Holdup Victim’s Grandson, 12, Kills One of Two Robbers

Police are searching for a robber whose accomplice was shot to death by a 12-year-old boy defending his grandmother in the Compton store she runs.

The two robbers entered the 99 Cents Plus store at 745 E. Compton Blvd. about noon Sunday. One held a gun to the head of the 62-year-old manager as her grandson watched, Compton Police Lt. Danny Sneed said.

An 18-year-old employee emerged from the back of the store and knocked the gun from the man’s hand, Sneed said. The second robber then began beating the woman, Sneed said.

The grandson, who had grabbed a handgun kept in the store, fired several shots at the attacker.

The robber, identified by his family as Dennis Smith, 16, of Compton, was taken to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, where he died.

According to Sneed, Smith had an arrest record that included two previous robberies. His accomplice, described as being in his middle to late teens, is at large, police said.

The 12-year-old was released to the custody of his grandmother, Sneed said. Police withheld their names. He will not be charged in the shooting “because he was saving the life of his grandmother,” Sneed said.

Store owners in neighboring shops said the woman had been robbed at least twice in the six months that she has worked at the store, which is owned by her son. She was beaten in the first robbery, said Juan Zamora, owner of a boutique a few doors down.

“She [spent] one week in bed,” he said. “She was traumatized.”

Zamora said the woman also lost a daughter and a grandson in a plane crash last year in Mexico.

Friends and relatives of the slain robber set up a makeshift shrine with several candles and a white teddy bear in front of the closed store.

Dawn Hunt, 23, a cousin of Dennis Smith, said the teenager “wasn’t a bad person at all. That’s why it’s just puzzling to all of us.”

She added that “no one’s mad at the boy who shot him. It’s just everybody’s hurt, especially about something so senseless.”