Suspects in Cop Killing May Be Tied to Holdups : Crime: Authorities are investigating whether the trio accused of slaying an off-duty Glendora police officer might have committed at least 15 grocery store robberies.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials are investigating whether the suspected killers of a Glendora police officer may also have been responsible for a string of recent grocery store holdups across the San Gabriel Valley, authorities said Sunday.

After at least 15 holdups during the last two months--in which victims described similar suspects and brutal tactics--law enforcement officials had been planning to stake out a few local markets Saturday night, hoping to catch the robbers. But the evening before the undercover operation, off-duty Agent Louis A. Pompei was fatally shot as he tried to stop a holdup at a Vons market in San Dimas.

“They’re looking at a series of market robberies that appear to be similar in nature. They believe the same group of suspects have been committing them,” said Lt. Frank Merriman, who is leading the murder investigation.

The San Dimas Vons, however, was not among the stores where stakeouts were planned, he said.

A narcotics investigator the last three years, Pompei was standing in a checkout line about 8:30 p.m. when an armed youth attempted a robbery, ordering a bag boy to the floor, according to sheriff’s officials. When the suspect began pistol-whipping the bag boy for moving too slowly, Pompei drew his own gun, they said, and ordered the suspect and a companion to stop. A gunfight ensued, and Pompei was hit several times.

The two suspects in the store, wounded as well, were arrested after they sought treatment at Queen of the Valley Hospital in West Covina. Police also arrested the suspected getaway driver.

Pompei, the first Glendora police officer killed in the line of duty, died in emergency surgery.

On Sunday, Pompei’s brother said his family was making funeral arrangements and will bury him in Pennsylvania, where he grew up.

Prosecutors are expected to file murder and robbery charges against the suspects, Daniel Hernandez, 19, and two juveniles, today or Tuesday. Authorities will attempt to have the juveniles, 16 and 17, tried as adults, Merriman said.

Meanwhile, sheriff’s investigators and police in several San Gabriel Valley communities are trying to link the trio to the spate of market holdups from Pico Rivera to Hacienda Heights, he said.

On Sunday, two merchants victimized in the earlier robberies described events similar to the Vons holdup, saying the robbers ordered employees and customers to the floor and pistol-whipped clerks who were slow in handing over money.

At the Chia Market in Pico Rivera, robbers struck twice in May, entering the store on separate Tuesdays at 8 p.m.

In the first robbery, three Latino teen-agers, at least two of them armed, demanded money from a cashier, recalled Lucy Valenzuela, 23, a supervisor at the store.

“She [the cashier] was too nervous, and she couldn’t open the register,” said Valenzuela, who witnessed both robberies. “One of them whacked her on the head with his gun. She was trying to open the register, but she couldn’t. He hit her again, and that’s when she started bleeding.”

Valenzuela said she jumped in front of the cashier and told the robbers, “I’ll open it for you.” After taking the cash, the robbers fled, she said.

In the second holdup, Valenzuela said, she was counting money from several registers when the robbers came in and instructed her to put the cash in a bag. A box boy tried unsuccessfully to wrestle the gun away from him, she said.

“I don’t think they had bullets in their guns because they would have shot him right then and there,” she said.

“They’re so young,” she said of the robbers, who escaped with more than $700. “I was mad, but I wasn’t scared.”

About a mile away, two similar-looking young men robbed Super A Foods twice within the first two weeks of May, said Jon Toller, a 40-year-old night manager. Toller said that he was forced at gunpoint to open a cash register during the first holdup, and that one robber pistol-whipped another clerk during the second for not opening his register.

The robbers in that case, however, drove away in a new black Ford Mustang. The trio arrested for the Vons robbery drove a gray car, police said.

To honor Pompei, a competitive bodybuilder known to the police chief’s children as “Robocop,” Glendora residents have planned a candlelight vigil tonight outside the store where he was shot.

The Glendora Police Department, which is trying to cope with the first loss of an officer in its 84-year existence, has been overwhelmed with bouquets and sympathetic phone calls. Officers on patrol, according to one sergeant, say the streets were quiet. At the station house, the sobbing of one of Pompei’s could occasionally be heard.

In Pompei’s hometown of Mahanoy City, Pa., one of the slain officer’s brothers expressed rage at the suspects. “I believe that in America, it should be an eye for an eye,” said Carlo Pompei, 48.

“My last conversation with him was on Mother’s Day,” he said. “I said, ‘Today, people have no respect for their own flesh and blood, let alone a guy carrying a badge.’ ”

Carlo Pompei said his brother replied, “I love what I do. When I get up in the morning, I say my prayers to God. What happens, just happens.”