The student said that as he walked past the injured man, he saw a clerk standing in the entrance to Store 24.

The student remembered the clerk from previous visits and described him as "in his late 30s or 40s... [with a] ponytail, about 5'10", thinnish."

The student said he believed the clerk was a recent hire. "I've gone to Store 24 frequently over the last 2 years, and I've only seen him there recently," he said.

"He was holding a knife. It was quite a small knife; I would say the whole knife itself was only about five inches, and the blade looked about two inches."

He said the clerk did not seem agitated. "He was definitely not brandishing [the knife] by his head or anything," the student said. "He was standing in the entrance of the store, almost as if he were guarding it."

"I heard some people around the guy kind of pleading with him to put the knife down. It seemed like they knew him," he said.

According to the student, the man with the knife was then approached by a police officer. "They had some words; there was a moment of hesitation, maybe three or four seconds...and then I saw him turn around and be handcuffed."

The student said there were no police cars around when he first walked onto the scene, but police cars and an ambulance began to arrive as he walked away.

"By the time I left, people were beginning to crowd," he said.

Another student, a junior at Northwestern University, was in town visiting a friend, and said she walked through the crime scene. "There was a fair amount of blood on the ground, and I stepped in it. It was between C'est Bon and Store 24;" she said.

"When you looked down you realized you were in the middle of a crime scene because you had blood on your shoes," she said.

The graduate student characterized the atmosphere as one of "confused interest--no one really knew what had happened. I think it all happened too fast."

The manager of Store 24 declined to comment yesterday afternoon