Browse archives: 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1996 | 1995

Published on 12/25/1995 All articles from this issue

Police looking for two suspects in liquor store shooting

printer friendly version

By Joanne Griffith Domingue / Town Crier Staff Writer

After the would-be robber at a Los Altos liquor store shot the 42-year-old clerk Tony Rivera in the hip, Rivera placed his own 911 call to police.

Just before 8 p.m. Dec. 13, two men walked into Woodlands Liquor Store on Grant Road. One headed to the cold chest for a drink. The other browsed the display of baseball cards, said Los Altos Police Sgt. Bob Lacey.

Then the men met at the register, and one of them pointed a .25-caliber automatic gun at the lone clerk.

At just that moment, ice cubes in the store's ice machine dropped with a loud rattle.

"The perps freaked," Lacey said. "The non-shooter said, 'shoot him.'"

The robbers and the clerk struggled, and the gun went off, "not by accident," Lacey said.

The shooter then fled. The second robber noticed his buddy was gone and took off, too.

The would-be robbers didn't get anything because the cash register never opened.

After a stay in the hospital, Rivera is recovering at home in Sunnyvale. "The bullet is still in his hip," Lacey said.

A police artist drew a sketch of the shooter. If you have any information, call the Los Altos Police at 948-8223.