By Brian Anderson
Contra Costa Newspapers

Oct. 29, 2002

OAKLAND —After finishing his meal and walking a woman to her car, David Holliman was headed through the darkened parking lot of a Dublin steakhouse the night of Dec. 11, 1998.

The night air was cool as he neared his vehicle about 30 feet off the Outback Steakhouse entrance, he said. But out of the shadows appeared the faceless subjects that he could never possibly forget. "Basically, I just ... got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time," Holliman told an Alameda County jury Monday.

In the continuing trial of three men accused of the fatal shooting of a deputy sheriff, Holliman testified that he was forced to return to the Dublin restaurant. Held at gunpoint and as one of the first to realize what was happening that night, Holliman was scared while he tugged on the handle of the eatery's front doors, he said.

He was forced to sit at first, then was corralled in the kitchen with about two dozen employees and customers, he said. Holliman testified that he and the others were marched into a walk-in cooler, where some of his fellow hostages mistook him for a robber.

"'I thought you were with them,'" Holliman recalled one woman saying. "Some of the other people echoed the same thoughts."

If he was one of the robbers, he remembered telling them, he wouldn't have been stuffed in the cooler.

Holliman emerged along with the others to learn that Deputy John Paul Monego had been killed while responding to an emergency call made from the restaurant. Three men, authorities believe, launched the deadly robbery that night after Holliman became the first hostage.

Reuben Eliceo Vasquez, 27, Miguel Galindo Sifuentes, 23, and Hai Minh Le, 23, were arrested a short distance from the restaurant after a police chase.

Each is charged with one count of first-degree murder with special circumstances that could make each man eligible for a death sentence.

On Monday, Holliman could not identify any of the men as they sat next to their attorneys in Judge Alfred Delucchi's courtroom. One was short and slender, he said, but none of the men looked familiar.

The trial continues today.