Merchant, 64, Assailant Slain in Santa Ana Store Robbery

The owner of a Santa Ana check-cashing store, who was opening the business early Monday morning with his son, was slain in a shoot-out with three would-be robbers, but had managed to return the fire, apparently killing one of them.

Philip Brower of Corona del Mar, who was celebrating his 64th birthday Monday and his 35th wedding anniversary this week, was pronounced dead at the scene of the shoot-out, which took place shortly before 9 a.m. at his Cash Unlimited store at 1509 N. Main St.

One of Brower’s assailants, Gerrald King, 20, of Costa Mesa, was pronounced dead at UCI Medical Center in Orange. Two suspects were arrested a short time later after a pickup truck identified by a witness as the getaway vehicle was traced to an Irvine address.

The suspects--identified by police as Harley Christopher Curtis, 20, of the Irvine address, and James Dewane Jones, 19, who is listed as a runaway from the Boy’s Republic youth correctional facility in Chino--were booked on suspicion of robbery and murder and ordered held in County Jail. Bonds had not been set late Monday.

Santa Ana police said the shoot-out occurred before the suspects could get any money. The shooting happened, officers said, as Brower and his son, David, 33, who operated the check-cashing business with his father, were unlocking the front door of the one-room store.

Standing in Hallway

They were standing in a common hallway that is used for three other businesses in the two-story building.

The younger Brower, who was not wounded, said from the doorway of his family’s Corona del Mar home Monday afternoon that he and his father were facing the front door when someone shoved a revolver between them and announced a holdup.

“I didn’t even believe it,” Brower said. “I looked down and the gun didn’t even look real. I thought it was a customer playing a practical joke.”

Brower said his father drew a .38-caliber revolver from his pants pocket, then about four shots were traded over the next 30 seconds.

“It was like a nightmare, just like a bad TV show,” Brower said. “I just stood there, with my face to the wall.”

The younger Brower did not get a look at the assailants. He said his father, slumped in a sitting position against a hallway wall, spoke to him before he died, but he declined to reveal his father’s final words.

Brower said Monday is generally the slowest day of the week in the check-cashing business, so “we would have been lucky” to have had $500 on hand.

Employees of other businesses along busy North Main reported hearing what they at first thought were car backfires. Santa Ana police officers on patrol nearby responded almost immediately and cordoned off the scene from onlookers.

Both mortally wounded men were found in the common hallway, as was Brower’s gun and an unspecified type of small revolver near King, police said.

A witness in the same building as Cash Unlimited gave police the license number of a white Nissan he saw speeding away, Santa Ana police spokeswoman Maureen Thomas said.

Police traced the license number to Irvine, where Curtis lives on Sunset River with his parents. Officers from Santa Ana and Irvine put the home under surveillance at 9:45 a.m.

An hour later, Thomas said, three young men emerged from the home and got into a pickup truck. The truck was stopped half a block later by 15 Irvine police officers and three Santa Ana police officers.

One Not Present in Robbery

The occupants put up no resistance and were arrested. One was later released without charges after it was determined that he had not been present during the robbery, Thomas said.

She said police have not determined pending further investigation whom they suspect of firing the shots into the elder Brower.

Benjamin Franklin, 19, who identified himself as a cousin of Curtis, said Curtis had not been involved in any recent criminal trouble of which he was aware.

Curtis, an Irvine High School graduate who played on the school’s football and wrestling squads, has been working as a haircutter in the Irvine area, Franklin said.

“Ain’t no way he did it,” Franklin said. “He works honestly. He makes a good living. He don’t steal, and he don’t do drugs.”

David Brower said his father, originally from England, was a car dealership manager in Illinois before moving to California about seven years ago and then opening the check-cashing business in 1983.

Before Monday, Brower said his father had had no serious problems with crime since opening the business. In 1985, according to Santa Ana police records, Brower filed a complaint that someone had forged a check for $150.

And once, Brower said, someone broke out the window of Cash Unlimited when the Browers refused to cash a check.

Brower said he and his father used to call the police about hot-check artists, but he added that they had not been a major problem recently.

Although the business had not been held up, Brower said his father routinely carried a gun.

Bulletproof Windows

“Any time a merchant has a lot of cash like this, there can be a problem,” Brower said, adding that he and his father were protected inside the business by a concrete wall and bulletproof teller windows.

Above the wall is a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun with a sign that warns: “Use a gun, go to jail.”

Other merchants in the neighborhood said they could not remember the last time there had been an armed robbery there. They said crimes like car break-ins are more common.

The Browers usually unlock the whole building, Brower said, but when they arrived for work Monday, the building had already been opened by someone else who works in it.

Besides their business, other building tenants include an immigration clinic and a notary public on the ground level and a vocational training school upstairs. Those businesses were kept shuttered for half the day Monday as police investigated.

John Torres, a legal assistant for the Immigration Clinic, recalled the elder Brower as a “very nice” person who occasionally dealt with unruly customers.

“Sometimes we would hear raised voices and people walking out angry,” Torres said.

Ads on the window outside Cash Unlimited proclaim: “ANY KIND CHECKS CASHED NO I.D. REQUIRED.” The business, which also rents P.O. boxes and makes identification photos, includes among its clientele parolees referred to it by officials at a California Department of Corrections parole office on the other side of North Main.

Although Cash Unlimited started with brisk business five years ago, Brower’s son said the store had fallen on hard times in the last year because of intense competition. Brower’s was among the first shops to open in the county specializing in “instant” check cashing.

But the business drew instant legal controversy when a company called Pacific Ring Enterprises filed suit in 1983 in Orange County Superior Court, accusing Brower and several other local check entrepreneurs of stealing Pacific’s secret screening techniques. A judge later dropped Brower from the suit.

Brower’s death left friends and family in a state of shock Monday. Brower’s wife, Miriam, had planned to bake him a birthday cake for Monday night, said their son, Russell, 28, a physician. There were more celebration plans for the 35th wedding anniversary Friday.

“He was just totally devoted to his family,” Russell Brower said. “He put my brother, David, through law school, and he put me through med school. He just went to work and would spend his free time with us.”

David Brower could not say Monday what will happen to his father’s business. “These things happen,” he said. “You mess with trash, and you get your fingers dirty.”