Gunman tied up a clerk, stole his truck, Fresno police say.

By Tim Eberly and Louis Galvan / The Fresno Bee


Fresno police shot and killed a 28-year-old Fresno man Tuesday morning moments after he robbed a local paintball supply store, tied up a store clerk with duct tape and stole the employee's pickup, witnesses and police said.

The robber, whose name was not made public Tuesday, was shot shortly after 10:15 a.m. in the parking lot of Blackstone Village, a busy central Fresno strip mall in the 4700 block of North Blackstone Avenue. Wearing a black ski mask and a hooded sweat shirt, the man had just fled Maximum Paintball Supply Inc.

Tipped off by one of the store's owners, who was in a rear office when the business was robbed, two police officers confronted the man in the parking lot and opened fire.

Fatally wounded, the man stole the clerk's pickup and drove it across all six lanes of Blackstone Avenue, as well as the grassy median, before slamming into a small landscaping boulder outside the Waffle Shop about 50 yards away.

After a handful of police officers pulled him from the truck, the man was taken to University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead shortly before 11 a.m.

Kevin Roggenkamp, 20, the paintball store clerk, said he was behind the counter when the robber walked in and pointed a large handgun at his face.

The robber, who was short and spoke in a commanding voice, demanded that Roggenkamp open the cash register.

As Roggenkamp complied, 39-year-old Thom Sharp, who owns the store with his wife, Debbie, saw the gunman on a computer monitor, which is hooked up to 12 cameras inside the store and two in the parking lot.

"The gun was already up and pointed at Kevin," Sharp said. "I don't think he was halfway across the room when I had 911 on the phone." For the next five minutes, Sharp kept police dispatchers abreast of everything happening as the robber plundered the store.

"Just explaining how it happened as I was witnessing it," he said.

Sharp said the robber did not appear rushed.

"He never saw me make the phone call, so he probably thought he had all the time in the world," he said.

The robber ordered Roggenkamp onto the floor and duct-taped his hands behind his back but did not tie his feet. He took everything out of the clerk's pockets, including his wallet and keys.

After taking about $150 from the register, the robber asked Roggenkamp where the most expensive paintball guns were. Roggenkamp pointed him toward where the guns valued at about $1,000 each were stocked.

The suspect strung the weapons through their trigger guards along a rope with a knot tied at one end. Roggenkamp estimated the man took between 10 and 15 guns.

At one point, the man was searching through a room next to Sharp's office. Several minutes into the robbery, Sharp locked his door.

Before the robber left, he demanded to know where Roggenkamp's truck was. The clerk told him what it looked like and where it was parked.

Then Roggenkamp felt what might have been the handgun on the back of his head. The robber made a final threat.

"He said, 'If that's not your truck, I'm going to come back and kill you,'" Roggenkamp said.

What happened in the parking lot is unclear. Roggenkamp looked outside briefly to make sure the man was not coming back, but he did not see the fatal confrontation.

Sgt. Gregg Sanders, the Police Department's spokesman, said a traffic officer was the first to arrive, followed moments later by a patrol officer.

The officers confronted the man somewhere in the lot and fired at him. Later in the day, numerous bullet fragments and shell casings still were scattered on the pavement.

Sgt. Len Gleim would not say whether the robber threatened the officers or returned fire.

Daniel Mucino, 33, a manager at the Me-N-Ed's Pizza parlor two doors down from the paintball shop, was in the kitchen making salads when he heard three to four gunshots.

He looked outside the restaurant's front windows and saw the white pickup leaving the lot. He could not see the driver clearly. Two police officers were running after the car. One was carrying a shotgun; the other had a handgun.

The truck went across the southbound lanes of Blackstone, jumped the center divider and appeared to be going the wrong way in the northbound lanes. The robber narrowly missed an approaching black-and-white patrol car before crashing into a rock.

Several other officers arrived about the time the car wrecked. Mucino said four or five officers with their guns drawn surrounded the car.

Soon after, they pulled the suspect from the car. They also found a loaded handgun.

Gleim did not know whether the man was conscious, but officers performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on him before he was taken to the hospital.

The pickup had what appeared to be gunshot damage, including a large hole through the driver's side window and a smaller hole near the outside rear-view mirror, also on the driver's side.

Police shut down Blackstone Avenue between Shaw and Gettysburg avenues until about 5 p.m. The road closure forced dozens of businesses in the area to close.

Debbie Sharp, co-owner of the paintball shop, said it was not the first time the business has been victimized. Since it opened seven years ago, the paintball shop has been broken into about twice a year.

"But this is our first robbery, though," Sharp said, noting there were no employees inside during the break-ins.

Despite Tuesday's violence, Sharp said they won't close the store.

"It will not affect us at all," she said. "I won't let it. You can't let these people affect you."

The incident was the second fatal officer-involved shooting in Fresno County in three days.

On Saturday, Sanger police shot and killed a 24-year-old Del Rey man when he tried to drive off in a stolen car with the carjacking victim underneath it.

Source: http://www.fresnobee.com/home/story/...10726110c.html

"Gleim did not know whether the man was conscious, but officers performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on him before he was taken to the hospital."

A policeman buddy of mine learned love the resuscition part of his duty. He says it was his duty to give CPR to some jerk he wounded in a gun battle. He said " I was angry at this guy for trying to kill me, and angry I had to try to resuscitate him, but as I watched my CPR pump the blood from his wound I felt a macarbe sense of justice. I pumped that sucker dry long before the EMTs arrived."

it would have been funny if the clerk pointed him to the spyders instead of highend guns

idiots...if those were weapons, the guy wouldn't have been robed in the first place.

just the way the world go's round

Thats why i always keep a loaded pball pistol (couldent think of the pistols name braindead... school screws ur mind up ahh!)

i love the part that the owner just watches and locks his door. lol

but he did call 911 real quick. at our local store, there is a front/back office so some of the guys are safe. lol