Gas Attendant Who Killed Intruder Won’t Be Tried

The Orange County district attorney’s office Thursday announced it will not prosecute a Westminster gas station attendant who fatally shot a burglar who was trying to flee.

Stressing that it was a “close call,” Deputy Dist. Atty. John Conley said he based his decision not to file homicide charges against Michael G. Coughran, 20, on a 1935 state appeals court decision in a similar case. That ruling stemmed from a wrongful death civil suit filed against a Los Angeles cafe owner who waited with a gun inside after finding the cafe’s front window tampered with, and fatally shot a burglar.

“It was our belief that a person could reasonably believe (in Coughran’s case) that he was dealing with a repeat burglar for the seventh time,” Conley said of the attendant, who had been paid by his boss to stay overnight at the station following a half dozen burglaries.

“It doesn’t mean that any person with a commercial building can shoot and kill someone . . .. We want it clear that it’s not open season on burglars, but there were factors in this case that made it different,” Conley said.

“It’s the last time I’m gonna do it,” Coughran, still shaken by the experience, said Thursday. He plans to return to his job at the gas station, but never again to stand guard with a gun. “I think I did my turn,” he said.

Use of ‘Deadly Force’

Citing a state law that states the use of “deadly force” is justified by “anyone” trying to apprehend a person committing a felony, Conley noted that the courts typically interpret that to apply only in cases where there is a threat of death or great bodily injury to the killer.

“In order to file on that we would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Coughran did not believe that he was threatened,” said Conley. He said evidence including a taped phone call to police in which Coughran’s panicked wife reported the burglary and spoke “excitedly” before shots were heard, indicated that they were genuinely afraid.

“I was very afraid,” a relieved Coughran said Thursday after learning he would not be charged. He would not discuss the shooting itself on the advice of an attorney but said that the trauma of killing someone has changed his life.

“I’ve been shooting (guns) four times (before this incident) in my life,” Coughran said. “Three times with my dad and once target shooting in the Boy Scouts.”

Does he feel comfortable with guns? “Not anymore,” Coughran said softly. “ . . . I’m never going to be the same again. Really.”

A Huntington Beach resident, Coughran has been on paid leave from his job since the shooting Feb. 21 at the Family Union Service Station on Westminster Avenue, where he works for $3.60 an hour. He said Westminster police investigators advised him to take some time off until the matter was settled.

With some irony, Coughran on Thursday remembered meeting David Ray Lewis four months before he shot and killed him. Prosecutors said Lewis was a convicted thief who had burglarized the station at least once and as many as six times before. Conley said fingerprints taken from a Feb. 10 burglary matched up with Lewis’.

With Wife at Station

Shortly after midnight on Feb. 21, investigators said, Lewis threw something through a front window and entered the Family Union station. He then approached a refrigerator where employees had been keeping the station’s cash----a possible sign to Coughran that the burglar knew from past break-ins where to find it, Conley said.

Lewis was confronted by Coughran, who with his wife, Lori, 19, had been sleeping on an air mattress in the station at the request of his boss, station owner Aslan Zandieh. Conley said Zandieh paid Coughran to do so “like a normal work shift” in the wake of six burglaries since Nov. 15, 1984.

Assistant Dist. Atty. James Enright said Coughran told investigators he bought a .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle at the request and instruction of Zandieh, who gave him $100 to do so. Zandieh told police he loaned the money to Coughran to buy the weapon. Investigators said the rifle was kept at the station but belonged to Coughran, who denied ownership of the weapon Thursday but would not say whom it belonged to.

“Either way,” Enright said, “there is no doubt he (Coughran) was acting in the scope of his employer.”

Investigators said the two men became embroiled in an argument as Coughran tried to hold Lewis at bay and Lori Coughran called the Westminster Police Department, which routinely tapes its phone calls.

Even as Coughran trained the rifle on him, Lewis reached into his pocket once and “made movements” toward the attendant before running toward the station’s broken window, Enright said.

Shot a Second Time

Coughran shot Lewis once in the hip and then a second time in the “back area” as he was trying to escape, Enright said.

“The second shot looked like it was shot when (Lewis) was bent over, going through the kidney on up to the aorta (the major artery of the body), which caused his death,” Enright said. “He ran out to the alley and expired.”

Enright and Conley both acknowledged Thursday what they called “the obvious problems” with the case and that some might misinterpret the decision as tacit approval for vigilantism. The suspect made no blatant threats toward the couple and he was running out the door when he was shot from behind, they noted.

“There is no question in our mind that we had a lot of problems with it,” Enright said. “The deceased in this case did not threaten the defendant, he was merely trying to escape as (Coughran) was trying to hold the burglar for the police. This obviously wasn’t an accident . . . there’s no question that the person was shot as he was going out the window, not coming in, and he was shot in the buttocks and back area.

“(Coughran) told us the person had one foot out the building and the other one in; it was in that position that he was shot. But he was refusing to stay and be arrested by the citizen while the citizen was waiting for police . . . . it verifies that the individual here, that his intention was to arrest the burglar and he was trying to detain the burglar . . . not try to kill him. He was shooting at his rear end to stop him.

Law ‘Is Very Vague’

“We feel that this particular decision is a very, very close one. We gave him every reasonable benefit of the interpretation of the facts and also of the law, and the law is very vague on this . . . .”

Coughran stayed home from work again Thursday, reflecting on the shooting.

He said he now remembers meeting Lewis but didn’t recognize him that night and only realized it was he days after the shooting. He had met the man back in October, he said, shortly after being hired at the gas station.

“I didn’t know I did (know the victim), but one night he came into the station and paid a bill on a car he had repaired there,” Coughran said. “Even when they (police) said his name, I didn’t know (that I had met him).”

“I was worried that I’d have to go through all the stuff (court proceedings), but I don’t think I was too worried I’d have to go to prison or anything.”