By Brian Anderson
Contra Costa Newspapers

Sept. 30, 2002

OAKLAND —The call to Dublin law enforcement was routine.

Each year, the department logs countless accidental and otherwise unintended 911 hang-up calls. So, when a dispatcher's callback netted a worker's assurance that all was clear at the Outback Steakhouse, the risk level seemed to dwindle dramatically.

But minutes later when then-Alameda County Sheriff's Deputy Angela Schwab walked through the front doors of the Regional Street eatery, the call became everything except average. A young deputy soon would be dead and the three men charged in his killing would quickly be in police custody.

Opening statements in the trial of Ruben Eliceo Vasquez, 27, of Modesto, Miguel Galindo Sifuentes, 23, and Hai Minh Le, 23, of Turlock, begin Tuesday in Alameda County Superior Court. Each man faces a single murder count and a special circumstance, the armed robbery. Prosecutors believe Vasquez fired the fatal shots, but will seek the death penalty against all three.

Call to police

At 11:53 p.m. on Dec. 11, 1998, a dispatcher answered an emergency call. It had been a pretty standard Friday night for the deputies who patrol Dublin under contract, mostly minor calls for help and requests for service.

Major crimes were not implausible in the city of 26,750 residents, but murders and other significant problems were typically reserved for other, larger East Bay cities.

Therefore, when no one was on the other end of the 911 call, there was not a lot to panic about. A simple call back to the steak joint and a check by a patrol officer to ensure it was business as usual would be enough under normal circumstances to clear the matter.

"Everything's fine," the person who answered the phone at Outback was recorded as saying. "Thank you," the dispatcher responded before radioing to responding officers that the situation was "code 4," or under control.

But things were not fine at Outback. Seconds before the call to authorities, three men had launched a full-scale robbery.

Authorities believe it was an idea carried to Dublin by three men in a 1990 Acura Legend who headed out from the San Joaquin Valley earlier that night.

The three had tried to rob a Stockton restaurant days before the Outback incident, Le was recorded as telling deputies, and were ready to take another whack at crime.

A man investigators believe was Sifuentes went in first, sat at a table and ordered a grilled cheese, records show. Despite the clock pushing close to midnight, there were still about two dozen customers and employees scattered about, witnesses said.

After sitting for a short time, the man told a server he had to retrieve money from his car, records show. As he neared the doors, authorities said, the robbery plan roared ahead.

"I knew something was going to happen," deputies say Le later told them on tape. "I thought we were going to eat there, then when we got there (Vasquez) told me the situation and stuff."

Le's taped statement was ruled admissible at trial, but the same judge said Sifuentes and Vasquez had invoked their Miranda rights after arrest and should not have been subjected to further questioning.

Officer down

Armed with a 9mm handgun and two pellet guns, the trio began herding stunned diners and workers into the back of the restaurant, investigators said.

A similar approach reportedly had been taken at Mallard's, the Stockton restaurant that was nearly robbed three days earlier, officials said.

No one was injured and nothing was taken in that incident after a manager locked himself in an office and refused to come out, detectives wrote in reports.

But one of the robbers at Outback that night was getting aggressive just as Schwab, who could not be reached by the Times for comment, was marching through the restaurant's front doors, witnesses later told authorities.

Vasquez "told her to get down on the ground or something like that," Le reportedly told police, adding that her gun was taken away.

Forced to the back of the restaurant, Schwab huddled with the others as Monego stepped from his patrol cruiser and headed toward the restaurant doors.

A law enforcement officer for nearly a decade, Monego knew how to stay safe. Instructors had taught him as much at the 97th Basic Police Academy he graduated from, and he had worked at Santa Rita Jail, the Los Angeles Police Department and elsewhere.

His wife, Tammy, worked for the California Highway Patrol and the issue of safety had been discussed more than a couple of times in the Monego household.

On that December night, though, the training, experience and quick-headedness that Monego was remembered for simply were not enough.

Bullets sliced through the air and into the man. Monego was launched backward, as though he had been jerked like a doll with a string wrapped around it, as a security guard from a nearby hotel later described the scene to officials.

He landed on his back, the witness said.

In a horrific conclusion to what his loved ones recalled as a beautiful life, Monego was finished off. The gunman hovered above him briefly before running for the car.

The robbers raced from the parking lot and onto the streets of Dublin.

Left at the scene were dozens of onlookers, who tried to make sense of what happened and call for help.

"Officer down! Officer down!," one man was recorded screaming into Monego's police radio, which moments earlier had crackled with the signal that all was clear.

The chase

Not far from the scene, the Beato brothers listened to the radio.

"I had heard 11-99, shots fired, officer down," Len Beato recalled in court testimony this year. "We passed by a white car leaving at a high rate of speed. I told him to just keep driving toward the scene."

The pair of Dublin police reservists were the first to respond to what had become a chaotic scene.

Monego was covered in blood. A large crowd had gathered. The men accused of creating the mess were on the run.

"I told my brother I was going to go after them," Beato said.

He soon spotted the little white car and a chase ensued. They turned from one road to the next, racing over darkened roads.

Soon the pursuit came to a crashing halt against a curb on Dublin Boulevard. Two men ran and were later captured, while another was pulled from the back of the car and placed under arrest.

Meanwhile, Monego had been rushed to Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley.

Tammy, his wife and mother of their son Dominic, then 18 months old, and Monego's sister, Mary Ellen Biesecker, had hurried there to see him.

But John Paul Monego was dead.

"I miss him terribly," Biesecker said. "It still hurts a lot."

Tammy Monego has declined to talk about the case with reporters.

On the other side of the case, there are other devastated families.

The parents of Le, Sifuentes and relatives of Vasquez have attended nearly every court hearing leading up to Tuesday's trial.

They talk of good kids, young community college students with dreams, hopes and desires that have somehow taken second billing to their own murder trial.

"We used to call him the clown of the house," Glenda Rojas said of Vasquez, her cousin. "He definitely would never even hurt a little animal and definitely not a person.

"This is not the Ruben I know."

Defense attorneys are battling for the men. In March, citing pretrial publicity, Judge Alfred Delucchi granted a defense request for an attorney gag order in the case.

For the family and friends Monego left behind, the impending trial provides some hope and yet a great deal of pain. There are wishes for resolution and promises of fond recollections, but they are couched with the reality that the husband, father, son, brother and deputy sheriff will not be coming home.

"I could tell you I want justice to be served, but I don't know," Biesecker said. "I don't know what I want from the trial."