Click image for enlargement. North Las Vegas police investigate a shooting at the American Mini Market on Las Vegas Boulevard, north of Carey Avenue. A store manager shot two robbery suspects Friday afternoon, killing one. Photo by John Gurzinski. A robbery attempt Friday at the American Mini Market on Las Vegas Boulevard left one suspect dead and another with injuries that were not life-threatening after the manager exchanged gunfire with the suspects. No one else was injured in the incident. Photo by Ralph Fountain.

A convenience store manager shot and killed a robbery suspect and injured another Friday after the men entered his North Las Vegas store and took the manager and several customers hostage.

The two suspects held up the American Mini Market at 2564 Las Vegas Blvd. North on Friday afternoon, North Las Vegas police said. Then, the robbery suspects bound the store manager and several customers using zip ties and tried to rob them, police said.

The manager, whose name was not released, escaped from the ties and retrieved a gun stashed inside the store. Shortly after 2 p.m., the manager exchanged "a bunch" of shots with the suspects, North Las Vegas police spokesman Tim Bedwell said.

Both of the suspects were hit with gunfire.

One of suspects stumbled out of the store and died in the parking lot, Bedwell said. The other, whose name also was not released, was hit in the lower extremities and fled on foot, leaving a trail of blood, he said.

The suspect was caught by police and taken to University Medical Center, where he was treated for injuries that were not life-threatening, Bedwell said. Police said the man could be charged with robbery and murder once he recovers from his wounds. Under Nevada law, a suspect in a felony crime in which a person dies can be charged with murder even if their actions didn't directly cause the death.

No one else was injured in the shooting.

"This is how we like these incidents to end up," Bedwell said.

The customers called the manager a hero.

"He saved us all," said 27-year-old Kevin Aden, who was in the store when the suspects came in.

Aden said that he and the other people in the store were tied up for about 10 to 15 minutes in the back room as the suspects robbed them and the store.

Aden, a tobacco company sales representative, said he was not supposed to have been at the store at the time. He was traveling north on Las Vegas Boulevard on Friday morning, stopping at convenience stores to restock cigarettes when he accidentally skipped the American Mini Market.

"I just decided to go back there in the afternoon," he said. "That was a bad idea."

Police said there were conflicting reports from witnesses about the number of suspects in the incident. Bedwell said there might have been a driver of a getaway car and others involved in the robbery. Police planned to look at video surveillance footage to see whether others were involved, he said.

Police said they believe the two men who held up the American Mini Market were involved in a similar robbery at a convenience store on Thursday night.

Bedwell said customers at a store on Lake Mead Boulevard, just west of Pecos Road, about 1.5 miles from the American Mini Market, were bound with zip ties and robbed on Thursday night.

There were four suspects in that incident, he said. They had a "cavalier" attitude during the incident, similar to the attitude described by witnesses during Friday's holdup, police said.

"Witnesses reported they were laughing and joking in there (the convenience store) with their guns," Bedwell said.

During Thursday night's holdup, Bedwell said one of the suspects would stand near the store entrance with a gun behind his back. As customers entered the store, the man would put a gun to their head, walk them to the back of the store and bind them with zip ties, Bedwell said.

"That is as dangerous a situation going on as could possibly occur," he said.

Bedwell said police weren't considering charging the store manager in Friday's shooting of the robbery suspects.

"The initial impression of everybody is this was a justifiable shooting," he said.

"In a situation where their business gets robbed and the suspects flee, you can't chase them down and shoot them," he said. "It doesn't look like anything like that happened today."

Bedwell said the store manager's gun was registered and the witnesses' opinion that the manager is a hero could be accurate.

"If everything holds up true ... then yeah, he is a hero," Bedwell said.