Mall Merchants Fear for Safety : They Say Shooting Death of Arcade Worker Underscores Lax Security at Del Amo Fashion Center

Del Amo Fashion Center merchants are scared.

Sunday morning, one of their own was shot to death--possibly by a robber hiding in a service hallway--as he prepared to open the Torrance mall’s popular video arcade.

The most frightening thing about Michael Ellis’ death, the shopkeepers say, is that it could easily happen again.

The mall’s back halls and service entries are so deserted that at times, “you could scream and yell and fight and no one would hear you, no one would know,” said Lana Hung, who owns the Teriyaki House next door to Aladdin’s Arcade, where Ellis died.

“You have to be careful all the time here,” she said. “When a security guard quits, they don’t replace him . . . Some of my friends who have businesses in other places, they think the mall is more safe. I don’t think so.”

Officials with The Torrance Company, which operates the huge mall, declined to comment on whether new security measures are planned in response to the shooting. Even if such plans are being made, a secretary said, the mall would not publicize the fact for fear of decreasing the new security’s effectiveness.

Ellis was the second Del Amo worker killed at the mall in just over two years. Donald Hernandez, 19-year-old movie usher and newlywed, was shot to death in a January, 1991, robbery at one of the mall’s two theater complexes.

Merchants in the stores surrounding the arcade where Ellis died have plenty of ideas for making the mall safer, but they complain that management has not asked.

“It’s a few guys spread out all over this place wearing security uniforms, but when there’s trouble, they’re never here. Never,” complained one shop owner, who did not want his name or business identified for fear he would become a crime target. “Yes, we’re frustrated, but what can we do?”

He suggested that the mall should install a video security system with motion-sensitive cameras in the service corridors to monitor people as they walk through the halls.

Other merchants said security could be improved by providing more officers with better training, and by making sure that service doors remain locked at all times.

“The security here is really lax,” said Angela Travis, manager of the General Nutrition Center, three doors down from the arcade. “At Christmastime they put all their effort into making sure employees don’t park at the mall . . . and they do a really good job of that. I wish they would put that kind of effort into making things safer around here.”

Travis said her employees are more frightened than ever since Ellis was shot.

Torrance police believe Ellis was confronted by a robber in the arcade’s back office shortly after his mother, Sandra Kay Cutting, dropped him off at 9 a.m. to prepare the arcade for business.

Other employees found his body about 10:45 a.m., police said. But Cutting, who was scheduled to pick up her son from work at 6:45 p.m., said no one from the arcade, the mall or the police department notified her about the shooting.

About 3 p.m., Ellis’ former girlfriend called the family’s Long Beach house to say that “something was wrong at the arcade,” said Cutting, who tried unsuccessfully to call the business and eventually decided to drive to the mall with her youngest son, 17-year-old Jeffrey, to check on Ellis.

Cutting said she waited in her car while Jeffrey went inside. Within minutes, he returned to the car with a Torrance detective and blurted to his mother: “They shot him. He’s dead. He’s dead.”

On Wednesday, family and friends who had gathered in the Cutting’s small living room described Ellis as a gentle youth with simple dreams and pleasures.

“He was a funny guy and he liked sports a lot, especially the Lakers and the Dodgers,” said Ellis’ second brother, Mark, 18. “He’d been working at the arcade . . . almost two years and he liked it. It was a kick-back job, just dealing with people and helping them have a good time.”

Ellis was trying to save money to return to Long Beach City College, from which he had dropped out in 1991, so that he eventually could complete a business degree at a four-year university.

When a cousin’s boyfriend died in a Northern California accident two months ago, he told his mother he wanted to quit his job to go north and help her through the trauma.

Cutting talked him out of it.

“He was very sensitive and took everything to heart . . . and he knew she was hurting,” Cutting said. “I should have let him quit when he wanted to. He’d be alive now if I had.”