Clerk Shot in Robbery Sues City Hall : Blames Police for Phoning to Check on Reason for Silent Alarm

A former liquor store clerk who was shot by a bandit filed suit Wednesday against the City of Costa Mesa and Police Chief Roger Neth, claiming that police telephoned his store after a silent alarm was activated instead of answering the call for help.

Elias Aoun, 26, of Orange claims in his suit that the telephone call by police provoked two gunmen, who probably would merely have taken the money from the cash register and left him unharmed.

“The attitude of those people changed from just trying to get the money and scare me to nervousness, to taking cover behind me, taking me to the back room and shooting me,” Aoun said in a telephone interview Wednesday night.

On Nov. 24, 1984, Aoun was working at Sir Charles Liquor Store on Bristol Street in Costa Mesa when two armed men came into the shop and demanded all of the money in the cash register and Aoun’s wallet, his attorney, Nick O’Malley, said.

When the robbers reached into the register to take the money they activated a silent alarm, notifying police that a robbery was in progress. But instead of sending officers to investigate, O’Malley said, the police telephoned the store 1 1/2 minutes after the alarm was tripped to find out if anything was wrong.

“One of the suspects answered the phone and assured the caller that everything was all right,” O’Malley said. “Then that suspect took the clerk into the back room at gunpoint and shot him in the back . . . . The police eventually came, but it was some time later.”

“I thought definitely the police would show up,” Aoun said. “I was told it was a silent alarm that went straight to the police and when it was activated, it would show up at the police station that a robbery was in progress.”

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Costa Mesa Police Lt. Leslie Harris declined to comment on the suit, which he said he had not seen. And he said he was unaware of the department’s silent alarm policy.

“The calls come into the communications center, not the Police Department, so I don’t know what the policy is,” Harris said.

Aoun has since left the liquor store and now works for a private telephone company in Anaheim. But he carries around evidence of the attack to this day.

After the shooting, he said, he was in the intensive care ward of Fountain Valley Community Hospital for 12 days. Doctors had to remove one third of his left lung, which was riddled with metal pellets from the gun blast, he said.

But surgeons could not remove all of the pellets, which were scattered throughout his chest cavity and upper body, and he said he still goes to the doctor on occasion to have the remaining pellets taken out as they surface.

Aoun is asking an unspecified amount of damages; however, the Costa Mesa City Council rejected a $250,000 claim from Aoun last May, O’Malley said.

According to store manager Henry Traboulsi, this specific alarm system was installed after the store was held up in 1983 on a night when he was working.

“The FBI and the City of Costa Mesa asked us to put this alarm in,” Traboulsi said. “This (the incident with Aoun) was the first time it went off, and they didn’t answer it.”

Traboulsi said he was training a new employee last Friday, when the man accidentally tripped the alarm.

“And the police just called again,” Traboulsi said. “I think they really want someone to get hurt before they change their system.”