Slain Shop Owner’s Son Awaits Justice Amid Grief

Nick Roshdieh’s anger is a bulging presence, almost like the 20 pounds of muscle he’s put on since his mother’s slaying.

Weightlifting has helped him cope. He finds solace in his religion, Islam. But when he speaks of the man he believes shot his mother to death and seriously wounded his father 11 months ago, his right leg bounces in agitation and his brown eyes darken.

Roshdieh, 25, sat at a tiny, round table Tuesday in the Baskin-Robbins ice cream store where the shootings occurred in what police say was a botched robbery and described his family’s nightmare.

Four days earlier, prosecutors had dropped robbery charges against Manuel Ramirez Rodriguez in connection with a robbery at a Baskin-Robbins store in Tustin that occurred just before the shooting here. Laguna Beach police, who have never filed charges in the Roshdieh slaying, say Rodriguez is still their prime suspect.

Rodriguez remains in custody pending a transfer to Riverside County, where he faces unrelated robbery and parole violation charges, police said.

For Roshdieh, who says he cannot blot out the memory of his mother lying in a pool of blood, the anger lives on.

Describing his mother--”an angel,” he calls her--Roshdieh’s tone softens and, for a moment, his grief outweighs his fury.

“Every day when I wake up, it’s right here,” he said, placing a stiff palm an inch from his nose. “The look in my mom’s face when they took her away. It’s very hard to deal with.”

It was 9:30 p.m. Feb. 20 when a tattooed gunman entered Simindokht and Firooz Roshdieh’s store. Since then, Roshdieh has taken control of the family business and become the main support of his tight-knit family. He also has increased his weightlifting to twice a day, boosting his muscular frame from 210 to 230 pounds.

His frail-looking, 64-year-old father, who before the slaying worked seven days a week with his wife, now visits her grave daily. His right hand was paralyzed by the shooting, Nick Roshdieh said. Nick Roshdieh and his sister, Nilo, both of whom considered their mother their best friend, also go often to the Lake Forest burial ground.

“That’s our home away from home now,” Nick Roshdieh said.

Having stuck close together through the hellish past year, family members were jarred by the recent news that charges in the Tustin robbery had been dropped.

“But good things come to people who wait,” Nick Roshdieh said. “And what goes around comes around. I’ll let Manuel deal with his conscience for now. . . . His time will come.”

Although he sympathizes with the Roshdieh family’s anguish, Rodriguez’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Ronald Klar, said Tuesday that he considers it “irresponsible” for Laguna Beach police to continue to name his client as their main suspect.

Klar said Rodriguez passed a polygraph test and has an alibi that puts him 750 miles away in Oregon at the time of the shooting.

Klar said at least 15 people can place Rodriguez in the small town of Chiloquin, Ore., that day.

Rodriguez’s family members said authorities hurried to judge him because of his criminal record and background. Police said Rodriguez is a former Santa Ana gang member.

Initially, much of the investigation hinged on a surveillance videotape that showed a gunman pointing a weapon at a clerk in the Tustin ice cream store.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Chris Evans said last week that, after scrutinizing the video, investigators had too many questions about the gunman’s identity at the Tustin heist to pursue charges.

Laguna Beach police, however, believe two people might have been involved in the crimes. Firooz Roshdieh quickly picked Rodriguez out of a lineup, police said.

“We feel very confident we have the right suspect,” Laguna Beach Police Chief Neil J. Purcell Jr. said Tuesday. “And it’s just going to take some time to be able to prove that.”

The community pulled together and donated about $5,000 to the family, Nick Roshdieh said.

Volunteers also worked shifts to reopen the ice cream store.

But now that job has fallen largely to Nick Roshdieh, who works about five hours a day at the store while carrying 15 units at Saddleback College and Cal State San Marcos.

He is determined to finish college, which was his mother’s dream for him, and begin a career in finance, Roshdieh said.

Nick Roshdieh said two things have helped sustain him: his religious beliefs and his anger.

When he is not working, studying or lifting weights, Nick Roshdieh said he plays pool or hangs out with friends. But he can’t seem to “enjoy anything to the fullest” since the shootings.

“There’s a sense of emptiness, you know. Every day I wake up . . . to a gloomy day,” he said. “It’s hard to pull yourself through that. But I take it one day at a time, with the grace of God. That’s really all you can do.”