Store Owner Failed to Heed Own Advice

Don’t ever put up a fight if you’re robbed, Jose Palmas would advise workers at the two markets he owned in South-Central Los Angeles. Just give the robbers want they want.

Tragically, Palmas didn’t listen to his own advice.

After the market he owned at Adams Boulevard and Hooper Avenue was robbed Tuesday afternoon, Palmas set out to confront the robbers, bringing a handgun with him. But the father of seven was fatally wounded without getting off a shot.

Palmas came to the United States in the early 1970s from the Mexican state of Jalisco. In a city where tensions between blacks and Latinos are common, there was universal sorrow Wednesday on the racially mixed block of Adams where he was shot.

“I know if I didn’t have any money he would say, ‘That’s all right. You’re hungry? Then get something to eat,’ ” recalled Johnny Tousand, 34, a neighborhood resident.

“He was always helping people out. When they told me he was killed yesterday, I was devastated. The lady that told me, she was crying.”

On the porch of their yellow stucco home next to the Adams market, Palmas’ 18-year-old daughter, Lisette, somewhat dazed, quietly replayed what had happened.

Palmas had been working at his other market at Central Avenue and 27th Street when he got a phone call: Robbers had hit the Adams store. He and his oldest son, 15-year-old Jose Manuel, rushed over.

There, Lisette said, “My brother told me that my dad . . . asked some guy if he had seen some men running from the store. That guy just pulled out a gun and shot my dad in the chest.”

Jose Manuel told his sister that he quickly shot the man who had shot his father. He then started chasing two other suspects.

The mortally wounded Palmas managed to get out of the car and scream to his son to take him to the hospital. Police intervened and rushed him to County-USC Medical Center, where he died shortly afterward.

Police said the wounded suspect was later arrested at a hospital; the other two suspects remained at large.

Palmas’ daughter Blanca, 11, her eyes puffy and red from so many tears, said, “He was a great dad. But he was more then a dad; he was my friend.

“He would take me with him to the park, and to his friend’s house who had a swimming pool.”

As Blanca spoke, her youngest sister, 4-year-old Maite, came wheeling by on a tricycle, wearing a green dress with a large sunflower. She jumped off and went inside the market, which was closed to the public Wednesday, emerged a few minutes later with two plums and silently offered them to visitors.

“I don’t think she knows what happened,” said Blanca.

In fact, she did.

“The cholos. They killed my papa,” the large-eyed girl said later.

Jose Garcia, 40, who had worked with Palmas at the Carniceria Las Palmas since 1984, remembered his boss’ advice, now seeming ironic.

“He always told us if something happens, like a robbery, just let it go, don’t say anything,” said Garcia, adding that it was the first time either of Palmas’ markets had been robbed.

In this tough neighborhood, where police say there is a different gang every few blocks, residents had the same opinion of Palmas: He was a good man.

“I get to know a lot of people on the job,” said LAPD Officer Dino Espinoza, who has worked the neighborhood around Adams and Hooper for six years. “But I tell you, he stood out.”

Espinoza recalled a recent community cleanup event, at which 100 people helped paint over graffiti and pick up trash. When the officer told Palmas that organizers were running out of food for the larger-than-expected crew, Palmas provided the rest.

With the Carniceria Las Palmas closed Wednesday, Charles Christopher, 63, was forced to go to a store a block away on Hooper.

“He was a wonderful person,” Christopher said. “He’d see me and tease me and I’d tease him back, saying stuff like ‘I gonna have you shipped back to Mexico.’ He was my friend. But I just don’t understand why he chased after those robbers. That’s the police’s job.”