Main image
2nd February
2011
written by Richard

The scene at Fifth Avenue and F Street was like an episode of violence from a western movie or four hours of street fighting from a war.  Only the uniforms were wrong and the “enemy” was a single gunman. —–San Diego Union, April 9, 1965

The site of a popular downtown Starbuck’s was the scene of a violent robbery in April 1965. The Hub Pawnshop Shootout.

4 Comments

  1. John Culea
    22/05/2018

    Does anyone know if Robert Page Anderson is still alive? Last interview was in Seattle in 1990.

  2. 22/05/2018

    Hi John,
    I’ve got a file on Anderson at home with all the research notes from when I wrote the article. But here at work, without that file at hand, I’m looking at Ancestry.com and see from the SS Death Index that he died on August 13, 1999. The death index record shows his birth date as January 4, 1937. There’s also a California Birth Index record that shows the same date.
    Regards, Rick

  3. John Culea
    22/05/2018

    Hi Rick,
    Wow, you are awesome.
    Thank you so much for this info. I am in the process of starting a book on the Hub shootout. My last eight books have been historical novels but I am in the mood to do something nonfiction and the Hub story has always intrigued me. The late Ray Wilson narrated a news story on that day that is riveting.
    I admire your work and appreciate your love of history and bringing the past alive. My books have been about events in Arizona and recently stories centered on the two expositions in Balboa Park and the first year of the Padres in 1936. My latest effort “Infamy to Injustice Liberties Shame” follows a fictional family from San Diego following their exile along with about a thousand others to Santa Anita and then to Poston, Arizona. It was the hardest of the books to write. I’ll be doing a presentation at an event at USD the morning of June 19.
    I want to acknowledge your help in my latest work and would appreciate any additional info you can provide. I would like to now more about Robert Crandall, the newspaper guy who had a heart attack at the scene and more info on Louis Richards, the credit manager who was killed. I hope to find that in a search of the UT archives at SDSU next week. They have great resources. Too bad that the UT is not part of the California Digital Project. I accessed the San Bernarino Sun for much of the background in “Infamy” and also the newspapers at the internment camps at Santa Anita and Poston.
    Thank you again for your help. Please call me anytime at 858 484-5118. If there is anything I can do for you, just ask.
    Best,
    John (john.culea@gmail.com)

  4. Orvil Hale
    14/10/2018

    Hi John,

    I just finished reading yoour book on the Hub Shootout. What a masterpiece! The thoroughness and its contents go way beyond my expectations. Thank you for allowing me to contribute some of the historical details.

    Orv Hale

Leave a Reply