Murder Suspect Takes Hostages at Clinic

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

Robert Jacobsen, 35, an unemployed truck driver, held the single hostage late Thursday while demanding a pizza and a priest and pacing through the one-story clinic smoking cigarettes, police said.

He wore a dark trench coat and gazed out the front window at the crowd gathered across the street at the Chula Vista Shopping Center urging him to surrender. Police and hostages who had been released described him as calm and rational.

Jacobsen is a prime suspect in the slaying of retired Chula Vista jeweler William Warden, shot at his home before dawn on Feb. 18, authorities said. Police had been searching for Jacobsen since shortly after the Warden killing but had received no news of his whereabouts until Thursday.

About 2:30 p.m. Thursday, a bartender told police that Jacobsen was inside the clinic. By the time officers arrived, however, he was gone. He was quickly spotted in front of a movie theater 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 said they did not know who had fired it.

About half an hour after Jacobsen walked into the clinic with the handgun, a male hostage was released, police said. Seven more hostages, mostly female employees, were released about three hours later at about 5:30 p.m. A woman hostage dressed in a white medical uniform walked out of the building with her arms over her head at about 6:40 p.m.

Ten minutes after the last woman walked out, a man opened the clinic door and threw something out front. It was unclear whether the man was the remaining hostage or the suspect.

One hostage, 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.”

Twice during the ordeal, radio station KSDO-AM was able to call the clinic and speak to a hostage, Dolores Loveless.

At one point early in the incident, Loveless said Jacobsen’s sole demand was a cellular phone. She said she was not being held at gunpoint and that the gunman was calm.

The medical clinic is next door to Scripps Memorial Hospital on H Street. Because police sealed off H Street from 4th to 6th avenues, many shoppers were stranded and could not get to their cars.

Each time Jacobsen approached a window, the crowd that had gathered 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 has family in the area.

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