Gunmen Surrender After Holding 3

Gunmen who broke into a Reuben’s Restaurant in Orange early Saturday and tied up three people--including two who had been taking cardboard from the restaurant--were captured after a six-hour standoff with police.

The two men, one armed with a shotgun and the other with a pistol, broke into the closed restaurant about 3 a.m., apparently hoping to find the night’s profits, police said.

They found only the 50-year-old night janitor and his wife and two men not connected to Reuben’s. Those two had been helping themselves to discarded cardboard from the back of the Reuben’s Restaurant-Coco’s Family Restaurant complex on Tustin Avenue near the Orange Mall.

The gunmen ordered the janitor and the other two men into the bathroom. The janitor’s wife escaped out the back and called the police on the 911 emergency line.

One police official said the robbers left the three men left tied up but unattended in the bathroom. The captives escaped one by one and were met by a small army of Orange police officers who had surrounded the building.

‘Time on Our Side’

“Once the hostages were free, and we were assured that no innocent people were inside, then time was on our side,” said Orange Police Sgt. Stan Gabel.

Police then tried repeatedly by loudspeaker and by telephone to contact the two gunmen, both in English and in Spanish. “No contact was ever made,” Gabel said.

When a police dog was sent in and found no one, police began to concentrate on the attic.

A special entry team of four officers and the dog went in and found the two men in the attic. They were arrested without incident. The two apparently had been there for several hours, police said.

Police identified one of the suspects as Danny Ray Trowbridge, 22, of Ontario. The other gave a his name as Steven Wilson, but police booked him as a John Doe. His age and residence were not available. The names of the three victims were not released by police.

Police had blocked off traffic along Tustin Avenue, from Lincoln Avenue on the south to Heim Avenue on the north, for much of the morning before the capture.

Michael McVey, a Reuben’s spokesman, said he arrived on the scene about 7 a.m. and thought a nearby bank was being robbed.

An employee of Reuben’s said the gunmen had easy access to the attic--used primarily for storage of the restaurant’s air-conditioning units--because a straight ladder leads to an opening.

Restaurant officials described the janitor and his wife as Romanian immigrants who speak almost no English.

Reuben’s was not scheduled to open until Saturday night. But the Coco’s in the same complex, which does a heavy breakfast trade, was closed until about 12:30 p.m., said the day manager for the two restaurants, Khalid Ansari.