LAKE WORTH — An armed robber who held up a store across the street from
the city police station Monday made his fatal mistake when he turned his
gun from the shop owner and toward a woman and baby who came in the
door, according to investigators.

That is when the store’s owner, Noe Brewster, grabbed his own gun and
shot Orlando Guadalupe once in the face, killing him, police said.

The woman Guadalupe had threatened was Brewster’s daughter-in-law and
the baby his grandson, said relatives who gathered around the 1106
Lucerne Ave. beeper business after the shooting.

No one else was hurt, police said, but Brewster, 47, later was taken to
an area hospital complaining of chest pains. Police late Monday
identified the robber as Guadalupe, 35, of 808-3 Tiffany Drive W. in
West Palm Beach.

Lake Worth police Sgt. Ed Riddle said the shooting appeared to be
self-defense and was “eerily similar” to another daylight holdup that
ended in a robber’s death slightly more than a week before. On May 11,
jeweler Garry Bernardo shot to death one of two men who held him up in
his suburban Lake Worth pawnshop. Brewster, in fact, knows Bernardo,
family members said.

The daylight robbery of the store that faces the police station also was
“brazen,” Riddle said
“I guess he couldn’t read the sign that says `police,? ” Riddle said.

The robber had apparently come to the store, Beeper Stop, earlier to
“case” it, Riddle said.

The man returned about 5 p.m. saying he wanted to get a beeper. Brewster
turned to get paperwork, he told police, and turned back to face a
semiautomatic handgun. He told police he had the chance to reach for his
weapon when the man pointed his gun at the woman and baby, threatening
to kill them if he didn’t get money.

Several doors down, Jim Curran of All Type Air Conditioning didn’t hear
the gunshot but heard screaming and ran outside to see a woman running
from the store, carrying a baby and calling for help.

Police interviewed Brewster and his daughter-in-law at the police
station, where Noe Brewster Jr. joined his wife and father.
“I believe he saved their lives and his own,” Noe Brewster Jr. said
later.

Brewster has owned the store for about a year since retiring from the
housing authority, his sister Emily Brewster Leal said. He has had no
serious problems and family members often visit, she said.

On Monday evening, the lights were still on in the empty store. A
playpen holding a child’s toy and a bottle stood by the window, a few
yards from a pool of blood.

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