A security guard working at a marijuana dispensary operating illegally in San Bernardino was killed in a gunfight with two attempted robbers late Monday, Feb. 16.

Anthony Victor Pineda, 25, of Rowland Heights, was pronounced dead on the scene after San Bernardino police forced their way into the shop because the people running it refused to let them in, said department spokesman Lt. Rich Lawhead.

At least one of the would-be robbers was hit as well, Lawhead said. He asked for the public’s help to find the suspects.

Just before 10 p.m., two men with guns stormed into the nondescript shop tucked away in a strip mall in the 2800 block of Rialto Avenue, Lawhead said.

Marijuana dispensaries are banned in San Bernardino, and the sign outside the store advertised it as an eyebrow threading business, but some neighborhood residents said that was left over from a previous tenant.

Inside, the store is divided into two rooms: The front is where employees check IDs and the back is where they sell the marijuana, Lawhead said.

The two gunmen forced their way into the back room, where they and Pineda exchanged fire, Lawhead said.

How many shots were fired hadn’t been determined, but there was “fairly extensive gunfire inside,” he said.

Witnesses reported seeing the men run away and hearing one say he had been shot, police said in a news release.

“There’s a pretty substantial blood trail leading away from the business,” Lawhead said.

STORE WORKERS UNCOOPERATIVE

Shortly after the incident, police received a call reporting shots fired with one possibly dead. When officers got there, the doors were locked, Lawhead said.

“They had to force their way inside,” he said. “We’re the ones who broke the glass door.”

The shop has a surveillance system, but the shop personnel refused to give police access to it. Investigators instead got a search warrant and confiscated the whole system, and forensic technicians are working to get the footage, Lawhead said.

Police have only a hazy picture of what happened inside the building and they have no significant description of the suspects because the witnesses who worked at the shop have refused to talk to investigators, he said.

“Without the public’s help we won’t be able to solve this one,” he said.

Late Tuesday the morning as police continued to investigate, the dispensary’s shattered door was boarded up but glass shards littered the sidewalk and a trail of blood drops led from the door to the parking lot.

A red car containing Pineda’s identification cards was parked in front of the shop. One of those cards indicated he was slated to work security at Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood.

Visible through the car window were clues to some of the slain man’s hobbies: running shoes, a poster with instructional chord charts and shooting range targets depiction robots from the Terminator movies.

DISPENSARY SECURITY

Police believe about 40 medical marijuana dispensaries are active in San Bernardino despite the city’s ban, but the businesses are hard to track, Lawhead said.

“They are very transient, they move from place to place,” he said.

Pineda worked as a security guard for Security Industry Specialists Inc., but a company official said Pineda was not on duty at the time of the shooting, and the dispensary was not one of the company’s clients.

“Our condolences go out to the family,” said Tom Seltz, the company’s president. He declined to comment further.

Whether Pineda worked for another security company hired by the dispensary, or directly for the shop’s owners, was unknown.

Marijuana dispensaries have been known to hire their security in both of those ways, giving birth to a cottage industry of security firms specializing in protecting marijuana-related businesses, said Lanny Swerdlow, a marijuana legalization advocate and head of the Marijuana Anti-Prohibition Project.

‘NO GOOD’ FOR NEIGHBORHOOD

Some employees at neighboring businesses never noticed anything suspicious at the location.

“You just saw people come in, come out with bags of whatever just like a normal store,” said Tony Lam, who works at Super 99 Cent Plus nearby.

Others said they had suspected something illegal had been going on there for months.

“We’d pass by and you could just smell it,” said Jennifer Peña, a 16-year-old who lives across the street and often comes to the shopping center with her mother.

Susana Vigil, the girl’s mother, said having dispensaries in her neighborhood makes her fear for her and others’ families.

“It’s no good. I’m a mother of a family,” she said. “I’m scared for the kids, I’m scared for the mothers, I’m scared for the babies.”

Other locals, such as Daniel Salazar who works a few doors down, said the shooting is scary but the neighborhood is no stranger to crime.

“I grew up in South Central (Los Angeles), so to me it’s just like home,” Salazar said.

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