Clerk Comes to the Rescue

Mohammed Saleem, a desk clerk at the Canoga House Motor Hotel, did not object when two robbers ordered him at gunpoint to empty his cash register.

He did not object when they shoved him and grabbed the change box. But when one man approached a hotel customer and demanded her jewelry, Saleem decided it was time to fight back.

“They didn’t look that strong,” he said, recalling how he prepared for his counterattack. “So I thought, ‘let me see what will happen.’ ”

When they left, Saleem had been shot twice.

According to Los Angeles police, Saleem and witnesses, it all started when two men wearing white makeup walked into the lobby of the Canoga Park hotel after 10 p.m. Tuesday and ordered Saleem to hand over the money.

After he had emptied the cash register and handed over the change box, the one robber carrying a pistol said he wanted more.

“I was getting ready to give him the reserve cash,” Saleem said. “I was turning and bending to an open drawer . . . when he fired.”

The assailant shot Saleem in the chest with a .25-caliber pistol, Detective Robert Johansen said.

But Saleem did not realize he had been hit.

“I thought he hit the wall or something. I didn’t think I had been shot,” he said.

The assailant turned to Anna Lopez, who had been filling out a registration card, and demanded her jewelry.

Lopez, 22, took off rings and earrings and began taking off her necklace.

That’s when Saleem reached for a broken ax handle kept near the register.

The hotel owner, Cappy R. Trotter, had encouraged Saleem to keep the ax handle for protection after he had complained about being vulnerable during the night hours.

Six months earlier, Saleem said, he was robbed in the hotel office by a man brandishing a large gun.

But as Saleem reached for the ax handle the gunman fired once again, hitting him in the foot.

Again, Saleem did not realize he had been shot.

He thought it was a warning shot. He attacked.

“I got crazy and hit him with the stick. I hit him once on his back and threw the stick at them as they were running away,” Saleem said.

The robbers escaped on foot with the money from the cash register, but they dropped the change box and jewelry, Johansen said.

Saleem said he did not know he was wounded until a hotel resident ran into the office after she heard the shots.

“I told her, ‘I think I’m OK, but I feel a slight pain in my chest.’ When she pulled off my sweater, my shirt and undershirt were red,” Saleem said.

She screamed for hotel manager Ghalaza Roohi, who called 911.

Saleem, 34, was admitted to Northridge Hospital Medical Center and released the next evening.

He hopes to return to work soon.

Saleem, a Canoga Park resident, also is a security guard for a computer company in Agoura Hills, working the graveyard shift to help support his wife and two children, ages 4 and 5, back in his native Pakistan.

Saleem is saving so they can join him some day.

He said he has never been robbed as a security guard.

The potentially fatal consequences of his heroics seemed to hit him Thursday.

“I thought, ‘I have my kids and if something happens to me what will happen to them?’ ” he said.

But his Orthodox Muslim faith sustains him, he said. “It just wasn’t my time to go.”