Suspect, 71, Shot Dead After O.C. Robbery

An elderly man who was beset by failing health and financial problems was shot and killed by police Monday after he reportedly robbed a bank and then brandished a gun at police outside his mobile home.

The man, identified by neighbors as Joseph Vincent Tittone, 71, was shot in his carport after officers tracked him from a Wells Fargo Bank that had just been robbed, police said.

According to neighbors, Tittone was in poor health, and his wife had suffered a stroke in June. Neighbors also said his rent check had bounced and he had called the manager Monday to ask if he could pay in cash.

Police said the robbery occurred just before 2 p.m. when a man handed a note to a teller at the bank in the 1000 block of Orangethorpe Avenue. Bank employees notified police within moments of the robbery, Anaheim Police Lt. Ted LaBahn said.

Police in two cruisers, along with a police helicopter, tracked the suspect’s car to the Del Este mobile home park off East Street, within blocks of the bank, LaBahn said.

Neighbors said police then surrounded Tittone’s green and black 1977 Cadillac as he drove into the carport next to his yellow and white mobile home.

Joe Sonoqui, a resident and former manager at the park, said he saw Tittone drive into the park “lickety-split,” followed by two police cars. Three officers got out with their guns drawn and gave Tittone a series of orders. But he looked straight ahead and did not appear to comply, Sonoqui said.

One officer approached Tittone’s car but suddenly jumped back, Sonoqui said. The officer got behind a police car door as the other officers got out and stood behind their doors, Sonoqui said.

The officers issued commands such as “keep your hands where we can see them,” he said.

“He obviously wasn’t complying. And their pitch got more intense, to a point where it’s excitable.”

Suddenly, the three officers “flinched in unison,” Sonoqui said, as though Tittone had done something, and Tittone was shot.

“I bet my life that they had reason to shoot him,” Sonoqui said. He said that he heard about 10 shots but that police later told him they recovered 17 shell casings.

Another resident said she heard the officers order the driver to exit the car and drop his gun, then heard a flurry of gunfire.

Both Sonoqui and another neighbor said Tittone’s wife had stepped out of her home to see what was going on.

Police would not confirm Tittone’s identification and offered few details about the shooting, citing an ongoing investigation. But LaBahn said the suspect had pointed a gun at the officers. He said Tittone never fired the gun, which was found at the scene.

At the park where neighbors said Tittone and his wife had lived about 15 years, Tittone was known for tending his yard and for his collection of bird feeders. Some residents said Tittone had been grappling with financial trouble since his wife’s stroke.

Next-door neighbor Beverly Rojas described Tittone as a giving man who volunteered to mow her lawn and kept a small plastic swimming pool in his backyard for Rojas’ 18-month-old granddaughter. Her daughter, Yvette Rojas, said Tittone was going to be her daughter’s godfather.

Yvette Rojas, 33, who said she has seen pictures of Tittone in his World War II uniform, said he was a decorated war hero. She described him as a “very classy gentleman” with a habit of bringing over covered dishes of his Italian cooking.

The Tittones, she said, were like “bread and butter” and had “taken care of me and my mother since we moved here.”

Yvette Rojas said that on Monday she had at first ignored the sirens outside because the trailer park is next to a freeway offramp, and the sound is not uncommon. Then she heard men yelling “get out of the car” and peeked around her home to see police with guns drawn.

The officers yelled at her to get into her house, she said.

“I ran back, and the last step I took, I heard boom! Boom! Boom!” She ran to her daughter’s room and got on the floor with the girl. All she heard then, she said, was “dead silence.”

Rojas said that Tittone and his wife were married in 1985 or ’86 and that his wife has four children by a previous marriage. The couple have a poodle named Teddy and three cats, she said.

Tittone loved Frank Sinatra and played his recordings loud on Saturday nights, she said.

Rojas and others in the neighborhood were trying to reconcile their impressions of the man with the events of Monday.

“What’s sad is that he made a mistake, and that’s all he’ll be remembered for,” said neighbor Dee Bertoli, 53.

An internal Anaheim police investigation of the shooting and a separate inquiry by the Orange County district attorney’s office are underway, officials said. Both are routine procedures after officer-involved shootings.

The incident was the second this year in Southern California in which a septuagenarian has made headlines in a crime involving a gun.

In May, a 71-year-old West Covina woman used a vintage gun during a botched holdup attempt at a gas station. Mary Ruth Blanco received three years’ probation for the attempted armed robbery, which she initially said was spurred by Internal Revenue Service threats to foreclose on her home for unpaid taxes. Later, Blanco attributed her crime to an allergic reaction to the medication Prozac.

Blanco could have faced a minimum four years in prison for the holdup, but a plea bargain reduced the charges she faced. Prosecutors cited Blanco’s age, poor health and lack of a criminal record as factors in the plea bargain.