After the robbery: Dad escapes police grasp

ELLENSBURG — It happens every day: A man pulls out a gun and tells a convenience store clerk to open the till. But the little girl in a pink jacket standing forlornly by the robber’s side made this crime anything but ordinary.

More than two days after the heartbreaking videotaped holdup at an Ellensburg-area store, 9-year-old Meadow Webb was safe in the hands of family friends Thursday in a small town along the Northern California coast.

Her father, Robert Daniel Webb, a former Yakima resident, narrowly escaped police there and remained at large.

Police describe Webb, 42, as a man who cared for his daughter but had problems with alcohol and trouble holding a job; at one point his wife had a restraining order against him. He had recently lost his job in the eyeglass industry.

The robber on Tuesday threatened to kill the graveyard shift clerk at an AM/PM convenience store near Ellensburg if he called police, but he also tried to explain himself.

“I’m out of work. My daughter’s got to survive,” he said on the video.

Despite being held at gunpoint, clerk Eric Owens said he could identify with the man’s desperation given the country’s recession.

“He told me he lost his job, that his daughter needed health care,” said Owens, a 48-year-old who was laid off from his own IT job in Seattle. “I told him, ‘OK, dude. There’s a lot of people hurting right now.

“I’ve been a single parent before. I’ve sold my blood to feed them.’”

Owens was interviewed over the phone on NBC’s “Today”  show Thursday morning, and was preparing that afternoon for more interviews by national newscasters Keith Olbermann and Geraldo Rivera. The story has picked up as far away as Australia.

Owens said he hadn’t slept much and was scheduled to work the graveyard shift again Thursday night.

He said the robber’s eyes teared up as they talked.

“That told me right there this guy is really hurting inside. He’s angry, defeated. He’s just desperate,” he said. “Down, deep inside he’s probably a decent guy, but he made a bad choice out of desperation.”

Later Tuesday, Webb and his daughter were spotted in Yakima. By Wednesday night, they had turned up in Fortuna, in Califonia’s Humboldt County. There Webb dropped off the girl at an acquaintance’s house, Fortuna police said.

The acquaintance learned Webb was wanted and called police, who were waiting when he returned. But Webb sped away into the darkness just as officers approached him, police said.

By Thursday, the girl’s mother was headed for Fortuna to pick up her daughter, police said.

“She was surprised that her husband would actually commit a robbery, but once that sunk in, that he had put their daughter in that position, she became very concerned and upset,” said Kittitas County Undersheriff Clayton Myers.

Webb had a history of behaving aggressively in front of his family, according to allegations filed in a 2007 restraining order filed in Yakima County Superior Court.

He was accused by his wife of trying to choke her, threatening her with a bow and arrow, and breaking a window.

“We had many verbal arguments in front of our daughter,” Susan Huynh Webb wrote in seeking the restraining order. “He threw eggs at my car while my daughter and I were sitting in it.

“She is afraid of him now.”

The restraining order, which lasted several months, directed Webb to seek alcohol treatment and anger management.

Webb had most recently lived in Everett, Wash., about 120 miles northwest of Ellensburg, police said. But public records show he had lived in Yakima, as well as Humboldt County, Calif.

His stepmother, Lola Webb, answered the door at her home in Sunnyside but refused to speak with a reporter from The Associated Press except to confirm that the little girl was safe.

“Yes, thank God for that,” she said.

• To view a clip of surveillance footage of the robbery go to: http://www.nwcn.com/