Robbers Get $300,000 in Heist After Sellout Game

Three armed men, wearing ski masks and motorcycle helmets, forced their way past a security guard and held three other stadium workers at gunpoint at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium before making off with about $300,000 in concession money after Sunday’s sellout Chargers-Raiders game, police reported.

San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender said he thought the heist was the largest armed robbery in San Diego history. In September, 1980, two gunmen held up an armored car guard inside a Pacific Beach Bank of America, escaping with $283,000.

About 9:30 p.m. Sunday after most of the record sellout crowd of 58,566 had left the stadium, three men knocked on a door to the stadium security office, according to Dale Hamme, owner of Locator Services, a private security firm. Sabo Camacho, a guard employed by Hamme and the only person in the office after another guard had left a few minutes earlier, opened the steel door leading to the small ground-level office and the three robbers burst through, according to Police Department spokesman Bill Robinson.

The three men, armed with a rifle, a shotgun and a small revolver, then took Camacho at gunpoint to the stadium basement, where the vault storing concession money is.

On the way to the basement, the robbers encountered Richard Esau, a stadium beer supplier from John Lenore Co., and an assistant. They were forced, with the security guard, into an area near the vault, Robinson said.

“I just finished counting my empty kegs when my assistant and I got off an elevator near the vault,” Esau said. “We didn’t see anybody around and we assumed everyone had gone home already.”

While one bandit held the three men under gunpoint, another robber tried to enter the vault room, Esau said. An employee of the stadium concessionaire, Servomation, was inside the vault counting money when one of the gunmen knocked on the door, Esau said. The employee was ordered to fill a duffel bag with cash from food, drink and souvenir sales, Robinson said, adding that a large sum was left behind.

The thieves told the four to lie near the door of the vault, Esau said, adding that he had trouble understanding the men because the masks and helmets muffled their voices. Esau was struck in the back of the head, presumably by the gunman with the revolver, after he failed to completely lie on the ground, he said. The blow caused no injury, yet Esau said he pretended he was unconscious to avoid further confrontations.

The gunmen told the four to stay on the ground and not to move or they would “blow our heads off,” Esau said. A few minutes later, after the four were sure the gunmen had fled, they called police.

Robinson said it appeared that the three men knew how to gain entry to the stadium and knew their way around the sports complex. Esau said the gunmen never asked for directions.

“They seemed to know what they were doing,” he said. “The only time they talked to us is when they yelled at us when they wanted us to do something, like lie on the floor.”

No arrests have been made, and police are continuing the investigation, Robinson said.