TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) – A judge has granted the City of Toledo a temporary restraining order to padlock a local gas station for ten days.
City leaders said the Mobil gas station on North Detroit and Central Avenue is a public nuisance. Court documents claim the business has been the scene of several shootings and drug trafficking arrests. The owners of the gas station were served papers on Friday ordering it to stop operating. One citizen who wanted to remain anonymous told 13abc that she refuses to stop there while driving by.
“We bypass it like the plague because you don’t know what’s going to happen. If I do have to travel by that intersection, I’m literally praying at my steering wheel ‘just get me through this intersection to get home’.
Police and councilwoman Vanice Williams started looking into the incidents at the gas station last year after 74-year-old John Toyer was shot inside his van. Members of the Toledo police departments gang task force had a suspect pulled over in the parking lot when a car traveling west on central avenue fired shots. Councilwoman Williams says the elderly man was innocent. Last month the owner of the gas station was shot.
“We need to make sure that these businesses run a clean, safe, law-abiding business,” said Toledo councilwoman Vanice Williams.
The City of Toledo is also seeking a permanent injunction to shut down the gas station for at least one year. 13abc went to the business to get a comment. A man stopped our reporter at the door and said he had no comment.
City lawyers will head back to court on this case next week.
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