In the early morning hours of Oct. 9, 1990, five heavily-armed gunmen broke into the PACE Warehouse store in Downey. Armed with assault rifles and protected by flak jackets, the gunmen stole $46,000 in cash from a warehouse safe before the robbery was interrupted by Downey Police.

Two Downey police officers were shot and wounded in an ensuing gun battle. Officers Randy Ewing and Joel Willis survived their injuries and eventually returned to patrolling.

Thirty years after the shooting, Ewing and Willis – along with responding officer Ralph Bruner – shared their memories of the incident.

Ralph Bruner

What was your rank at the time of the shooting?

I was a training officer. I had 10 years on in Downey at the time of the incident.

How old were you at the time? 

41.

What are your memories of the incident? 

One thing I was always amazed with at Downey PD was the training they give their police officers… When you go out on patrol, talking like the early morning of the incident, you go out almost hoping that you’re prepared for almost anything that might happen.

Basically, 5 a.m in the morning, a little before that, two units were assigned the call, a robbery in progress at Pace Warehouse, which was quite common in Downey. Anytime there’s a serious call, almost every officer that’s out there — at this time there were four of us working at 5 a.m. — and the other two officers responded to the location, which to me was one of the great things about Downey PD is we all looked out for each other, especially on potentially serious and dangerous calls.

I felt that we deployed very well tactically when we arrived at the location, and when the suspects sprung the ambush on us I was surprised where the fire was coming from, which was behind us.

I think, again, thanks to the training that I felt that Downey PD gave us, I responded to the situation and the shooting, and did my best to protect myself, the other officers, and the citizens that were at the location.

Obviously, it was very scary and surprising; you didn’t really expect something like this to happen. As a matter of fact, I don’t think officers had been ambushed in this manner almost forever; people said after the incident that they didn’t think anything like this had ever happened, being ambushed by somebody with full automatic weapons like that.

Pretty much it all happened very quickly, I just kind of reacted...The interesting part was you weren’t really incredibly scared until after it was over, was when I got a little more scared than when it was going down.

I remember after the incident I was very critical of myself, and I tried to think of what I might have possibly done better. I thought in detail how I responded, and was amazed how much of my reaction was what I had practiced in training.

It was like we had four separate incidents going on; each one of us had our own thing to respond to but it was all happening at the same time.

But it went very well; we got really lucky that none of our officers were killed, and that none of the citizens that were being held hostage inside the warehouse were injured badly or were killed. I think a lot of that, we have to thank the Downey Fire Department, because when they got there, we had two officers shot multiple times each. The Fire Department - without hesitation - came running in with stretchers and grabbed our two injured officers...knowing that the scene wasn’t secure. They retrieved our officers and took them to the hospital, and quite possibly saved their lives.

I think overall - the way all four of us responded - it’s probably what saved our lives in the situation; mine and everybody’s there.

 

Did you ever fear for your life?

Of course. I had a large number of full-automatic rounds shot at me at my police car, and rounds were bouncing all around me. Obviously, it would scare anybody. The training is incredibly important. Downey PD was always amazing...It was incredibly scary for all of us, and incredibly scary for 20 plus people that were being held hostage inside the Pace warehouse.

To say I wasn’t scared is crazy; I was definitely scared. But I think just responding in a way you’ve been trained, and having a plan made it a lot easier to deal with.

Did the incident affect you at all?

I think right after the incident when I got back to work - this is kind of a humorous way of putting it - I was kind of sneaking up on parked cars to write parking tickets because I was a little nervous that something like that may happen again. It does affect you later on the job; not making me crazy, but making me cautious, and maybe overly so at first. Then I kind of toned down and got back to being myself and really enjoying the job again for a lot of years...I don’t think it made me cynical or a bad policeman in any way, I think it just made me a little more careful. I already kind of knew that things like this could happen, but it’s still a shock when something of this level happens. This was pretty dramatic.

What are you up to today? 

I moved up here to Utah. I’ve been retired now for 15 years; it’s unbelievable. It probably feels like longer than that to my wife. Been married for 46 years now, and just doing my best to keep her happy and enjoy our retirement here.

Joel Willis

What was your rank at the time of the shooting?

I was just a policeman; I had 8 months out of the academy. I was a rookie.

How old were you at the time? 

22.

What are your memories of the incident? 

 I’m sure you’ve heard the story. It was an ambush. We didn’t know if we were looking at an actual robbery in progress inside the store. There were multiple cars parked out in the parking lot. We didn’t even have a clue that there would be anybody hiding in cars to shoot at us. I was hit before I knew what was even going on; the first sound or even idea that there was a shooting going on was the impact of the bullet. It hit my butt, but it came out my knee. That’s how I knew I was involved in a shooting, and then it just snowballed from there.

Can you explain what that feels like to be shot? You said it entered your buttock and out your knee.

