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Five kids in Missouri have to spend their first Christmas without their father, and Omaha police are asking for the public’s help in bringing his killer to justice.
On Dec. 8, a masked man walked into Howell’s BP gas station, 7166 N. 30th St., robbed the store and shot the clerk, 40-year-old John Wesley Gerber.
Gerber, a father of five, had just started working at the store the week before the shooting. He moved to Omaha from Missouri after a divorce, a brother has said.
Sgt. Anna Sewell of the police department’s homicide unit said it appears Gerber did everything he was supposed to do yet still was shot.
She called his death reminiscent of the city’s first homicide of the year. Laura Pierce was shot and killed Jan. 2 while working at the Kwik Shop at 32nd and Q Streets. Like Gerber, Pierce complied with robbers’ demands but was shot anyway.
Police arrested 18-year-old Tyrell D. Jones in that case, though he was not believed to be the shooter. Jones was ordered to stand trial on charges of first-degree murder and use of a weapon to commit a felony. The shooter has not been caught.
Sewell said Thursday the two slayings aren’t believed to be related and that there is nothing to indicate Gerber knew his killer.
Sewell said police still need to interview people and believe those individuals may have seen something on Dec. 8 or may know the shooter.
That shooting happened about 1 p.m. during a snow storm in Omaha. Sewell said there may have been people out shoveling or sledding.
The shooter has been described as standing between 5-foot-7 and 5-foot-9, of average build, wearing a black-and-white, plaid, medium-length coat with a hood covering his head. A dark cloth, possibly a scarf, covered the lower portion of his face. His eyes and nose were not covered.
One witness said he may have a short, brush-cut hairstyle.
The suspect was last seen carrying a silver revolver and running west on Read Street into a neighborhood south of the gas station.
Police tracked his footprints in the snow as far as they could.
The man entered the store alone, talked to Gerber and shot him. It all happened relatively quickly, Sewell said.
“It was a crime that didn’t have to happen,” Sewell said. “Now a family is forced to spend the holidays without their dad. We believe someone out there knows who is responsible.”
Gerber’s children, who range in age from 6 to 12 years old, still live with their mother in Kirksville, where he lived until 2007.
He also served in the Army National Guard and went to Iraq during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
He served as a volunteer firefighter in Kirksville, Mo.
Police ask anyone with information about the shooting to call the homicide unit at 444-5656 or Crime Stoppers at 444-STOP (7867), or send a text message with your tip, beginning with “OPD” to CRIMES (274637), or submit the tip online at www.OmahaCrimeStoppers.net.
Contact the writer:
444-1279, jason.kuiper@owh.com
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