Suspect Picks Poor Hiding Place : Robbery: Impromptu posse of students and store owner chase man into high-security Hughes compound.

An armed robbery suspect was chased Friday by his intended victim and an impromptu posse of high school students into a high-security compound at Hughes Aircraft in Fullerton--where plant guards refused to let him leave.

La Habra Police Sgt. Matt Stoner said the suspect, Billy McCullough Jr., 30, of Maywood, who was armed with a knife, took about $400 out of the cash register of Big Bob’s Liquor near the corner of La Habra Boulevard and Cypress Street about 2:30 p.m.

Bob Gala, the store’s owner, went after McCullough, who got into an older-model Volkswagen van and sped away, he said. Gala followed the van in his own vehicle, from La Habra into Fullerton.

“At some point, the suspect stopped and got out of his vehicle,” Stoner said. “The owner of the liquor store confronted him, and the suspect took off on foot.

“That’s when several high school students joined in the pursuit. They chased him across the schoolyard. He jumped over a fence into a highly secured compound that turned out to be Hughes Aircraft.”

Stoner said Hughes’ security guards would not let him leave “because he had never signed in.”

“There are days when you just can’t win,” Stoner said.

“I was lucky today,” Gala said late Friday. “Basically, I saw that he wasn’t too harmful. . . . I wanted him to stop coming in my store.”

Gala said he believes that the same suspect robbed his store about six weeks ago of $800 to $900, when one of his employees was on duty. Police, he said, never arrested McCullough for that incident because a security camera in the store did not capture a sharp enough photograph of him.

“I’ve never had to do this before,” Gala said. “Thank God nobody was hurt. I had to make him stop.”

McCullough was being held at the La Habra Jail without bail on suspicion of armed robbery and parole violation.