn't see myself wanting to punish the shooter from the information given.

However, the missing details of this situation could vastly change my opinion.

in this age of violence, I'm almost surprised such things don't happen more often... but while it's something stupid to fight about , it would've been reasonable to talk about it. I dunno what the laws are in the States but if I recall correctly over here we have laws that don't allow gas stations to lower their price under a certain "market price"... or at least it's something like that. Been such a long time since I heard about it.

As for the dead guy... well, *maybe* he shouldn't be dead today but since he was the one who started it all, I hope no one is surprised that he is.

shooting your gun in any way other then to defeat the person assulting you is dangerous and reckless. You aim your weapon at your target and you fire. You DO NOT fire at anything you do not mean to kill.

those are VERY BASIC gun safety things, If you draw your weapon in self defence the ONLY thing you should be shooting or even pointing at is the person(s) you are defending yourself from.


something sketching about "preaching peace", when they described what he was preaching it didnt sound like peace, he told them to have patience, basically to wait until later.

I was in Law Enforcement for 5 years, if you pull your firearm, you do it for one reason. Our training wasn't to shoot the ceiling or to give warning shots. As an individual- thank God you have the Right to protect yourself. If not- you'd be hit in the head with a bat !

That is also what i have learned, from shooting with police and Secret Service. Only shooting to kill makes you think twice about whether or not to draw, and whether or not to shoot. When you take on the practice of firing warning shots, it encourages you to pull out your gun and shoot when the situation doesn't warrant it.

And always shoot to kill. Just hope it never comes to that.

I totaly agree. If I was in that exact situation (vauge as it may be), I would shoot the guy aswell. If someone breaks into my building with a group of his employees, starts a fight, then busts out a baseball bat and start beating people? When I read that a baseball bat appeared, I thought that it was the deadly weapon.

The rule isn't dont bring a gun to a knife fight, its don't bust out a weapon on the guy with a gun unless you want to get shot.

Do gas stations in the States actually pick their own prices? In Canada, head office tells you what to set the has price at. When I worked at an Esso station, we would get e-mails through our point-of-sale terminal telling us what to change the prices to, and at what time to do it.

Ah, Detroit. Brings back all kinds of warm and fuzzy feelings like when my friends brother got shot in the head for hitting on a girl. Sweet, sweet Detroit.

gas stations through out the United States set their own gas prices. everyone from local mom & pop shops to major oil companies. some stations with the mobil, exxon, hess, shell names are under unique fuel contracts. the local mom & pop stations tend to buy from a third party and the price of gas varies through out the day.

Ah, but "talking about it" might have been labeled as price fixing. Those laws can be worse than murder laws

The beauties of a free market economy

I recently moved from Arkansas, where the liquor stores are privately owned and the prices set based on what the market will bear (and what the liquor store next door is selling for).

Now I'm in North Carolina where the liquor stores are all owned by the state (as a mechanism for tax collection, so they claim).

The difference between the two? My favorite 750ml bottle of tequila costs $15.00us in Arkansas, and $26.00us in NC.

I'd really hate to think how bad our gas prices would look if they were set by the government.

bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahA , dont bring a bat to a gun fight!

Ride a bike.

Head Office doesn't mean the government. It means the big corporation in charge of the individual gas stations. Esso is Exxon, and they have a lot of gas stations here, nationwide.

I heard once that the US government does control gas prices... but in the sense that it requires they be kept lower. They don't allow a markup over a certain amount and that gas stations in the US make most of their profits by selling other things. I don't have any source on this and it could be total bullshit. If it isn't... then, well, the government is doing the exact opposite of what you think it's doing in this case. Which is rare.

I worked in a gas station here in Ottawa for like, two days, and got the impression that the guy running the place could set the price at whatever he wanted. It was a Shell station. Halfway through the day he noticed the guy down the street was seling it cheaper, and so he undercut him. So was the impression I got. Like I said, I only worked there for two days.

The laws in America are actually designed to prevent price wars. Almost all states have laws that prevent selling gas for under a certain percent above the price they bought it for.

But anyways, gas stations just set their prices at the level they need to keep up stock. Since gasoline is a commodity, when a station gets word prices are going up in the future, they have to charge more "right now" in order to be able to buy another tanker full of gas, and also to keep prices relatively stable.

Gas station owners LOVE it when the government sets prices, as the profit margins become amazing.

There is no such law. Gas stations here are allowed to charge whatever they want for what they sell, regardless of profit or loss. Local and state governments are free to pursue gouging or price-fixing complaints but such investigations are rare ( *successful* prosecutions even rarer) and usually involve disruptive events like hurricane Katrina, which spiked gas prices in the Atlanta area for some time.

It is common for branded stations pay different amounts for the same gas from the same company depending on location and volume of fuel they sell. Thus one Sunoco station may be 2.89/gal for regular and another in the next town $2.99/gal yet both stations make the same 12 cents/gal in profit.

Such arrangements mean branded fuel is usually slightly more expensive than independent, non branded stations. The upside is that branded stations are less likely to run out of fuel or suffer sudden price spikes from spot market supply jitters since they are under contract with major oil companies with large in-house supply networks and a lot of capacity.

We're paying the equivalent of around $8 a gallon in the UK at the moment...