Disarming Way With Woman Foils Robbery

Believing he was about to be killed by a woman bandit, the night manager of a Hollywood Jack-in-the-Box restaurant disarmed her with a perfect “rear gun take-away” early Monday, then literally slammed her into the cooler, police said.

Los Angeles officers said the manager, Nageed Halaka, 23, wrested the gun away from Carla McClain, 22, then pushed her ahead of him into the walk-in refrigerator and slammed the heavy door behind them both during the 7 a.m. robbery attempt.

Halaka and McClain were let out about five minutes later, when police arrived to open the refrigerator, which has no inside handle.

Anticlimactically, the pistol turned out not to be a .45-caliber automatic, which it closely resembled, but a pellet gun, Hollywood Division Police Sgt. Ron Dina said.

Dina said McClain, suspected of holding up the same restaurant at 1243 N. Highland Ave. twice before, was booked on suspicion of armed robbery.

The sergeant said Halaka violated the fast-food restaurant’s policy by resisting the robber but told officers that the gunwoman had told him she was going to kill him if he did not open the safe--and he did not know the combination.

“It was a pretty gutsy thing,” Dina said, “maybe not the smartest thing to do. . . . But he told the officers his reasoning was, ‘I couldn’t open the safe, so I thought she was going to kill me.’ Then he put her in the freezer--that was pretty clever.”

Dina said Halaka told officers that he learned the take-away technique while serving in the military of his native Egypt.