Guard’s Quiet Shift Ends in a Dramatic Shoot-Out

It was 9:30 p.m., and security guard James N. Marshall had just finished a quiet shift Tuesday patrolling outside an Inglewood grocery store. His real work, however, was about to begin.

The store’s managers had just locked up the City Farm Market on South Prairie Avenue when they were confronted by two robbers, one of whom brandished a handgun. Marshall sprinted across the parking lot, exchanging gunfire with one of the robbers. When the shooting ended, Marshall was lying in the parking lot with three bullet wounds, and the gunman was fatally wounded.

Inglewood police said a preliminary investigation showed that Marshall acted legally, even heroically, in breaking up the robbery.

“The guard is a very brave man who placed his own personal safety below the needs of his employer,” said Sgt. Harold Moret, a police spokesman. “His attention to duty is very commendable.”

At Delta Pacific Security, where Marshall has worked for four years, supervisors called him a well-trained guard who is called in for tough assignments.

“I wish I had 500 guards just like him,” said Vernon Turcotte, who founded the Torrance security company 53 years ago. “This is the difference between a trained and an untrained man.”

Marshall, 33, at home in Hawthorne on Wednesday recovering from his wounds to the shoulder and back, accepted the accolades but said he was just doing his job.

“I looked over and I saw a guy with a gun to one of the owner’s heads,” Marshall said. “I just reacted. I see a gun and I respond. I don’t have any time to ask questions.”

Marshall’s final duty of the shift is to watch the parking lot as the manager locks up the store, walks to his car and heads home.

After manager Tarek Ibraham Mustafa and his uncle, Hilal Ahmed Awadallah, got into Mustafa’s car, another vehicle pulled up to block it from behind and a gunman confronted Mustafa.

Marshall ran across the parking lot. The gunman fired at Marshall. Marshall shot back. Both Marshall and the gunman were hit.

The gunman, who was struck in the hip, and his driver fled in a silver Oldsmobile. Mustafa called police from his car telephone.

Upon hearing that one of the passengers was injured, police went to nearby Centinela Hospital Medical Center. There they spotted a man pulling a passenger out of an Oldsmobile near the hospital’s emergency room. When the man spotted the police, he pushed the passenger back in the car and sped off.

Police stopped the car several blocks away and arrested the driver, Mark Alan Burks, 22, on suspicion of attempted murder and attempted robbery.

The passenger, Timothy Lavell Harris, whom police identified as the gunman who shot Marshall, died at 10:30 p.m. at Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital.

Marshall was treated and released from Martin Luther King Jr.-Drew Medical Center.

Moret said Wednesday that the store owners were lucky to have had Marshall on duty Tuesday night.

“Mr. Mustafa hired the right security guard,” Moret said.