Lawsuit Alleges Store Policy Puts Guards in Peril : Crime: Gregory Alaimo, injured while on duty, contends Home Depot insists weapons be holstered. An ex-colleague was killed in a robbery this week.

Home Depot, the hardware chain that owns a San Fernando store where an armored car guard was shot to death by a robber Monday, is being sued by another guard wounded in a similar robbery who contends that Home Depot security policy makes guards easy targets for robbers.

The lawsuit, filed by Gregory Alaimo of Burbank after he was shot in the hand and permanently disabled during a March 23, 1990, robbery at a Van Nuys store, contends that Home Depot has a policy forbidding security couriers from unholstering their weapons while inside a store. Couriers otherwise draw their guns and hold them at their sides while making money deliveries or pickups in what they perceive to be dangerous situations.

Home Depot won a dismissal of the lawsuit this year on the grounds that Alaimo had accepted the risk of being shot when he took the guard job, but Alaimo is appealing.

In a grim coincidence, Alaimo’s Sectran Security Transportation partner on the day he was shot was Edwin Maldonado, the guard who was killed Monday. As Maldonado stepped out of the office of a Home Depot at 12960 Foothill Blvd., he was shot in the head and upper torso and two robbers took the bag of money he was carrying.

Maldonado’s weapon was still holstered when he was shot and his sister said he had previously expressed concerns over what he said was Home Depot’s policy of discouraging couriers from holding their guns while making route stops.

Home Depot officials declined to comment on the case or discuss the chain’s security policies, but a spokesman said it is unlikely any weapons policy would have prevented Maldonado’s death.

“What happened would have happened no matter what policies we have,” said Jim Tattersall, West Coast director of loss prevention for Home Depot. “It was one of those unforeseen things. No matter what anybody did, these criminals would have taken the avenues they did.”

San Fernando Police Lt. Ernie Halcon agreed, saying: “I feel very strongly that if this young man had a gun in his hand we would still have had a dead guard on our hands. I don’t see any policy or procedure that was at fault here.”

Sectran officials declined to discuss the shootings of Maldonado and Alaimo or the security policies of Home Depot.

Investigators said Tuesday they had not identified any suspects in the case and were studying other recent armored car robberies, including the robbery in which Alaimo was shot, for similarities and possible suspects.

“We are looking at a whole bunch of them,” said Halcon, whose department is being aided in the investigation by Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives.

In Alaimo’s lawsuit filed in 1990 in Van Nuys Superior Court, he alleged that Home Depot’s security policies were negligent because they left couriers at the mercy of a waiting gunman by preventing them from walking with their weapons out as a deterrent and forcing them to walk through crowded sections of the stores to get to offices in the rear of the buildings where money pickups or deliveries are made.

“Home Depot is displaying a callous disregard for safety,” said Nicholas A. Micelli, an attorney who represents Alaimo. “The armed security guard must parade through this gauntlet and at no time can he even place his hand on his weapon. Why be an armed guard if you can’t defend yourself? It is a sad joke and someone has died because of it.”

The suit seeks unspecified damages for loss of income. Alaimo, 44, of Burbank, has been on medical leave from his Sectran job since being shot.

According to Micelli, Home Depot won a summary judgment dismissing the suit after arguing that Alaimo assumed the risk of being shot when he accepted the job as an armed courier. But Alaimo is appealing, claiming that negligent security policies outweigh the “assumed risk” of his job.

Alaimo said in an interview that he might have been able to avoid being shot if he had been able to carry his weapon. He was shot as he turned to look at a man he had noticed following him. He said he raised his right hand to block a shot at his head and the bullet passed through his hand and thumb. He said he has lost 95% of the use of his right hand and will not be able to work as a courier again.

“If I had my gun out, the robber would have had second thoughts,” Alaimo said. “I have been saying from the beginning, ‘What’s it going to take, someone getting killed?’ Now, that has happened. It’s a shame it has come to this.”

Peter J. Zomber, an attorney defending Home Depot in the Alaimo suit, did not return a call for comment.