By Brian Anderson
Contra Costa Newspapers

Oct. 31, 2002

OAKLAND —A former deputy sheriff taken hostage during a Dublin steakhouse robbery told a jury Wednesday that she was stripped of her gun after being caught off guard while responding to the emergency call.

Angela Schwab, a key witness in the trial of three men accused of killing Deputy John Paul Monego, almost immediately begged for her life after stumbling into the holdup Dec. 11, 1998, she said.

"He started yelling at me to give him my gun and get down on the ground," Schwab said. "I started pleading 'Don't shoot me. I have children. I'm married.'"

Reuben Eliceo Vasquez, 27, Miguel Galindo Sifuentes, 23, and Hai Minh Le, 23, are charged with first degree murder and special circumstances. They could face the death penalty.

With the defendants looking on, Schwab took the stand for about two hours Wednesday in Judge Alfred Delucchi's Alameda County courtroom. She identified all three men, saying Vasquez was the one she saw first.

Schwab told jurors she was about a minute from the Outback Steakhouse on Regional Street when a police dispatcher received a 911 call from the restaurant. While responding, she learned from the dispatcher that an Outback manager reported everything was fine, she said.

But unknown to Schwab at the time was that Jim McGinnis, the restaurant proprietor who waved off police, had a gun to his head when the dispatcher called.

Schwab said she steered her police cruiser into the parking lot, then headed for the door. A full-time deputy with Alameda County for six years, she had responded to false alarms before.

"It could have been any type of emergency," Schwab said.

Through a window, she spotted four people who she mistook for janitors and a restaurant manager, she said. But once inside the foyer, her eyes caught a glimpse of another man, and he had a gun.

"I was taken by surprise," Schwab said. "He was pointing it at me about waist high."

She was ordered to the floor and punched in the face, she said.

"At some point I unholstered my gun, took it out and he grabbed it out of my hand," she said.

Approaching the restaurant was Monego, a 33-year-old father and veteran deputy sheriff, officials have said. He also had heard what McGinnis had told the dispatcher and was heading for the door, according to a taped radio transmission played in court.

Schwab was being marched to the rear of the restaurant, she said. Le and Sifuentes were behind her and a gun was in her back, she said.

She had reached for her radio and the panic button that would have warned Monego of the danger inside, Schwab told jurors. But one of the men ordered her to stay away from the device, she said.

"It was right around the first (ceiling) fan that I heard bang, bang, bang, bang," she said on Wednesday, pointing at a photo of the Outback dining room.

Splayed before the restaurant doors, Monego was shot and dying, witness testimony and court records have shown. His gun remained holstered, Schwab said; he never had a chance.

Sifuentes and Le took off through a side door, Schwar said, and she ran for a bathroom and called for help before heading for the entrance to help her fallen colleague.

"I checked for a pulse and I didn't feel one," Schwab told jurors, recalling Monego's "open, unfocused eyes."

Wringing her hands and tossing glances at the ground, Schwab appeared nervous and unsettled as Monego's wife, parents and loved ones listened from the crowded courtroom gallery. She said nothing to them while leaving the witness stand for the day.

Schwab returned to work briefly after the shooting, but resigned from the force. She is scheduled to testify again today.