By Brian Anderson
Contra Costa Newspapers

Oct. 22, 2002

OAKLAND —A Dublin steakhouse waiter who served a man authorities believe robbed the Regional Street restaurant identified another man Monday accused of gunning down a deputy sheriff during the deadly hold-up.

Duane Harper told jurors in the continuing trial of three men charged with robbing the Outback Steakhouse that the ordeal began late Dec. 11, 1998, when a young man walked into the eatery. It was just about closing time, Harper said, but the man was seated anyway.

He was waiting for friends and needed to be by a window, the waiter said he was told. But as the clock ticked and the man's friends didn't show, Harper wanted him to leave, he said.

"He was acting strangely the whole time he was in there," Harper said. "He was very quiet. I had actually felt bad for him."

Before long, the man was on the way out the door, Harper said. He needed to grab 17 cents from his car to pay the rest of the $7 tab for the grilled cheese and soda he had ordered, Harper recalled for jurors in Alameda County Judge Alfred Delucchi's courtroom.

Moments later, another man appeared, he said. The man was walking with intensity toward the bar and flashed a "cocky" smile, Harper said.

"I jumped to the conclusion that he was there to do us harm," Harper said. "I felt he was going to hijack the restaurant."

Prosecutor Jon Goodfellow has maintained the man and two others did just that, herding about two dozen employees and customers into the back. Nearly $5,000 was taken during the robbery, a witness said last week.

Deputy John Paul Monego was shot and killed while investigating an emergency call from the restaurant.

Reuben Eliceo Vasquez, 27, Miguel Galindo Sifuentes, 23, and Hai Minh Le, 23, were arrested a short distance away after a police chase. Each is charged with a first-degree murder count and special circumstances that could make him eligible for a death sentence.

Harper pointed to Vasquez on Monday, saying he was the man with the "cocky, arrogant" look from that night. "I was sure that this was the guy who walked through the front doors," he said.

But Harper acknowledged that he never identified the man he had waited on and could not pick out Le as a suspect.

"He didn't stand out in my mind as being anything to me," Harper said, referring to the diner, who Goodfellow has said was Sifuentes.

The trial continues today.