Her Tip Trips Suspect Despite Failing Sight

After a legally blind courthouse worker recognized him as a suspected killer depicted in a police drawing, an Encino man was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of murdering an employee of a fast-food restaurant in the San Fernando Valley.

Timothy Kruska, 25, was arrested without incident outside the San Fernando Courthouse cafeteria shortly after noon, said Lt. Edwin Powell of the Los Angeles County marshal’s office in San Fernando.

Deputies who took Kruska into custody found him napping on a courthouse bench a few minutes after the female worker had spotted him in the cafeteria.

“If he had been dressed any differently, I never would have recognized him,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified.

Reward Offered

Although she is legally blind, she said she can make out shapes and some facial details at close range.

Powell described Kruska as “an absolute dead-bang ringer match” for the composite drawing released Tuesday by detectives investigating the murder Sunday of Leroy Moore, 25, assistant manager of a Taco Bell outlet on Ventura Boulevard in Tarzana.

Officials of the restaurant chain Tuesday had offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the gunman.

Moore was shot in the chest by a robber who forced his way into the restaurant about 3 a.m. The killer fled with $200, officials said.

Taco Bell employees who allegedly saw the man around the restaurant the evening of the slaying helped police create the composite drawing, which depicts a white male in his late 20s with wide-set eyes, long hair, a mustache and beard.

“I had just finished looking at the L.A. Times article and that drawing just a few seconds before I looked up and saw him,” the woman who recognized Kruska said.

She told Municipal Judge Michael S. Luros, who was lunching in the cafeteria, about her suspicions. Luros summoned deputy marshals.

“When the deputies woke him up and showed him the picture, he said, ‘I know it looks like me, and I was there at the Taco Bell, but I didn’t kill anybody,’ ” Luros recalled.

Kruska was wearing a dirty baseball cap similar to the one shown in the composite and had the same style of hair, beard and mustache as the man in the picture, Luros said.

The suspect was in the building to appear in traffic court for a ticket he had received last February for riding a motorcycle with a suspended license, Powell said.

Kruska was later booked at the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley Division, which is handling the murder investigation, Powell said.