Shields’ Counterpunch Delivered in Form of Bullets : Crime: Former top-ranked welterweight boxer reflects on his gunfight with robbers at North Hollywood restaurant.

Screenwriter Randy Shields twirled the pen in his hand, thoughts racing through his head. He needed more drama in the script. A bit of danger. He needed something . . .

Outside, the air hung heavily in the night and mist began to creep across the quiet streets as midnight came and went. Sharply then, the door to the restaurant crashed open and two men lurched in, guns drawn and faces taut with their twisted intentions. A shotgun blast roared through the room. The two men spoke of death.

But wait. That was no script!

That was two men with guns. And they actually were bursting into a restaurant, into the restaurant on Laurel Canyon Boulevard in North Hollywood where Shields, a boxer-turned-writer, was pen-twirling over a script into the early morning hours Saturday.

Shields needed this kind of interruption like he needed a hole in the head, which is what he came very close to getting.

Instead, Shields, a top-ranked welterweight during the 1970s who fought Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns, emerged as a hero. He took a bullet in the leg and then returned the fire with his own gun, wounding the two gunmen, who were arrested 30 minutes after the wild shootout.

Shields, 36, of North Hollywood, works as a bodyguard in addition to pursuing a screenwriting career. He is licensed to carry a gun, but in the four years he has carried his 9-millimeter semiautomatic he has never used it. That changed in a few stunning seconds at 12:30 a.m. Saturday when the quiet of the Four ‘n 20 restaurant was snapped by the two armed robbers.

Shields and others in the restaurant said the first man through the door pulled the trigger on a shotgun within seconds after entering, blowing out a section of the ceiling and sending most of the 20 customers and 10 employees into a screaming panic.

At the first shot, Shields said, he hit the floor and began crawling toward an unused back room in the restaurant. The second gunman saw Shields and fired several shots at him, one bullet ripping into the back of his left leg. Despite the pain, Shields made it into the dark room and crawled under a table.

The gunman, carrying what police said was a .22 revolver, came after him.

“I just stayed quiet and let him come right by me,” Shields said. “The room was dark and he couldn’t find the light switch and I didn’t move a muscle. Maybe he thought I’d gone out a back door.”

The gunman returned to the main dining area and he and his accomplice fired several more shots, shattering windows and further terrorizing the customers and workers. One of the gunmen ordered a busboy to open the cash register. When the man said he didn’t know how, the gunman fired a shot at the busboy. Amazingly, the bullet passed through the man’s shoe without hitting his foot.

A customer was ordered to the register but he also was unable to open it. And then the gunmen, their robbery plans fading, turned even more violent.

“The taller guy, the one with the shotgun, starts screaming, ‘I’m going to kill somebody. Somebody is going to die tonight,’ ” Shields said. “That’s when I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. Some of the customers and employees were my friends. I thought in the next few seconds my friends were going to die.”

Shields, who had removed his gun from its holster after the pursuing gunman had failed to find him in the darkened room, erupted. He rolled to his feet and came up running and shooting, headed toward the two gunmen in a lightning attack. The robbers turned and fled, although not before sending a series of shots in Shields’ direction. Both men were hit by Shields’ bullets, but neither fell.

Shields continued his pursuit into the parking lot, where the men were climbing into a getaway car driven by a brother of one of them, police said. Shields unloaded two more rounds, emptying his weapon. As he darted back into the restaurant, the attackers’ return fire whistled over his head.

“I had always heard that story about hearing bullets go over your head,” Shields said. “I never believed you could actually hear them.

“You can.”

As the suspects fled in the car, they pumped several more bullets through the front of the restaurant, shattering more glass as customers shrieked in horror.

And then, perhaps two minutes after it had started, the nightmare was over.

“So fast,” Shields said. “It all happened in a few seconds, it seemed. When I heard the first shot I was on the ground and heading for that back room in a half-second. All I wanted to do was get myself in position to fight back. Finally, when they talked about people dying, I just came up shooting. There was no more time.”

Three men were arrested 30 minutes after the shooting. Two had bullet wounds. They were inside a car that matched a description given by Shields and other customers in the restaurant. Terry Redd, 24, and Tyron Hill, 19, both of Compton, were arrested on suspicion of attempted robbery, although police said additional charges probably will be filed.

Redd was shot in the chest and back. Hill was shot in the right buttock. The driver of the car, Michael Redd, 23, was booked on the same charge.

After the shootout, the men called 911 and requested an ambulance. They told police they had been the victims of a drive-by shooting.

Police said the same trio was responsible for an armed robbery that netted $300 at a Marie Callender’s restaurant in Sherman Oaks two hours before the confrontation with Shields, and the robbery of a nearby video store just 30 minutes before the gunfight at the Four ‘n 20 restaurant.

“I think he did the right thing,” police Sgt. Robert Ontiveros said of Shields. “They kept saying they were going to kill somebody if they didn’t get any money. I think other peoples’ lives didn’t mean anything to them.”

Paramedics removed the bullet from Shields’ leg at the scene and he walked to his car and drove home. By midweek he was walking with only a slight limp, teaching a boxing and self defense class to women at a Woodland Hills health club and also trying to make progress on the screenplay.

“That’s been hard,” Shields said. “I’ve been in a fog. I can’t write for any length of time.”

That and the sore leg, he said, are the only reminders of his horrific night. Although, as he sat at night in an ice cream shop on Ventura Boulevard five days after the ordeal and talked about it, he kept the handgun close and admitted that now he looks more carefully, nervously, at people.

“But honestly, I’ve slept like a baby,” he said. “The whole thing never scared me. I stayed as calm as could be. I always wondered what it would be like the day I was forced to use my gun.”

His reaction to the situation was the result, he said, of a lifetime of preparation, from a young child with a father who demanded he learn to take care of himself through a long pro boxing career and numerous bloody fights.

Shields, who retired from boxing 10 years ago with a 40-8 record and made a one-bout comeback in 1990--he suffered a broken jaw in losing a 10-round decision--said his reaction came naturally.

“When I was three years old living in Washington, D.C., I fell into a snowbank one winter,” he recalled. “I was crying, crying for someone to get me out. And my father stood over me and said, ‘Get up.’ And I cried and said I couldn’t, that I was stuck. And my father said, ‘ Get up .’

“After a while, I got up. By myself. I remember it very vividly. That’s how my life went. I was taught to pick myself up. To defend myself.”

When the bullet slammed into the back of his leg as he crawled along the carpet in the restaurant, the same feeling swept over him.

“I knew I had to take care of myself,” he said. “And at that moment, it felt just like boxing. My career was one of a puncher. When someone would tag me and hurt me, I’d put my head down and start throwing nonstop punches at him.

“When I got hit by the bullet and saw all the blood, I felt the same way. These guys had just hit me. Now I had to hit back. The only difference was, we had guns.”