Fireworks Stand Guard Slain in Garden Grove

GARDEN GROVE —  In two Independence Day attacks, a security guard was stabbed to death at a fireworks stand, and within half an hour, robbers bound two 16-year-olds with duct tape at a second stand a few blocks away.

Police discovered the body of the 36-year-old security guard, William Martin of Garden Grove, about 5 a.m. outside a Red Devil fireworks stand in the Pavilion Plaza parking lot at Brookhurst Street and Chapman Avenue. Police said Martin might have surprised robbers as they were trying to pry open the door to the stand. He had been stabbed in the throat, but the attackers fled without taking anything.

Victoria Sundgren, who managed the stand with her husband, said Martin might have tried to interfere with the burglars because he was upset that he had failed to prevent a burglary of the stand Saturday night.

“He said, ‘They won’t get by me again,’ ” Sundgren said. She and her husband had told Martin not to try to confront anyone, she said, but to call police if he saw anything suspicious.

“But I guess he felt really bad. It was just the type of person he was. He was very protective.”

Sundgren said Martin and his wife had celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary Monday. They have a daughter about 10.

The discovery of his body came just 30 minutes after and a few blocks from where two 16-year-olds, who were guarding a Freedom Fireworks stand in a field at Garden Grove Boulevard and Euclid Street, were tied at gunpoint. The stand was robbed of $6,000 worth of fireworks.

The boys said that they had been sitting in beach chairs watching their stand as the parents of one of them slept nearby in a trailer. Two men wearing ski masks and dark clothes approached from behind and put guns to their heads, the boys said.

“They told us to shut up or they’d kill us,” one said. “So I shut up. I didn’t look at them. I just kept my head down.”

While the robbers tied them to their chairs with duct tape and blindfolded and gagged them, the boys heard a car pull up and the sound of the men breaking into the stand. Within a few minutes, the car drove off. One teen-ager managed to rip off his tape and wake his parents.

While the boys were talking to police, the same officers were notified that Martin’s body had been found by an officer on patrol, said Patricia Peterson, mother of one of the teens.

Garden Grove Police Sgt. Scott Watson said police are investigating whether the same robbers struck both stands.

Samuel Eiferman, a volunteer at the Red Devil fireworks stand, said, “I feel very horrible that something like this would happen over fireworks. It’s not worth a life for something like this. We were going to use the money to help save lives, and here this happened.” Eiferman is a former president of B’nai B’rith, a Jewish service organization that was using the stand to raise money for 29 charities.

The teen-agers’ stand was intended to raise money for a YMCA father-son camping program, the Seven Feather Nation Indian Guides. The program sponsors activities for boys ages 5 to 9 and their fathers. One of the teen-agers who was attacked Tuesday said he and his two brothers had gone through the program with their father.

Both teens said they were concerned about what the loss of the fireworks, more than a third of their stock, will mean to the program.

“I was really mad afterward that someone would come and steal from a little kids group,” the boy said. “I don’t know why they did it, but it’s not right. It’s just not the way to go.”

Patricia Peterson said given that the same men might have attacked both fireworks stands, she was just grateful that her son and his friend are alive.

“I’ve thanked God so many times and hugged my son so many times today, probably more than I have in the last six months,” Peterson said. “All you can do is thank the Lord that they are OK.”