NEWS: Store owner details gun battle with robbers
By Harrison Sheppard, Staff Writer
Three days after a wild shootout with two robbers, Tujunga market owner Ralph Gambina recalled the harrowing experience clearly.
When the two men burst into his store and demanded cash, he said, he was ready for trouble: He had a 9 mm Ruger pistol tucked in the back of his waistband and he wasn't afraid to use it.
Even with a gun in his face, he kept waiting for his moment, for the time the robbers would slip up and give him a chance to draw.
He would soon get his chance, and when it was all over, a 16-year was lying dead on the floor, and Gambina had a bullet in his lung.
"I couldn't breathe" after being shot, he said Thursday in a telephone interview from his hospital bed. "It felt like a knife in my back. My lung was filling with blood."
Still, despite the pain, he was determined to chase after the robber who had shot him.
"I was lying on the floor. I wiggled my hands and feet and said I'm all right. Let's go. So I jumped up and went after him. By the time I got to the door, he was gone. I went around the corner and saw his silhouette in the dark."
Gambina said he always carries a gun on him at the store. His father was killed in a 1981 robbery and his own store had been robbed twice in the last year.
The latest robbery began around 11:40 p.m. Monday. Gambina was alone in the store when two men burst in and demanded cash from the register.
The larger man, who had a gun, was wearing a ski mask, while the other had a hood pulled around his face with a drawstring, Gambina said.
The Los Angeles County Coroner's Office later identified the smaller suspect as 16-year-old Louis Manuel Chavez of Altadena. The other suspect is still at large.
Gambina acted nervous, telling them "Don't shoot me, I got four kids. I'll give you everything I got." But in his head, he said, he thought of the Ruger, and waited for them to make just one mistake.
Since the register was nearly empty, they ordered him to open the safe. Gambina led the larger man to the back of the store, while the smaller one rifled through the front counter area and ripped a telephone out of the wall.
His safe was closed, but unlocked. Gambina turned the dials, locking it, as he pretended to forget the combination under the pressure.
He was still waiting for his moment. After the robber gave up on the safe, they walked back to the front of the store. As he passed through the doorway, his moment came. Gambina dived behind an aisle.
"The big guy didn't have a clear shot at me," he recalled. "I drew my weapon and popped the little guy twice."
The larger man fired at him, hitting some boxes. Gambina took a few steps back and tried to fire again, but his gun jammed. He banged it against the wall, and that was when he got shot once. The bullet pierced his left side and went through to his lung, he said.
Gambina hit the ground. His body hurt, but once he realized he was going to survive, he stood up. He tried chasing after the other man, but decided not to follow him into the neighborhood. He returned to the store and called 911.
As for the young man lying on the floor of his store in a pool of blood?
"I kicked him in the head and I said, Was it worth it? "
He had thought the 16-year-old was armed as well, but it turned out the object in his hand was the store's telephone, Gambina said.
Gambina said he regrets the death of the teen, but felt justified in defending himself. Police agreed, deciding not to arrest him.
"I'm a plain working stiff who wants to do a decent job," he said. He was born in the family's store, he added, and "I want to die of old age there."
Once some gang members tried to steal some beer from his store.
"I beat them both in the head with a pistol and got my beer back," he said |
