INCOMING! : Jewelry Shop Robbers’ Bullet Smacks Wall of Nearby Bank

Tom Dorich said he had just left his desk at the Union Bank where he works in Brentwood on Friday when the bullet came crashing through the window directly above where he’d been sitting.

“If I’d still been sitting there it would have passed a foot from my head,” the 30-year-old commercial-loan officer said Friday afternoon. “I’d have had a heart attack.”

Witnesses said a pair of armed robbers fired into the bank on San Vicente Boulevard as they attempted to shoot a man who chased them after they held up a small jewelry store nearby.

The bullet missed the man, the busy traffic on San Vicente, Dorich, the several customers in the bank lobby and a line of tellers behind a counter before it struck a paneled wall and fell to the floor.

Wife Forced Inside

Ralph Rosen, 40, owner of the jewelry store that bears his name, said the two men forced his wife inside the store about 11:30 a.m., smashed a glass case and scooped up a handful of watches.

“They took the gold-plated ones--the good ones they left,” Rosen said. “I kept asking myself, ‘Why is all that traffic out there?’ You see, I had a .44 special by my hand, but I couldn’t use it because I might hurt someone out there.”

Rosen said the robbers dashed outside and jumped into a car parked in front of the store.

“As they took off, a guy outside saw what they were doing and gave chase,” Rosen said. “They pulled into the parking lot, and he pulled in behind them. One of them turned around and fired that shot, the one that went into the bank.

“They took off, and that was enough for him,” Rosen said.

The value of the stolen watches was not immediately determined.