Features

Gunman gets cash in violent robbery

The Associated Press
Wednesday February 14, 2001

LOS ANGELES — Police were searching Tuesday for a masked gunman who fired on an armored car guard outside a grocery store and fled with a bag of money. 

The robbery Monday was the latest in a string of attacks on armored cars in Southern California.  

Three guards have been killed and six people wounded in six months. 

The armored car guard was walking out of Jetro Wholesale Groceries in the Crenshaw area when the robber fired several shots, Officer Jason Lee said. 

No one was hit, he said, but the guard dropped a cash bag as he ran back into the store.  

The gunman took the bag and fled in a van with two other people. The stolen van was abandoned a few blocks away. 

In the past six months: 

• An armored car guard was killed and a second was wounded Feb. 5 in a holdup outside a North Hollywood supermarket. 

• A store guard was grazed by a bullet on Dec. 12 outside a South Central supermarket, and an armored car courier was shot in the back but escaped injury because he was wearing a bulletproof vest. 

• An armored car guard was found shot to death Dec. 7 in the vehicle after it was hijacked outside a West Hollywood bank. 

• Robbers shot an armored car guard to death Oct. 30 outside a bank in Ontario. 

• A bystander was killed and four people were wounded when robbers exchanged gunfire with an armored car guard outside a San Fernando Valley store on Aug. 13.