I didn’t feel it go in; the only thing I felt was the exit wound out near my knee there. It felt like somebody hit me with a sledge hammer from behind. Then the second I felt it – the initial sense of being hit with a sledge hammer – it immediately went away; there was zero feeling, zero pain, nothing. I knew I had been shot, but I had zero pain; I couldn’t feel a thing. And I was still standing.

You already know that you’re injured. Now you realize that you’re in a potentially very dire situation. What goes through your mind? What happens at that point? What action do you take?

I turned and I looked…and basically said who the “blank” shot me? I turned, and there’s a guy behind me – about 25 feet away, maybe – with a full-auto AK47 just blowing rounds at me. I was just in awe that I wasn’t being hit; I didn’t think I was, but it turns out I was. I got shot two other times, but I didn’t know.

I remember just trying to get to cover, and feeling bullets fly by my head, hitting the ground, hitting the wall behind me, trying to get to the pillar for cover. That was my first objective, was to get out of the line of fire.

Did you ever fear for your life?

I didn’t fear the initial barrage, which I really found weird. When I got to safety behind the pillar, then I started getting scared….Everything just went dire, because everything didn’t calm down when I was safe…not quite panic, just fear. Then I looked down and I saw in my right hand I had my gun, and when I saw that gun I realized I could fight back. I got extremely angry, like a rage I can’t even describe. I just rolled over and started and started engaging the guy again.

He took off running; I hit him once. Kept firing, He got up, and I guess he got into a getaway van, but I never saw the van.

Once I got that rage in, my training kicked in. Then my brain basically took over my body; I had no control over what I did. It was just watching it perform, due to my training; it just went into a reactionary, instinctive mode…my brain just took over. It was weird.

How did the incident affect you? Does it still affect you?

I went back to work five or six months later, and continued seeing a psychology doctor, kind of going through some stuff in my head. I was fine psychologically, just because of that rage that saved me I had some anger issues I had to get through. Got through that, and I was all good; at least I thought I was. Then I left and went to Anaheim PD, and promptly got into another shooting…the combo of them kind of really took a toll on me mentally. But post traumatic stress, you can deal with it. It’ll be with me forever, for sure. You just gotta know how to deal with it.

What are you up to today? 

I’ve since retired. Enjoying my retirement…just living life with my family. My kids are all grown up. My youngest is 21, my middle daughter is 23, and my oldest boy is 30. Just kind of hanging with them and my wife.

Randy Ewing

What was your rank at the time of the shooting?

I was just a police officer.

How old were you at the time?

36

What are your memories of the incident? 

We got the call about 5 o’clock in the morning. Possible armed robbery, burglary. The Pace location, we knew they were closed, but there was a gas station there that always had problems  with people coming in...We parked underneath the - I think it was the 605 - we parked under there and went in on foot. As we were going on foot, Ralph went by and went to the far side of Pace. We’d just cleared the gas station; it was closed, there was nobody there.

There were lots of cars in the parking lot, nothing really stood out to us. We had been briefed that there was a crew working, pulling these robberies but I don’t think we really had time to connect all of that. We turned our radios down...we didn’t want the dispatchers jumping on the air on us and giving our position away.

We went through there, started clearing the parking lot. About the time we cleared the parking lot - approaching the vehicles in the parking lot - Ralph pointed out that he had suspects inside Pace...He walked towards the front, because there was lights leading from it; you could see people inside. At that point, we started scrambling to take cover. Unfortunately, I took cover in front of the suspects getaway vehicle. I was behind a light standard there, Joel was to my north, towards the pillars right at the front. I don’t know where Keith was at that point...I could see Joel and Ralph, but I wasn’t sure where Keith was. 

At that point I crouched down - I had a shotgun - I crouched down behind the light standard and I heard the door of the van open up behind me to my right. I rose up, and as I started to stand up to face it and turn, that’s when I got shot. Then all hell broke loose after that.

I jumped to the other side of the planter to get away from the knucklehead that was shooting at me, hit the ground and tried to move back towards the planter so at least if he did step across when he came out I’d have a little bit of cover. 

I dropped the shotgun, then he stepped through his position through the bushes there; we were in a firefight just right there. 

He was shooting at Joel; I’m not sure he knew where I was at right away. But when I sat up and shot back at him, he directed his attention to me. Then he turned and ran. 

One of the three of us shot him. I’m not sure which one; it’s always in contention between the three of us, but it doesn’t matter at this point. He did take a bullet, and he went down. He got up, and ran back in the van. 

The van was backing up; he had to run around to get into it. I put a bullet through the rear of the van just hoping to get a lucky shot on somebody...then I put one through the driver’s door.

Unfortunately, it went to a crossbeam in the door there, and it prevented it from hitting the driver. Pretty much, that’s it.

Where were you shot?

I was shot in the buttocks and the hip on the right side, and in the side on the left and the buttock on the left.

What are you up to today?

I’m a wildlife photographer now, North Idaho. I got my kids here, and I remarried about 15 years ago.

Alex Dominguez conducted the interviews. Eric Pierce contributed to this report. The Downey Patriot would like to thank the Downey Police Department for its assistance in coordinating the interviews.