Crime & Safety

3 Years After Their Shopkeeper Father and Husband was Gunned Down, Family Seeks Answers

A reward of $20,000 is offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for shooting Kamir Khamarko in 2010. "We will never give up fighting for our dad," his daughter said.

Vivian Denha’s dad wasn’t around to walk her down the aisle when she got married. He didn’t live to see his granddaughter born. Ida Khamarko only got to spend 34 years with the love of her life  when it should have been 50 or 60 or even 70 years. The family of Karim Khamarko is still grieving. 

And their questions are unanswered about who shot the 64-year-old proprietor of the Dollar Plus Club at 2750 Hilton in Ferndale on Nov. 26, 2010 – Black Friday.

In a report on WXYZ, the family talks about what was taken from them when a gunman walked into the store and ripped the shopkeeper from his family.

Find out what's happening in Ferndalewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“Our family is forever changed because of what this one person did,” Denha said of her father’s murder.  “They took away so much from all of us.”

“What happened changed our life completely,” Khamarko’s widow said. "The family is torn.”

Find out what's happening in Ferndalewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The Khamarkos had been doing business in Ferndale for nearly 15 years when the gunman entered the store in what police described as a botched robbery. Karim Khamarko ran a video shop on Woodward Heights from 1995-97. He then moved the business to 2750 Hilton, buying the building there. In 2006, he switched his business from a video rental shop to a discount retail store.

They closed the store in June 2011. Being there was “just too emotional,” another daughter, Candace Khamarko, told Patch at the time.

Police have no suspects. There have been no arrests, no closure.

What they do know is that the suspect entered the store right before closing time that night, sometime between 8:35 p.m. and 8:55 p.m. Dollar Club Plus didn't have video surveillance, but neighboring businesses caught the suspect casing the store and then leaving on foot.

The trail ended there. In the more than three years since, there have only been bittersweet memories, nagging questions and no answers.

The family teamed with Crime Stoppers and the Chaldean Chamber of Commerce to offer a $15,000, then a $20,000, plus an additional $5,000 the family agreed to chip in if tips leading to the suspect’s arrest came in by Friday.

“We want the perpetrator to know that we will never give fighting for our dad,” Candace Khamarko told WXYZ.  “This person took someone from our family that we can never replace.

“I want if for my dad cause that’s what he deserves,” she said. "He was a man that didn’t deserve for his life to end the way it did and he deserves to have that justice.”


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