Event Echoes Fatal Holdup : Employees Not Hurt in Robbery at Restaurant

A robbery at a Costa Mesa fast-food restaurant early Sunday was eerily reminiscent of a 1979 holdup in Santa Ana that ended with the execution-style shooting death of a young female employee, but there was one very fortunate difference: Sunday’s holdup ended without violence when the bandits fled.

Both robberies took place at Taco Bell outlets, and in both cases the young restaurant employees were herded into walk-in refrigerators by bandits armed with guns.

Sunday, just a few minutes after midnight, four employees were ordered into the refrigerator at the restaurant at 2900 Fairview St. by two gun-toting robbers.

No one was injured, but the robbers got away with an estimated $500, police said.

One 17-year-old employee who did not want to be identified said he was “sorting beans and listening to the radio” when he heard a knock at the rear door. The restaurant manager peered through a peephole in the door but could not see anyone, the employee said.

When the manager unlocked the door, one of the robbers pushed it open and forced his way into the restaurant, brandishing a rifle or similar weapon, he said.

Another employee, a 15-year-old who also did not want to be identified, said employees at first thought it was a joke. They soon discovered the robbers meant business.

The four workers were ordered into the refrigerator, which, fortunately, has no lock as a safety precaution. About 10 or 15 minutes later, the employees pushed the door open.

To their relief, they said, the robbers had fled.

“We were scared as hell. When someone points a gun at you, you get scared,” one said.

While they were inside the refrigerator, the 15-year-old said, the employees were “hoping and praying” the bandits would not open the door, “because they had guns.”

In June, 1979, a 20-year-old female employee at a Taco Bell outlet in Santa Ana was killed and an 18-year-old male worker injured in an execution-style shooting at the restaurant. The gunman, Marcelinos Ramos, was tried and found guilty of ordering the two employees to kneel and say their prayers before hitting them with a metal pipe and shooting them.

Ramos was handed a death sentence, but two months ago the state Supreme Court invalidated the sentence on a technicality.

The 15-year-old said late-night fast-food restaurant employees rarely talk about robberies because “the possibilities are slim,” with hold-ups occurring “only once every five or six years. You only hear about it when you first start working.”

The 15-year-old also said the peephole and a dead-bolt lock were installed on the rear door of the restaurant about six weeks ago. Further, night employees are advised to keep the door locked, the employee said.

Police are searching for two men, one described as about six feet tall and weighing about 190 pounds, who police said wore a tan bathrobe and carried a short-barreled rifle during the robbery. An employee who reported getting a “very close look” at one of the robbers said, however, that the man was wearing a bulky tan sweater. That employee also said the weapon appeared to be a BB gun, although another described it as a hunting rifle. One employee said the man was wearing a ski mask; another said it was a nylon stocking pulled over his face.

Police described the second gunman as about six feet tall and weighing about 175 pounds and wearing blue jeans, a green jacket and a blue-and-white soft-brimmed hat. He reportedly was carrying a handgun.

Police reported finding discarded clothing in a vacant field through which the two robbers are believed to have fled.