The Region - News from Sept. 12, 1985

An elderly security guard was shot to death by a would-be bandit in an East Los Angeles market, just a few weeks before he was to have retired. Police said A.J. Rhodes, 68, was on duty at Fine’s Food Center, a market on East Olympic Boulevard, when the suspect wrested his service revolver away from him and shot him in the upper chest. He died at the scene, and the slayer--who witnesses said also had a revolver of his own--fled in a car driven by another man. A spokesman for the Business Security Guard Service, Rhodes’ employer, said he had been transferred to Fine’s from another post just three weeks ago. The spokesman said he was the first guard killed on duty since the company started 10 years ago.