Clerk Shot in Holdup Days After Retiring From Navy

A former chief petty officer at Port Hueneme who retired from the Navy six days ago was shot in the back Monday by a man who robbed the fast-food market where he now works of $50.

Floyd DeBat of Camarillo was in good condition at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard, recuperating from the bullet that is lodged half an inch to the right of his spinal cord.

“I feel OK other than like a truck ran me over,” said DeBat, who had been stationed since 1973 at Port Hueneme.

DeBat retired from the Navy after 20 years on Wednesday and on Thursday began his new job working the night shift at the Circle K Food Market in the 200 block of East Pleasant Valley Road.

He said it was about 3 a.m. when a man came in and wandered toward the soda section.

“The next thing I know, he had a gun,” DeBat said.

DeBat said at first he thought the man was carrying a toy gun, but decided that rather than take a chance he would obey the man’s demands.

He said he handed over $50 from the cash register to the man, who spoke calmly.

Then, the man ordered DeBat to walk through the door.

DeBat said he believed at the time that the man was taking him outside to keep him from calling the police so the robber would have more time to escape.

But DeBat said he was only 10 feet outside the building, with the robber following about three feet behind, when he was shot.

The man took off running, DeBat said. And all DeBat allowed himself to think about, he said, was reaching the phone inside the store to call for help.

Police said they found DeBat lying on the floor next to the phone, conscious and able to tell them about the suspect, who is described as a male Latino between 18 and 20 years old.

The man, who had short, brown, curly hair, is about 5 feet, 8 inches tall and weighs about 120 pounds. He was wearing a dark T-shirt, black sweat pants and black tennis shoes, police said.

DeBat said that as he lies in the hospital, racked with pain every time he takes a breath, he has thought about how the man meant to kill him.

Doctors said that had the bullet struck a little higher or lower it would have punctured a vital organ.

They have decided for now to leave the bullet in DeBat’s back, he said.

DeBat said he took the job at Circle K to make some extra money and to help out the manager, with whom he is friends. But DeBat, who had been stationed since 1973 at the Port Hueneme Naval Base, said he is unsure whether he will return to the job at the store.

DeBat’s wife, Mitzi, 34, said that when she received the phone call from the hospital she could not believe what had happened.

“I thought I was having a nightmare,” she said.

DeBat, a native of New Orleans, said he planned on Monday night to call and break the news to his children--a son, 20, and two daughters, 23 and 24--who live in New Orleans and Washington.

He said he worked as an assistant manager at the store in 1987 for extra money and had never worried about crime there before he was shot.

“They’ve come up and held the store up,” DeBat said. “But they’ve never hurt the guy they held up.”

Police said they had no suspect in the case and are uncertain of the motive for the shooting.

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Sgt. Dennis Fitzgerald of the Port Hueneme Police Department. “The only thing I can figure out is that he shot him because he didn’t want a witness or it was a senseless act of cowardly violence.”

Fitzgerald is sure, however, that the man meant to kill DeBat.

“You don’t stand a couple feet away and shoot and not mean business,” Fitzgerald said.

He said that the Circle K and other 24-hour convenience markets are often targeted for robberies but that such shootings are extremely rare in Port Hueneme.

The last similar incident occurred on April 12, 1987, when a man robbed a gas station in the city of about $50 and executed the attendant by shooting him three times with a sawed-off shotgun, Fitzgerald said. Eric Chappell was subsequently found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, a court spokeswoman said.

The Circle K market in Port Hueneme will take precautions against crime by no longer staying open 24 hours a day, said clerk Barbara Winters. It will now close between 2 and 6 a.m., she said.

But the schedule change did not alleviate the fears of employees scared by the senseless crime, said Winters, who was scheduled to work until 2 a.m. Tuesday.

“I’m a nervous wreck,” she said.