Opinion ID: 844204
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Robbery Murder at the Pepper Steak Restaurant

Text: Nine days after Ricky Byrd‟s murder, defendant, with 17-year-old Tony Tyrone Rogers, used a firearm to commit a robbery that led to another death. On April 20, 1996, Fred Malouf (hereafter sometimes Fred), his wife Donna Malouf (Donna),6 and Donna‟s mother went to the Pepper Steak Restaurant in Colton at around 8:00 p.m. for coffee. Donna was an employee of the restaurant and had worked the morning shift that day. Fred was a retired captain in the Colton Police Department. After the Malouf party sat down in a booth at the back of the restaurant, a waitress named Krystal Anderson walked over to say hello. Donna testified at trial that moments later, defendant came running through the restaurant yelling, 6 At the time of trial, Donna Malouf had remarried and went by the name Donna Malouf Lawrence. 6 “It‟s a robbery. I‟ll shoot. Get your money out.” He was holding a large semiautomatic gun in his right hand. A mask came across his mouth and nose, and he was wearing a beanie on his head. Donna further testified that she immediately rose from the booth and started walking toward the kitchen because she knew that a gun was kept there. Before she reached her destination, however, defendant ran up and grabbed her by the hair. He yelled and cursed at her, wanting to know whether she was the manager and where the safe was located, and threatening to “blow [her] head off.” Donna told him there was no manager and no safe. According to Donna‟s testimony, defendant was yelling so hard that his mask slipped below his nose, and she could see all of his face except for his mouth and the top of his head. He then wrapped his hand holding his gun around Donna‟s throat and dragged her by the hair into the kitchen. Donna noticed that three other employees and the codefendant, Tony Rogers, were inside the kitchen. Rogers also was armed with a large semiautomatic gun, and he was wearing a hat but no mask. Defendant directed Rogers to shoot Donna if she moved, then left the kitchen and returned to the dining area. Several minutes later, Donna noticed Fred‟s face in the window of the kitchen‟s back door. Rogers ran toward the back door just as Fred was entering. When Fred attempted to wrest control of Rogers‟s gun, a shot rang out. Donna saw Fred fall back into the women‟s restroom. Rogers then stood over Fred and shot him repeatedly. At some point, Fred managed to remove his gun from his ankle holster and shoot Rogers in the upper chest. Rogers screamed, “I‟ve been shot,” and ran past Donna to exit the kitchen and flee. Other restaurant employees and patrons gave varying accounts of the sequence of events prior to the shooting. Krystal Anderson, the waitress who was 7 talking with the Maloufs at the outset of the robbery, testified that defendant dragged Donna by the hair and forced her into a booth, then pushed Anderson toward the cash register near the front of the restaurant by kicking her legs and hitting her. When Anderson had trouble complying with defendant‟s repeated demands to open the register, he hit her in the stomach with his gun. After she finally managed to open the register, defendant took out the money, which was mostly $5 and $10 bills. Defendant then reached into Anderson‟s apron and removed her tips. Another witness, Harold Lewis, was seated with his wife and grandson in a booth across from the cash register when defendant came into the restaurant waving his gun and demanding that everyone put their money on the table. According to his testimony, defendant first dragged Donna to the cash register before grabbing the other waitress. After taking the money from the till, defendant came up to Lewis, twisted Lewis‟s arm behind his back, and pointed the gun behind his ear. He then took the billfold and money that Lewis had placed on the table. There were some discrepancies in the testimony of the eight witnesses regarding the events in the restaurant before the shooting. But the witnesses testified consistently that after the shots were fired, defendant first ran back to the door leading to the kitchen and then fled through the front door of the restaurant. Three witnesses further testified that they saw defendant point his gun in the kitchen‟s passthrough window and heard it click, but that the gun did not fire. Officers responding to a dispatch regarding the robbery found Rogers hunched over on the sidewalk a short distance away. There was a semiautomatic handgun lying next to him. Rogers complained of a shotgun wound to the stomach and officers observed blood in his abdominal area. He was handcuffed and transported to the hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery. Officers 8 took Donna to view Rogers in the hospital, where she identified him as the shooter. An autopsy showed that Fred was shot five times at close range, suffering gunshot wounds to his face, abdomen, knee, thigh, and wrist. The fatal wound was the gunshot to the abdomen, which caused a small hole in the aorta that led to massive internal hemorrhaging. Officers investigating the crime scene discovered extensive evidence of gunfire in the kitchen area and restrooms, including 7 nine-millimeter cartridges, an expended bullet, and numerous bullet fragments. Ballistics testing on the ninemillimeter semiautomatic gun found next to Rogers at the time of his arrest showed that all of the cartridges found in the kitchen had been fired from his weapon. In the early morning hours the day after the shooting, officers contacted Rogers‟s 22-year-old cousin, Earl Williams, who was allowing Rogers to live with him. Williams told the officers that Rogers associated with three large AfricanAmerican men, one of whom he identified as J-Dog, the name by which defendant was known. Williams also took the officers to the San Bernardino apartment rented by Lateshia Winkler, where defendant occasionally stayed. Police then brought Williams to the police station to question him about his possible involvement in the crimes. He told officers that around 11:30 a.m. on the day of the shooting, defendant came to his apartment looking for Rogers, saying he needed “to talk to him about some cash flow.” Williams told defendant that Rogers was socializing at a nearby apartment and defendant left. When he returned to Williams‟s apartment with Rogers a short time later, Williams overheard defendant telling Rogers that he had been watching two places for the last two days and “we got to hit them before 8 o‟clock.” Williams testified at trial that he did not recall most of what he had told the officers during the questioning. 9 Investigators also interviewed Lateshia Winkler, in whose apartment defendant occasionally stayed. According to Winkler, defendant, Rogers, and another man whom she did not know left her apartment between 6:00 and 6:30 p.m. on the evening of the shooting. Defendant returned around 10:00 p.m. alone, two hours later than the time he said he would be home, and went straight to his bedroom. He appeared to be high. Winkler followed him, asking for an explanation but defendant stated angrily, “Don‟t start. I‟ve got a lot of shit on my mind.” Defendant then left the apartment for about 30 to 45 minutes. Winkler also told officers that in a longer conversation later that same night, defendant stated that “his homeboy got shot in a robbery, either by somebody who worked there or somebody who was staking it out.” The next day, while defendant was speaking with his mother by telephone, Winkler overheard defendant asking his mother, “What are they going to do?” and “Did he die?” Later, he told Winkler that his friend had been shot and was at a nearby hospital in police custody. Like Earl Williams, Winkler testified at trial that she did not remember most of what she told police during the interview. Both Williams and Winkler told police that they previously had seen defendant carry a handgun. According to Winkler, defendant kept two loaded magazines on the headboard in his bedroom and stored the gun in the trunk of Winkler‟s 1973 Pontiac Firebird, which was parked in a lot close to her apartment. Police searched the trunk of her car and discovered a Lorcin .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun. During the investigation, several eyewitnesses identified defendant as the masked man who entered the front of the restaurant waving a large firearm and announcing that a robbery was in progress. Donna picked defendant‟s picture from a photographic lineup, telling police she was “80 percent sure” that the photograph depicted the man who had forced her to go into the kitchen. She also 10 identified defendant in a live lineup conducted about one week after the photographic lineup, and later again at trial.