Midlothian police officers flagged down during a Dunkin Donuts robbery saw a gunman attack a clerk and point a gun at them before they fired through the store windows at him.
Published in the Daily Southtown, Dec. 23, 2005. This piece received Illinois Best of the Press recognition for column writing, with the judges praising "powerful descriptions" and "depressing insight into a criminal's life."
By Dennis Robaugh
Bobby Pounds marked the final hour of his 21st birthday by terrorizing two working stiffs on the Dunkin Donuts night shift.
Those 60 minutes were the last of his life.
At 11:15 p.m. Sunday, Pounds walked to the Dunkin Donuts drive-up window. The front door of the Midlothian store is locked at 9:30 p.m., but the window remains open 24 hours to fulfill the late-night doughnut and coffee cravings.
Pounds asked for a cup of coffee and a doughnut, the clerks told police, then he reached into the window, grabbed one clerk and demanded money. The clerk pulled away. The scrawny Pounds - 140 pounds and 6 feet tall - slid through the narrow window, an opening so small the clerks sometimes have trouble passing through large doughnut boxes.
Pounds threatened the doughnut guys with a revolver.
One gave Pounds several hundred dollars from the register. But he wanted more. The safe. Open the safe. That's where the big money is, or so robbers always think.
"(The employee) told him he didn't have the key," says Harold Kaufman, a Midlothian police detective who viewed the store's security camera footage in its entirety. "I guess (Pounds) didn't believe him."
Pounds pistol-whipped the clerk. Doctors later would staple and stitch the clerk's gashed face and head back together - 19 staples and nine stitches in all.
With Pounds now inside and beating down the hapless clerk - two video cameras overhead, one on either side of the small counter and dining area - the other employee slipped out a back door, ran to Pulaski and waved to a passing police car.
Pounds stopped hitting the clerk and moved toward the locked front door. Spotting the officers, he pointed his gun at them, Kaufman said. The officers drew their weapons and fired as many as 10 rounds. The slugs shattered two windows and a door before they struck Pounds.
From the moment Pounds asked for a doughnut to the second he was felled by the cops' bullets, 16 minutes passed.
In those 16 minutes, two men who hawk doughnuts and coffee for little more than minimum wage feared for their lives.
Two cops sworn to protect made split-second, life-and-death decisions. In ending one life, they may have saved another.
And Bobby Pounds made the worst and last of his life's choices on a milestone birthday, now just a curious and ironic footnote on his grave marker.
DeAndre Moore says his younger brother's behavior Sunday night was "out of character."
His family says Pounds, who leaves behind 4-year-old and 17-month-old sons, took care of his grandmother in Dixmoor. He attended GED classes at South Suburban College. And in the spring, he hoped to find a job.
"He was striving to stay on the right track," Moore said.
Almost three years ago -- his first son was 1 at the time - store security guards caught Pounds at the Matteson Target store trying to steal three CDs. His brother, Moore, apparently struggled with the guards. Moore was arrested and charged. Pounds pleaded guilty to retail theft.
In July, Pounds was caught trying to buy marijuana in Chicago Heights.
And late Sunday night, he climbed through the window of a doughnut shop with robbery on his mind and beat a man with a handgun.
Which moments better define his character, the actions of the soft-spoken family man as described by his family or the drugs and petty thievery noted in his criminal record?
On which track did Pounds spend most of his time? What compelled him that night to crawl into a locked doughnut shop, attack a clerk and wave a gun at police?
Even those who really knew the man wonder why.
But 16 minutes of security video isn't going to answer those questions. And the church pastors who hastily orchestrated a press conference Monday in the aftermath of Midlothian's first fatal police shooting in at least 16 years aren't interested in such questions, either.
The Rev. Lance Davis and the Rev. Donald Luster seized upon the family's grief and exploited their tears and sobs to advance their own agenda.
"We're here to raise questions as to the amount of force used to murder an individual and to stop the open season on young African-American men in the community," Davis declared.
"How many times does it take to get a 6-foot, 140-pound male down?" asked Luster, a church youth leader and ex-con, who suggested the cops used "brute or excessive force" in responding to the threat posed by Pounds.
Davis and Luster would not let the family talk alone with the press to answer questions about Pounds' life, perhaps because the few observations they made before Davis and Luster swooped in do not square favorably with the message these pastors want to deliver.
Luster, the disgraceful former mayor of Dixmoor, is a tax cheat who defrauded the government out of unemployment benefits and a convicted armed robber in his own right.
His background speaks volumes about his credibility.
As for Davis, his claim of an "open season" on black men in Midlothian is as absurd as his contention that Pounds was murdered.
This wasn't a teenager beaten black and blue in an interrogation room after an arrest for jaywalking. This wasn't an elderly man tackled in a dark park in a case of mistaken identity. This wasn't a 3 a.m. back-alley shooting.
Regardless of how many shots the Midlothian cops fired to bring an end to this crime, the images captured on the security video very well may justify their actions that night.
The family wants to see the tape. And they should see it.
But they won't find the answers in those 16 minutes.
For that, they might want to look back at the 21 years of Pounds' life.
Epilogue: A state police investigation later would rule this shooting justified.