SWAT Team ‘Rescues’ 18, but No Bandit Found

What began Monday morning as a frantic report of a masked robber holding hostages at a Pacific Bell office here ended in mystery three hours later, after police SWAT teams “rescued” all 18 customers and workers inside the office but could find no trace of a bandit.

No shots were fired and no one was injured during the bizarre incident in which only one person, a Pacific Bell employee who telephoned police, claimed to have actually seen a masked man.

Officers believe that the purported robber may have left through a back door before they arrived at the office, in National City Plaza just south of the San Diego city limits.

Police teams evacuated all businesses in the shopping center as a precaution before camouflaged SWAT officers snuck into the telephone company office to remove those inside. Once the 18 people were taken out, the SWAT unit, prepared to stun the suspect by tossing a concussion grenade at him, initiated a cautious search of each room.

The elaborate preparations, as it turned out, were unnecessary.

When no suspect could be found and the shopping center was declared secure once again, a crowd of more than 100 bystanders, most of them teen-agers, moved in to jeer the 55 San Diego and National City police officers who had responded to the scene.

“Whoever it was in there made you guys look like a bunch of rookies,” one on-looker teased. Police, however, seemed hardly embarrassed.

“This was an exercise in ‘better safe than sorry,’ ” said Lt. Dave Spisak, a San Diego Police Department spokesman.

Fifteen people were in line paying bills and three female employees were working in the Pacific Bell “public office,” one of seven in the county, when the episode began about 10:15 a.m.

Branch manager Karen Hagan said she was balancing receipts in a locked back room when “I heard a door open and footsteps coming down the hall. I heard a knock on the door, but when I asked who it is, no one answered.”

Hagan said that when she went to the door and looked through a peephole, she saw a tall man in a red coat wearing a rubber “old man” mask.

“I felt scared to death,” she said. Fearing a robbery attempt, Hagan said, she entered an adjoining room, dialed the emergency telephone number, 911, and was connected to the National City Police Department.

Hagan said she was instructed by police to get the customers to a safe place. However, a glass teller’s window separated her from the customers, she said. By slipping a key and a note under the teller’s window, she was able to instruct a customer to unlock a 12-by-8-foot storage room and herd the others into it until police could arrive.

“They (police) told us to pass a note around telling everyone to squat when we saw the SWAT team come in,” she said.

About the same time, according to Spisak, an unidentified customer left the office through its front door. Based on what Hagan reported seeing, that customer called the San Diego Police Department, which mobilized its SWAT units.

The National City police do not have such teams.

Albert C. Jones, 60, a retired federal employee and World War II combat veteran, was the last person in line at the Pacific Bell office when he glanced over his shoulder and noticed a police officer squatting behind a car in the parking lot. Jones said he thought at first that the officer might have been there because of trouble at an adjacent Wrigley’s supermarket.

“Then the teller gave us instructions that we were to get in that room because there was a suspicious person in the back, so in we went,” Jones said.

The customers--10 women, four men and a child--quietly fidgeted in the room for about 90 minutes. Periodically, Jones said, the teller in her glassed-in cage would hold up a piece of cardboard and scribble encouraging messages like “Be Calm.”

“Then, after a while, two SWAT guys pushed open the door to our room and started screaming, ‘Hit the deck! Hit the deck!’ ” Jones said. “It really upset a lot of the women.”

Another of those inside the room, college student Diana Johnson, 30, said people lost their composure only after SWAT personnel entered the room.

“Everybody started screaming and crying,” said Johnson, more than an hour after her release. “I’m still scared.”

At least one unidentified woman was given oxygen by paramedics who were standing by as the customers made it out about 11:50 a.m. A few minutes later, the three Pacific Bell employees also were evacuated.

“I don’t think we were hostages. A hostage is when they put a knife to your throat,” Jones said. “I think we were just detained.”

After a search of all rooms as well as the surrounding ceiling crawl spaces, police deemed the office safe about 1:30 p.m.

“Apparently (the suspect) got out right at the beginning,” said Sgt. Bill Nelson, the SWAT team leader. “We don’t know where he went.”