Clerk Shot, Killed During Daytime Robbery at Market

MOORPARK —  A rare daylight robbery Sunday left a clerk at a neighborhood market dead from several bullets to the head and drew a shocked, solemn crowd to the crime scene.

Police say they have no suspects yet in the shooting death of Marco Aurelio Rodriguez, the 21-year-old son of the market’s owner. The shooter also took an undetermined amount of money from one of the cash registers at Carniceria Rodriguez and fled without being seen by any of the other store employees.

While police investigated the scene, family members huddled outside the Moorpark Avenue store, and neighbors remembered the victim as a pleasant, helpful young man.

“He was very friendly, very respectful and very, very nice,” said Elsie Tello, who runs Tello’s Mexican Food nearby.

The shooting took place around 11:25 a.m. and left deputies with a maddening lack of clues. Ventura County Sheriff’s Senior Deputy Chuck Buttell said only four people were working in the store at the time. Rodriguez, who lived in Canoga Park, was manning the cash registers up front, while three co-workers were in back.

The co-workers did not see anyone enter or leave the store, Buttell said. Instead, one heard a noise in front and went to investigate. He found Rodriguez lying on the ground and called 911.

By the time deputies and a rescue crew from the Ventura County Fire Department arrived two minutes later, Rodriguez was dead.

Preliminary interviews with neighboring shopkeepers failed to turn up any witnesses to the crime, Buttell said. Unsure even of how many suspects they were looking for, deputies hoped that anyone who might have seen someone leaving the store at the time of the crime would contact them.

“We’re asking for the assistance of the public,” Buttell said. “If anyone saw anything, they should call.”

The shooting brought a crowd of about 100 curious and shocked neighbors, some still dressed for church, to the store’s parking lot near the intersection with 2nd Street.

Ruth and Liborio Martinez watched from their porch across the street. Ruth Martinez, who described the deceased as a talkative young man who liked to watch soccer matches at work, said the crime was a shock in a normally quiet neighborhood.

“I’ve lived here in this house 15 years, and nothing like this has ever happened.”

Tony Chavez, watching from the shade of a nearby storefront, doubted that the shooter could have been someone from Moorpark.

“Around here, everybody knows everybody,” he said.

Usually trouble comes into the community from outside, he said, like the December murder of a Moorpark man by Camarillo gang members.

The crowd was still gathered when, at around 4:30 p.m., deputies allowed the victim’s family members into the store to view the crime scene and say farewell. Relatives emerged sobbing and howling in grief.

Soon after, officials removed Rodriguez’s body from the store, and the crowd gradually dispersed.

Stunning as the crime was, Tello said the incident didn’t make her feel less safe in the neighborhood.

“Things happen because they just happen,” she said. “You don’t know where or why. It’s no use worrying about it.”