Hostage Held by Suspect in Murder : Crime: Man sought by police in slaying invades medical clinic in Chula Vista.

A suspect in the shooting death of a 74-year-old retired jeweler took 10 hostages at gunpoint Thursday afternoon at a Chula Vista medical clinic and released all but one by nightfall.

Robert Jacobsen, 35, an unemployed truck driver, held a single hostage late Thursday while demanding a pizza and a priest and pacing throughout the clinic smoking cigarettes.

He wore a dark trench coat and gazed out the front window at the crowd gathered across the street at the popular Chula Vista Shopping Center urging him to surrender.

The one-story clinic is next to Scripps Memorial Hospital on H Street.

Police and hostages described Jacobsen as being calm and rational at all times during the ordeal.

Seven women and two men were released Thursday. The lone hostage was believed to be a male patient.

Jacobsen, who lives in Chula Vista with his wife, two small children and mother in the same home, had been the prime suspect for a week in the slaying of William Warden. Warden had been shot at home before dawn Feb. 18 on a quiet cul-de-sac about 2 miles from the medical clinic.

Authorities had been searching for Jacobsen shortly after the killing, but had received no news of his whereabouts until Thursday. About 2:30 p.m., police were told by a bartender at John’s Place, two blocks from the clinic, that Jacobsen was inside.

By the time officers arrived, Jacobsen was gone but quickly spotted him in front of the Fiesta Twin Cinemas two blocks away. Officers raced after Jacobsen, who sprinted through a parking lot and ran into the ReadiCare Center.

At least one shot was fired after Jacobsen entered the clinic but police did not know Thursday night whether the suspect or police had fired it. Police believe Jacobsen may have been carrying a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun, the weapon used in the Warden murder.

About half an hour after Jacobsen walked into the clinic with the handgun, a male hostage was released. Seven people, mostly female employees, followed about three hours later, at 5:30 p.m. About 6:40 p.m., a female worker dressed in white medical clothing walked out of the building with her arms over her head.

Ten minutes after the last woman walked out, a man dressed in Levis and a shirt opened the door to ReadiCare and threw something out front. It was unclear whether the man was the remaining hostage or the suspect.

One of the hostages, Lisa Sullivan, an assistant manager at the clinic, called her fiancee shortly after Jacobsen arrived.

“She said there was a guy with a gun inside,” said Joe de la Cruz, 26, a former San Diego police officer. “The conversation was very brief, like 30 seconds. She said he had some hostages in the back. She sounded pretty calm and I told her just to relax. She had already been on the phone with the authorities.”

Sullivan, 22, was released with the group of seven employees. Police sequestered the group behind a nearby building in a commercial complex to get information about the incident.

Maria Dydasco, 30, a receptionist at ReadiCare, was also released at 5:30 p.m. As she walked out of the building, her mother, Helen Flores ran across the parking lot to hug her. Dydasco was sobbing.

“She told me she was hiding and that she’s glad she’s skinny,” Helen Flores said. Flores and her husband, Richard, work about a block away at a bookstore.

The Floreses saw a police helicopter circling overhead and someone told them the radio was reporting about the hostages. The couple rushed over and waited for hours with a large group gathered near the clinic.

Twice during the ordeal, radio station KSDO-AM was able to call the clinic and speak to one of the hostages, Dolores Loveless. At one point early in the incident, Loveless said Jacobsen’s sole demand was a cellular telephone. She said she was not being held at gunpoint and that the gunman was calm.

While police converged on the scene, officials at three nearby schools kept students inside until parents arrived to take them home.

The crime scene took on a boisterous atmosphere as about 200 onlookers across the street in a mall urged Jacobsen to surrender. Because police sealed off H Street from 4th to 6th Avenue, many shoppers were stranded and couldn’t get their cars.

Each time Jacobsen got close to a window, the crowd cheered, pleading with him to give up. At one point, police delivered a pizza to the suspect near the front door but well outside his reach. Jacobsen was visibly upset, police said.

Lt. Merlin Wilson of the Chula Vista Police Department said Jacobsen lived in the city and had family and friends in the area.

Authorities said Jacobsen was connected to the Warden killing by witnesses and through evidence that they declined to disclose.

Warden, a World War II Navy pilot and his wife of 50 years, Nola, lived on Glover Court. He owned McClendon’s Jewelers & Watch Repairs on 3rd Avenue in Chula Vista for more than 20 years until they sold the business last year.

The couple was in the process of selling their house, where they had lived for 25 years, and looked forward to retirement in Florida. They have four children.

Police believe the prowler climbed a steep canyon that surrounds the Warden home. As Warden rose at about 3:30 a.m. to use the bathroom, he came face-to-face with the prowler, police said, and was shot several times in the upper body and once in the chest. He fled out the back door into the canyon.

Times staff writers Lisa R. Omphroy and Paul Chavez contributed to this report.