Possible Suspect in Laguna Store Killing Is Held

A possible suspect in the killing of an owner of a Baskin-Robbins store in Laguna Beach was expected to be flown to Orange County by today after a television show led to his arrest in Oregon.

Manuel Ramirez Rodriguez, 25, of Corona was arrested without incident Sunday in the small town of Chiloquin, on a warrant stemming from a Tustin robbery the same night as the Laguna Beach slaying.

Simindokht Roshdieh, 53, was killed Feb. 20, and her 63-year-old husband, Firooz, was wounded in what police said was a botched robbery at the couple’s ice cream store on Main Street. The Roshdiehs were closing their store after 9:30 p.m. when the gunman demanded money and opened fire.

Laguna Beach police said they believed the slaying, the town’s first in 27 years, had culminated a spree of robberies. But they declined to talk about the arrest.

“The investigation is at a very, very critical state right now,” Laguna Beach Police Chief Neil J. Purcell Jr. said Tuesday. “I just cannot discuss any aspects of it at this point.”

Lt. Frank Semelsberger of the Tustin Police Department said that “as a result of publicity generated by the series of armed robberies, an informant came forward and identified this person.”

The same gunman also was wanted in connection with armed robberies earlier the same day at an ice cream store in Tustin and at a flower shop and music store, both in Costa Mesa. Police say he also may be a suspect in robberies in Los Angeles County.

Sgt. David Sellers of the Klamath County sheriff’s office said that in Oregon, Rodriguez had met a woman in a restaurant or a bar and started a conversation, later giving her his telephone number. On March 18, the woman recognized him on “America’s Most Wanted” and called the show from Portland, giving a description of the man she had met in the bar and his phone number, authorities said.

After some initial uncertainty, police traced the number to the mother of Rodriguez’s girlfriend in the small town about 26 miles north of the city of Klamath Falls.

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“I don’t believe the people living there had any idea that he was wanted or why,” Sellers said.

Nor did Klamath County deputies realize Rodriguez had been linked to the Laguna Beach slaying. Their arrest warrant actually came from Tustin, where witnesses to that Baskin-Robbins holdup had picked Rodriguez out of a photo lineup, Semelsberger said. Until the television show aired, Tustin police didn’t know where Rodriguez was.

But Laguna police did not have sufficient evidence to name Rodriguez in their own arrest warrant.

Armed with the Tustin warrant, Klamath County Deputy Greg Woodworth was patrolling Sunday when he saw Rodriguez, whom he knew only as a robbery suspect, in front of the girlfriend’s residence. He called Sellers, who was off duty.

“Had we known that he was a real bad guy, I think we would have done things differently,” Sellers said, jokingly.

With another deputy and a state policeman, Sellers and Woodworth went to the house at noon and “caught the guy flat-footed,” Sellers said. They “caught him going into the back door.”

Rodriguez was not armed and surrendered without any kind of fight, dressed in jeans, tennis shoes and a T-shirt.

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“Big? No,” Sellers said. “I would describe him more as a boy rather than a man. But he had gang tattoos all over his arms and neck.”

The suspect in the Tustin robbery had been described as a Latino male 19 to 23 years old, with bushy eyebrows and distinctive tattoos that include a teardrop under an eye and English-style script on his neck.

Deputies also found a reddish or maroon Camaro in the garage, the car Southern California authorities were looking for, Sellers said.

In addition to the robbery warrant from Tustin, Rodriguez was held on a parole violation issued in California. At a court appearance Tuesday in Klamath County Circuit Court, Rodriguez waived his right to an extradition hearing, a sheriff’s spokesman said.

Police say there also might be a connection between the Orange County robberies and three holdups in Los Angeles County.

Police said a man with a steel handgun held up stores in Redondo Beach on Jan. 24, and two other Conroy’s stores in Redondo Beach and Hawthorne were hit in similar robberies 17 minutes apart Feb. 7.

Laguna Beach Lt. Danell M. Adams said there was “a striking resemblance” between a surveillance camera photo taken during one of the Los Angeles County robberies and a photo taken Feb. 20 at the Tustin ice cream store.

A spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections said that Rodriguez was convicted of second-degree robbery in 1991, and paroled on that offense on Sept. 2, 1993. His parole was revoked on Dec. 27, 1993, for possession of heroin and a firearm, according to Regina Stephens. A year later, he was released on parole again, but on Jan. 26, 1995, a warrant was issued for his arrest, because his parole officer could not locate him.

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Rodriguez is expected to appear in a lineup this afternoon in front of two witnesses who may have seen him at the Laguna Beach Baskin-Robbins store, according to a source close to the investigation.

Family members of the Roshdiehs voiced relief at news of the arrest.

“I just hope he is off the streets because I don’t want it to happen to somebody else,” said Nilo Roshdieh, their daughter. Early Tuesday evening, Nilo, 28, said police hadn’t notified the family of the arrest.

Roshdieh said her father, who had been shot in the chest during the bungled burglary, was still recovering at his Aliso Viejo home and still needing pain medication. She said physicians have told him that it will be another couple of months before they can assess the extent of nerve damage he suffered.

Roshdieh said her brother, Nick, 24, is now operating the Baskin-Robbins in Laguna and she sometimes helps.