Surveillance camera footage that shows a convenience store clerk shooting a teen through the back of his head after a brief verbal altercation is at the center of a Bexar County lawsuit seeking over $1,000,000 in damages.
The video, recorded in January 2019 inside a 7-Eleven store located on Rigsby Avenue near Loop 410, shows clerk Dylan Noah pull out a handgun and fire shots at Pierre Kyle, moments after Kyle tossed a banana at him.
The shooting happened shortly after Noah had falsely accused Kyle and his cousin of attempting to steal a cell phone charger from the store, court documents state.
Kyle, 17 years old at the time, survived the shooting but continues to struggle with lingering injuries from the shooting, his civil attorneys told KSAT Investigates.
A lawsuit filed by Kyle’s attorneys in 2020 accuses Noah, store operator Arundip Singh and 7-Eleven of negligence, stating that the East Side store fostered an atmosphere of little training and provided no clear instructions on how employees were required to act.
Fateful encounter at 2 a.m.
Footage from multiple surveillance cameras inside the store, which does not include audio, shows Kyle, his cousin and his uncle enter the establishment around 2 a.m. on January 4, 2019.
Kyle and his cousin stop near the front of the store and appear to look at cell phone chargers.
Pierre Kyle (left) and his cousin look at cell phone chargers around 2 a.m. on January 4, 2019. (KSAT)
Minutes later, after the uncle has purchased items, Noah and the group appear to speak to one another. Noah was behind the counter, while Kyle and his family members were near the exit.
Kyle, who was not armed, then approaches the counter while speaking to Noah and as he backs away, picks up a banana from a tray and tosses it toward Noah, the footage shows.
After the banana misses Noah, he immediately pulls out a handgun and fires toward Kyle.
The footage shows Kyle getting shot in the head and then landing hard on the ground.
Kyle’s cousin pulled out a gun and fired toward Noah, the footage shows, but no one else was injured.
Kyle was treated at the scene and then taken to Brooke Army Medical Center. He underwent emergency surgery to remove a portion of the back of his skull to relieve pressure on his brain, records show.
Kyle then went through additional surgeries, including a procedure to insert a plate to cover the back of his head and seven screws at the bottom of his neck.
Pierre Kyle had a plate and seven screws surgically inserted after the shooting. (KSAT)
Kyle had to learn to walk again after the shooting, videos shared with KSAT Investigates show.
“Crazy and ridiculous why that would be the response, the type of response. These young men were ready to walk away,” said Roger Bresnahan, one of Kyle’s civil attorneys.
Kyle testified during a taped deposition in late May that he approached Noah after being falsely accused of theft by the clerk and after Noah called him a “negro.”
Noah, who was deposed as part of the civil suit in March, denied calling Kyle a “negro,” but admitted to accusing Kyle and his cousin of stealing a charger before retrieving the gun from under the store’s cash register just before the shooting.
He was not charged by San Antonio police at the time of the incident. A Bexar County grand jury in August 2020, however, indicted Noah for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Noah, who had a previous criminal history of assault in Bexar County, pleaded no contest to the aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charge in May 2021 in exchange for eight years of probation and paying restitution to Kyle.
Noah will remain on community supervision until July 2029, court records show.
“No comment and don’t call me back again,” said Noah, when reached for comment via telephone on Sept. 6.
Noah subsequently called back and then asked several questions about what KSAT was specifically looking into but refused to answer anything substantive about the case.
After the shooting, Noah was required to sign paperwork acknowledging that no weapons were allowed on the store premises, he testified in the deposition.
He testified he was later terminated by Singh over the shooting incident.
“Pierre Kyle was shot because people weren’t properly trained.”
In motions not yet heard by the court, attorneys for 7-Eleven have argued that the company does not bear responsibility for the shooting.
The company sells the rights to use its name and becomes a franchisor. People who buy the rights to then operate the 7-Eleven stores become franchisees, according to Kyle’s civil attorneys.
“Pierre Kyle was shot because people weren’t properly trained,” said Bianca Zuniga-Goldwater, one of Kyle’s attorneys. “7-Eleven is trying to wash their hands of this as much as they can and say, ‘We don’t have control, it’s the franchisee.'”
Attorneys Roger Bresnahan (left) and Bianca Zuniga-Goldwater (right). (KSAT)
During a deposition taken last year, Singh testified that his store has a no weapons policy and that clerks are trained not to accuse customers of theft.
“Weapons only breed violence,” said Singh, during the April 2021 deposition.
He testified that it would be a lie for Noah to state that he was given permission by Singh to bring a gun to work.
Singh added that employees are instructed not to escalate the situation if there is a confrontation with a customer.
Noah, in his subsequent deposition, repeatedly contradicted his former boss, stating that Singh had personally given him the OK to arm himself at work.
Dillon Noah gives a taped deposition on March 22, 2022. (KSAT)
Noah testified he bought the gun at a pawn shop before his shift that evening after being threatened by customers multiple times.
Additionally, a clerk at another 7-Eleven store in San Antonio had been murdered while at work just days earlier.
“I think at the very least Singh knew that Noah was worried, and he knew that a gun was going to be brought to the premises,” said Zuniga-Goldwater.
Noah also testified that he had been previously instructed to confront customers who had possibly stolen from the store.
“Yes. That’s how I was taught. Like, ‘Hey, we saw them on camera, confront them,’ because they would lose money like that,” testified Noah. “The way that they did over there, they would confront them.”
Noah testified that the shooting likely would not have happened if a second clerk had been assigned to work with him on the overnight shift and that he had asked Singh to transfer him to a morning shift after a gun was pointed at Noah previously. Singh denied the request, Noah testified.
Reached for comment via email, a public relations person who handles media inquiries for 7-Eleven asked for additional context regarding the suit but has so far not provided a statement on it.
Attorneys for 7-Eleven and Singh have not responded to phone calls seeking comment for this story.
The case is scheduled to go to trial in Bexar County district court next February.
Bumpy road since the shooting
Kyle, who had no criminal record before being shot, was arrested in Bexar County multiple times in 2020 and 2021, court records show.
Additionally, according to his taped deposition, Kyle survived being shot three times in an unrelated shooting outside a party in February 2020.
“I would have never got shot three times if I would’ve never got shot in the head the first time,” testified Kyle, who confirmed he dropped out of high school his senior year after claiming the 2019 shooting left him unable to focus in class.
“I think it really just completely uprooted the path he had set for himself,” said Zuniga-Goldwater.
“He didn’t have legal issues. Opposing counsel’s trying to paint the picture that this kid’s a bad kid,” said Bresnahan.