McKinleyville man arrested after alleged robbery, assault at Dollar General
A banned McKinleyville shopper allegedly sprayed a Dollar General clerk with lighter fluid, sending the worker to medical care and ending with a robbery arrest.
Humboldt County sheriff’s deputies arrested Trevor Parker, 29, of McKinleyville, after a violent confrontation at the Dollar General on Murray Road left a clerk with non-life-threatening injuries. Deputies said the case began as a retail theft call and escalated fast, raising immediate questions about worker safety at the 1180 Murray Road store.
According to the sheriff’s office, deputies were sent to the store at about 12:58 p.m. on June 16 after a clerk reported that Parker had come in, selected several items and then tried to leave with merchandise after being told he was banned because of prior attempted-theft incidents. As Parker walked out, deputies said, he grabbed a bottle of charcoal lighter fluid from a shelf.
The clerk told deputies that when he followed Parker and told him to leave the item behind, Parker sprayed him with the lighter fluid. The clerk said he knocked the container from Parker’s hands, and the encounter turned into a physical altercation outside the store. Medical personnel treated the clerk for injuries that were not considered life-threatening.
Parker fled on foot before deputies arrived, but deputies later found him near the intersection of Murray Road and U.S. Highway 101 and took him into custody without further incident. Before booking, he was taken to a local hospital for medical clearance after complaining of chest pain.
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office said Parker was booked on PC 211 robbery and PC 244 assault with a caustic chemical, language that reflects how deputies characterized the lighter fluid in the case. The sheriff’s office urged anyone with information about the incident or related criminal activity to call (707) 445-7251 or the Crime Tip Line at (707) 268-2539.
The arrest puts a spotlight on the kind of fast-moving store confrontation that can put clerks at risk in a matter of seconds, especially when a person has already been barred from the property. In this case, the response ended with an arrest near one of McKinleyville’s busiest traffic corridors, after a call that began inside a discount store aisle.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
