Warehouse Store Manager Fatally Shot in Robbery Try

A popular manager of a warehouse store was shot point-blank in the head before dozens of terrified shoppers who ducked for cover during an attempted robbery just before noon Thursday. He died of his wounds hours later in a local hospital.

Scott H. Wilson, 30, a customer service manager at the HomeBase store in Santa Ana, had just finished making change for a $50 bill when someone lunged toward him, shouted and fired a shot at Wilson’s right temple, police said.

Wilson was taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange, where he died about 5 p.m., police said.

Police were searching for the gunman, whom one witness described as a young man with two nose rings and a right cheek pierced with four silver studs.

The shooting at the store, at 17th and Bristol streets, occurred at 11:35 a.m. as about two dozen customers were shopping at a relocation sale.

The soon-to-close HomeBase is scheduled to be razed so the Santa Ana Unified School District can build the state’s first “space saver” school, a 100,000-square-foot building designed to occupy a smaller-than-usual area in an existing development.

A 48-year-old woman who described herself as a regular patron of the store said she had been watching a man in his early 20s and sporting nose rings for about half an hour before the shooting.

“I’m looking at this guy and he has no cart, nothing in his hands, and I’m wondering, ‘Is he casing the joint?’ ” said the woman.

She said she had borrowed a dime from Wilson to buy a drink shortly before the shooting. She drank her beverage while Wilson was at a cash register, munching on a sandwich and potato chips.

A few moments later, she said, she heard a bang and thought someone had dropped something in the store, but quickly concluded it had been a gunshot.

The woman said the gunman looked her in the eye, dropped the still-smoking gun to his side, and ran out the door empty-handed.

“I was so close to him I could have touched him,” she said. “People were screaming. They didn’t know what had happened, it all happened so fast.”

Santa Ana Police Sgt. Bob Clark said the gunman attacked Wilson while the manager was returning with $50 in change for a customer.

Wilson went to the safe in the front of the store and as he was walking back to a cashier, the gunman attacked, yelling something incomprehensible before shooting Wilson in the head, Clark said.

“It is our belief that the suspect was trying to rob the victim or the store of the money,” Clark said. “There is no indication that the suspect knew the victim.”

Police described the gunman as white, from 5-foot-5 to 5-foot-9. He was wearing light clothing and a black baseball cap.

The man fled the store in a white Toyota van, and police sought to track the vehicle to a Garden Grove address based on a license plate number jotted down at the shopping center, Clark said. By late afternoon, after surrounding the house for several hours, officers concluded they had the wrong address.

A HomeBase spokeswoman said Wilson had been hired three years ago, on his 27th birthday, and had been transferred to the Santa Ana store three months ago, where he was promoted to customer service manager.

“The team members around here have really strong feelings for Scott,” said Marie Kroesen, public relations manager for HomeBase.

HomeBase brought in a counseling team to offer help to the employees and customers who were in the store at the time of the shooting.

Also contributing to this report was Times staff writer Mark Platte.