Attempt to Protect Store Proves Fatal : Violence: Robbers shoot the owner of an electronics shop near the disturbance as he tries to remove merchandise. He had been a looting victim in the spring unrest.

A 33-year-old black businessman was slain during a robbery Monday night as he tried to remove high-priced electronics from his Manchester Avenue store, hoping to escape the looting he had suffered during the riots in April.

Employees had tried to persuade Raul Calvin Delcomber to stay away from the store, about one mile south of the intersection of Florence and Normandie avenues where trouble erupted late Monday afternoon.

But Delcomber, who owned a small chain of stores selling pagers, cellular telephones and other electronics, was monitoring police and fire reports on his beloved scanners and was convinced he should act before the violence worsened.

“He called me on his car phone right as he pulled up to the store at about 6:30, and said he wanted to get a few things out before it escalated into a riot,” said his fiancee, Bernita Lindsey, who manages Delcomber’s Inglewood store. “He was hoping to avoid the losses he suffered in the riots.”

Police say Delcomber was shot and killed in front of the strip mall storefront about 6:40 p.m. by one of four robbers who then fled with merchandise. There have been no arrests in the case, but there is a witness to the shooting, said Los Angeles police homicide Detective John Zambos.

Delcomber, who was an Explorer Scout and worked as a private ambulance driver after graduating from Inglewood High School in 1978, had received commendations from the Los Angeles city and county fire departments and from Sheriff Sherman Block for several rescues that were made as a result of his constant monitoring of police and fire scanners.

His friend, LaNessa Jones, described him as “a low-key, slacks-and-polo-shirt kind of guy, hair always groomed, a wholesome All-American type.” Delcomber told her after the April riots “he was hurt that most of the black businesses around him were untouched but he had gotten looted.”

Delcomber opened his first store on Manchester Boulevard in 1985 after discovering there was a growing demand for electronic beepers, friends and relatives said. His first purchase of five beepers quickly grew into Delcombers Communications, and in 1988 he opened the Inglewood store on Crenshaw Boulevard, and then a third store on Pacific Coast Highway in Lomita two years later.

“I would say he supplied between 25% and 50% of all the beepers in South Los Angeles,” said a friend, Los Angeles County Fire Inspector Brian Jordan. “His company supplied beepers to the executive board of the L.A. County Firefighters Union, and he knew a lot of people.”

Even after he became successful in business, employing 18 people at his three stores, Delcomber would always have at least three scanners operating, whether he was at work or at home, and would often visit disaster scenes, his fiancee said.

“We’d be going to dinner, listening to the scanner and end up going out on a call,” Lindsey said.

His eldest brother, Larry Williams, said Raul, the youngest of four boys, became hooked on electronics gear and fire rescue work as a youngster, getting his first CB radio at age 12 and spending hours after school at a Firestone Boulevard fire station. The youngster never missed the evening television news, his brother said.

“When our mother passed away, he was just 13 and after that he got real involved with it,” said Williams, who co-owned the Willowbrook house where Delcomber lived. “I think it helped him escape the grief.”

Delcomber became passionate about his hobby, recalled his father, Herbert McKinley, keeping CB radios and fire scanners on all night. As a teen-age Explorer Scout, he logged hundreds of volunteer hours at local fire stations.

His Scout training paid off during the July 4, 1979, rescue of a woman from a burning house. Delcomber is credited with saving the woman’s life, according to a commendation letter from Los Angeles County fire officials. It hangs with several others in the hallway of his Inglewood store.

In April, 1982, while working as a driver for the Goodhew Ambulance Co., Delcomber drove to an intersection in the unincorporated county area of Willowbrook after hearing on his scanner that a driver had swerved onto a sidewalk filled with children walking to school.

Delcomber administered CPR to a child pinned beneath the car until paramedics arrived, according to a letter of thanks from Block.

A letter from Los Angeles fire officials describes how two years later Delcomber assisted city firefighters with the rescue of three people from a burning house on East Century Boulevard.

“We were proud of him and he was still progressing,” said his brother, Larry Williams. “He wanted to open even more stores.”