3 Killers Sought in 5 Execution-Style Slayings in Tulare : Crime: Robbers wearing hoods ambush a bar on the edge of town. Police and regulars are shocked and describe the saloon as a quiet place.

Authorities searched Wednesday for three robbers who shot and killed five people execution-style at a bar on the edge of town.

The robbers, wearing hoods or ski masks and armed with sawed-off shotguns, killed three women and two men inside Pato’s Place, on the outskirts of this city of 40,000, Police Lt. Bob Gowin said. The bar’s owner, Guadalupe Cantu, 43, was hospitalized in stable condition with a chest wound near the shoulder.

Gowin said it appeared that the muzzles were placed against the heads of each victim--except Cantu--before the guns were fired. Cantu was shot from several feet away while emptying the till and lay on the floor pretending to be dead until the shooting stopped, the lieutenant said.

Friends and families clustered across the street from the stucco, Spanish-style bar until the five bodies, wrapped in blankets, were wheeled out on gurneys at mid-morning. Several women clutched one another and sobbed.

“I can’t believe this happened,” a woman who would identify herself only as Sylvia said as she hugged another woman. “My brother used to come here.”

Gowin said police had no record of problems at Pato’s Place.

Maria Magallanez had been playing pool with her boyfriend but left before the shootings to take some medication to her sister. By the time she returned, police had cordoned off the bar.

“They were friends of mine,” Magallanez said. “I’ve been coming here for six weeks. There’s been no fights, no nothing. It’s been real quiet. Everybody knows everybody.”

The owner’s former brother-in-law, Everett Robles, said Cantu had run a quiet bar since he bought it three years ago.

“He’s a really friendly guy, maintains a real friendship inside there,” Robles said. “Some people come in and out over and over every week.”

Usually, Cantu closed by 9 or 10 on weeknights because his last customers were ready to go home then, Robles said. However, the bar had sponsored a pool tournament that lasted until after 10 Tuesday, Gowin said. Pool players who left before the shootings were being contacted to find out if they saw anything or anyone unusual.

There were distinct similarities and differences between the Pato’s Place killings and the slayings of seven people at Carrillo’s Bar two years ago in Fresno 45 miles to the north.

Each is a small, stucco, Spanish-style structure nestled next to farms at the edge of its Central California city. Each offered dancing to live entertainment for primarily Latino patrons.

But Cantu limited dancing to weekends, moving pool tables onto the dance floor during the week, Robles said.

And the bars had much different reputations. Unlike the quiet atmosphere people described at Pato’s Place, neighbors of Carrillo’s Club complained after the May 16, 1993, killings that patrons often were drunk and rowdy.

Gowin said he has no indication that there is any connection between the cases. In each city, the killings are the most homicides in a single incident.

He described the suspects in the Pato’s killings as three men, one 6 feet tall and the others shorter.