BOSTON (WHDH) - Chaos ensued inside a Dorchester convenience store when the clerk attempted to stop a group of suspected shoplifters Monday evening.

Sajaad Hossain, a clerk at Rosario Grocery on Washington Street, says he was helping a customer when two kids walked in around 5:30 p.m.

“(One of the kids) was asking me if he could get Pringles and I told him, ‘OK. Just take it,” Hossain said. “But the second guy, he got a whole bunch of things in his hand and he was leaving the store without even stopping or without even looking at me.”

A surveillance camera captured Hossain jumping over the counter in an attempt to stop the shoplifter when more kids began to rush the store.

“I have my pepper spray and they took the pepper spray from me,” Hossain recalled. “They grabbed me. I was saving myself. They sprayed the pepper spray on me.”

A short time later, the teens took off with stolen merchandise in hand.

“The whole counter in the front, they took almost everything,” Hossain said, adding that this sort of thing has happened before but never to this extent.

“They say they’re hungry and my boss always tells me if they’re hungry, your first job is to feed the hungry man,” he said. “This time, what happened today, it was beyond everything.”

The incident is under investigation.

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