Sixteen security cameras now watch over the North Hill pizza shop where Zak Husein was shot and killed in December 2015.
New LED lighting brightens the darkness there after nightfall.
And Husein’s oldest brother, Ammar Husein, installed a security system that allows staff to buzz in customers picking up pies and buffalo wings while locking others out.
Those investments may have been the simplest changes Ammar, who owns the pizzeria, has made since Zak’s death.
On Thursday — in the moments after Akron police announced they had made an arrest in Zak’s murder — Ammar stood alone in flip flops and a New York Yankee’s baseball cap facing a gaggle of reporters explaining how Zak’s death had changed his soul.
“I finally learned what my dad’s been trying to teach me, I guess,” Ammar said. “Unfortunately, this is the way I had to learn patience. Unfortunately, this is the way I had to learn to humble myself. Unfortunately, this the way I had to seal a lot of holes that [were] in my life.”
People in Akron who knew Zak and others around the world who never met him mourned his death by taking action, Ammar said.
Water wells were dug in Zak’s name in Nigeria. Closer to home, the University of Akron — where Zak was a student studying international business — launched an annual event that has packaged more than 90.000 meals for Rise Against Hunger that have been distributed worldwide.
“He was just another kid from Akron,” Ammar Husein said, referring to his brother the same way Akron’s most famous son, LeBron James, refers to himself. “And now he’s moving emotions around the world.”
A KID FROM AKRON
Shaquille Anderson was also a kid from Akron.
Anderson is 23 now but he was the same age as Zak Husein —21 — on Dec. 7, 2015 when Zak was shot and killed.
One year to the date of Zak’s death, when both Akronites would have been 22, Anderson was convicted in Summit County Common Pleas Court of charges in eight robberies that happened in 2016. Six of the heists involved a gun.
Yet it would take Akron police, working with the FBI, several more months to connect Anderson to the North Hill pizzeria robbery and Zak’s slaying.
On Thursday, Akron Police Chief James Nice stood at a podium in front of downtown headquarters at a press conference to announce murder and robbery charges against Anderson, who is already incarcerated at the Mansfield Correctional Institution serving a 21-year sentence for eight robberies that happened after Zak’s death.
Nice acknowledged the Husein family’s pain, saying he knew they had “suffered so long” waiting for answers.
Detectives, he said, had been working on the case all along, just like they do with all open homicide cases, he said.
Nationwide, police solve less than half of all slayings, Nice said. So far this year, Akron police have cracked more than 80 percent of its homicides, a number boosted in part by an arrest in an arson fire than left a family of seven dead in May.
“All of our homicides are important,” Nice said.
In 2015, after watching somewhat blurry security video of the pizzeria robbery, detectives wondered if Zak Husein’s killer might have been a woman because of the shooter’s short stature.
The video shows Zak at the counter handing over money to a masked gunman. The gunman then shoots.
In the days after the homicide, police posted an image captured from the security video and this terse statement to Twitter: “APD needs help identifying this scumbag. Shot this poor kid in cold blood AFTER he handed over the money!”
Police Thursday, 19 months later, declined to say specifically what led them to Anderson because the case remains under investigation.
But they did say the FBI helped enhance the video to see it more clearly. That, paired with information they uncovered after chasing down tips, appeared to be key.
OTHER CRIMES
But Anderson wasn’t going anywhere.
He appears to have been in custody since August after leading police with the Gun Violence Reduction Team on a short car chase that ended when Anderson rammed a 2004 Ford Crown Victoria into a utility pole at South Arlington and Concord Avenue.
Anderson, according to various media reports at the time, tried to run from the scene, but he and a male passenger were arrested. Police also seized a loaded 9mm handgun from the vehicle.
At the time, police said both men were suspects in five Akron robberies and one in Barberton.
In the end, though, Anderson was found guilty of eight robberies, including ones at mobile phone stores in Akron and Dollar General in Barberton.
Ammar found out who police charged with his brother’s murder along with everyone else Thursday.
The moment a reporter handed Ammar Anderson’s mug shot, he recognized something:
“Those eyebrows,” Husein said, studying the thick, wide brows that arch over Anderson’s eyes.
In security footage of the shooting, the robber’s face is covered by a mask.
“But you could see the eyebrows,” Ammar said. “And those are the eyebrows.”
Zak and Ammar’s parents were too upset Thursday to attend the police press conference, said Ammar, who expressed sympathy for Anderson’s family, too, because he said they were also losing a son.
The Husein family is Muslim and Islam, Ammar said, teaches forgiveness.
Amar said he has forgiven Anderson for killing Zak, for causing him pain and for breaking his father’s heart.
“But I can’t forgive my mother’s tears,” he said. “I don’t think she has stopped crying.”
Anderson, he said, is a coward.
It takes courage, Ammar said, to be a working man like he is, to get up every day and go to a pizza shop, work long hours and get up the next day, even though it’s painful.
“It hurts,” Ammar said. “But it hurts worse to be behind bars.”
Amanda Garrett can be reached at 330-996-3725 or agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com.