Employee Saves Day by Sneaking Out During Robbery

A Los Angeles man who may be responsible for a dozen holdups in Orange County has been arrested here as a suspect in a pizzeria robbery, police said Friday.

Robert Dixon, 48, was captured Thursday as he fled the restaurant after police said he took $700 in cash and ordered a manager and a visitor into a restroom at gunpoint.

But he did not see another worker in the kitchen, who snuck out and called police.

Dixon was at Lamppost Pizza in the 13000 block of Harbor Boulevard for about 90 minutes until about 2:30 p.m. Steve Garcia, a partner in the business, said Friday: “I’d seen him sitting there, getting up for another beer.”

Then Dixon apparently left but re-entered through the back door, said Garcia, who went back to his office after a meeting with a food distributor and found Dixon inside.

“I said, ‘Excuse me, can I help you?’ and he pointed the gun at me,” Garcia said. “He said, ‘I want all the cash, and I want you and the lady out front (the distributor) back here.’ ”

Police Lt. John Woods said Dixon used a blue-steel handgun.

Garcia put the money from a safe in a white cloth bank bag, but the suspect flourished the pistol and asked for rolls of change too.

Dixon took Garcia to the separate bar and restaurant cash registers and had him remove cash, repeating, “Don’t be a hero, and don’t set off the alarm”--and smiling all the time, he said.

At the front register, Garcia asked Dixon whether he could keep some change so he could do business after he left.

Then Dixon told Garcia and the distributor to go the bathroom in the back. “Then I really thought he was going to shoot us,” Garcia said. “It was awful. I’ve never experienced anything like that before.”

But the suspect told them to stay there and left, police said.

Meanwhile, Rodney Hodge, who was working in the kitchen, had seen the barrel of Dixon’s gun and got outside to call police.

Hodge, Garcia said, “definitely gets a bonus.”

Police arrived quickly. Motorcycle Officer Dale Scroggins pursued Dixon onto the westbound Garden Grove Freeway to Brookhurst Street, where Dixon lost control of his car after trying to jump the center divider, Woods said. Gun and money were both recovered.

The suspect is believed to be responsible for about 12 county robberies, “primarily pizza parlors and Radio Shacks,” Woods said.

The suspect is being held in jail on suspicion of armed robbery, with bail set at $50,000.