1 Man Killed, Grocer Wounded in Tujunga Robbery

Leaving his accomplice dead, a robber ran from a Tujunga grocery store after exchanging gunfire with the shopkeeper, who suffered a bullet wound, police said Tuesday.

The dead man, who has not been identified, died of one or more gunshot wounds before police arrived at Canyon Market just before midnight Monday, said Det. Frank Bishop of LAPD’s Foothill Division.

Ralph J. Gambina, the 46-year-old proprietor of the family-owned convenience store at Hillrose Street and Tujunga Canyon Boulevard, was in serious but stable condition Tuesday at an area hospital. Police and family members said he was struck in the upper body by a single bullet.

It is unknown whether any money was stolen, police said.

“It looks like a robbery that went bad,” said Det. Miles Taylor of the Foothill Division, adding that preliminary indications suggest that Gambina acted in self-defense.

For the Gambina family, which resides in San Clemente but has owned the store in the quiet, hilly Tujunga neighborhood for more than 20 years, it was like reliving a nightmare.

In 1981, Ralph’s father, Salvatore Ted Gambina, was gunned down in the grocery store he owned in South-Central Los Angeles, family members said.

Police said that just before Ralph Gambina was ready to close the store Monday, two armed men walked in and demanded money. After they took money from the cash register, they demanded that Gambina open his safe, police said. Sometime after that shots were fired.

“I thought it was firecrackers,” said a neighbor, who asked not to be identified.

Another neighbor, who also declined to be identified, said: “It was just dead silent after the gunshots. I didn’t hear a car or anything.”

The dead man, possibly in his 20s, was wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt with its drawstring hood pulled over his face, Taylor said. Police had no description Tuesday of the robber still at large.

At the hospital Tuesday, Gambina’s wife, Leslie, said her husband cried and asked for a priest because he was so upset that a man had died--even if the man had just tried to rob him.

“He knows what it’s like to lose somebody,” she said. “Everybody has a mother. He’s sad for [the dead man’s] family.”

Because the store is in a residential neighborhood a good distance from other shops and busy traffic, the armed robbery surprised some residents as well as officers patrolling the area.

“There’s very little violent crime here,” said Don Muniz, LAPD’s senior lead officer for the neighborhood.

But other neighbors and Gambina family members said there had been several attempted robberies in the last few years at the store, which had been leased to another family until the Gambinas retook control about a year ago.

“That’s why he had the gun,” Leslie Gambina said.

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Some neighbors questioned whether Gambina should have had a gun, but police said the law permits store owners to keep guns.

“You’re allowed to have a gun in your own residence or business,” said Bishop, the LAPD detective.

Friends and family members described Gambina as an extremely hard-working man who tried to keep his store open every day of the year, often sleeping in a trailer behind the shop to avoid long commutes home to San Clemente.

“We had Easter dinner in the back of the store,” said Gambina’s 17-year-old son, Ted, who often helps out on weekends and holidays. “Christmas morning, we’re here,” he said.

By mid-afternoon Tuesday, the Canyon Market was already back in business, per Gambina’s orders from the hospital.

“He said to me, ‘Go back and open up that store,’ ” Leslie Gambina said, her eyes brimming with tears as she stood in front of the modest white market. “This is all he knows. He loves it.”

Police are asking anyone with information about the crime to call Foothill detectives at (818) 834-3115 or, after hours, at (818) 756-8861.