chasing a bg who was already running from you and then firing at him (a moving target) at 75 yards away in an open, public place is just downright irresponsible... it's people like that that give the safe, responsible gun-owning community a bad rep.
It really is hard to judge from a newspaper story what happened. Let me ask all of you this:
Have you ever been involved in something, or had intimate knowledge of something, that was reported in the newspaper? Did you notice that the story was incorrect in at least one crucial way if not more? A poll was taken several years ago on this question and something like 90% of the respondents said that there were crucial errors, yet interestingly they did not relate their experience to the overall level of accuracy of reporting.
You can't believe everything in the article as being automatically accurate. Maybe, just maybe the store clerk had a good backstop to be firing into so that if/when he missed he knew that the bullets weren't going to harm anyone innocent. Maybe, we don't know for sure. We don't know how accurate the distance was - if it was accurate why was it give as a range of 50 to 75 yards instead of a precise distance?
If the clerk ran out right after him how did the bg get up to a full 75 yard lead? Why did the reporter say that the fired "at least" three 9mm rounds? What was the actual number of shots fired? Who counted them?
Why did the bg turn and point an empty gun at a guy chasing him who he knew worked in a gun store? That's insane if you have a 50 to 75 yard lead. He would have to know the guy from the gun store was going to have a loaded gun, and if his wasn't loaded what did he think he was doing? If someone points a gun at you one of the best self defense techniques is to lay down a field of
suppressing fire, which is intended solely to keep the bg from being able to take careful aim and to make him duck and dodge and run and quit shooting at you, and if he does shoot at you he hopefully won't hit you because of all the lead flying at him. Ask any combat veteran about that.
Don't condemn the clerk without knowing more than what is in a newspaper article. Someday you may have an article written about you, and the odds are strong that you will find it was inaccurate and unfair in some way.