Robber carrying air pistol killed

A 47-year-old Otis Orchards man who tried to rob a Stateline smoke shop with an air pistol was shot 10 times and killed after the clerk pulled a gun of his own.

Joseph Kalani Hatchie entered Lew’s Smoke Shop just before 8 p.m. Monday wearing a gray ski mask, authorities said, then pushed the air pistol into the clerk’s stomach and demanded cash. Kootenai County Sheriff’s Capt. Ben Wolfinger said the clerk acted as if he were getting a bag from beneath the counter, but instead pulled a .40-caliber semiautomatic gun and fired at Hatchie.

Hatchie apparently tucked the air pistol, which wasn’t loaded, into his waistband as the clerk reached under the counter, Wolfinger said, and it was there when authorities arrived and found his body.

Wolfinger displayed the gun Hatchie wielded, along with four real firearms, during a news conference Tuesday afternoon to illustrate the difficulty in distinguishing the pellet gun from the real thing. Hatchie’s air pistol, which shoots plastic pellets, looked identical to a Walther P-9 semiautomatic.

“We wanted to do this display just so you understand what this poor clerk saw last night and, in that split-second, what decision he had to make,” Wolfinger said.

Wolfinger said there have been several incidents recently in which a suspect has brandished a pellet gun and authorities haven’t been able to tell the difference. On Halloween, a juvenile had one in his hand and turned on a Kootenai County officer in Hayden, Wolfinger said. The deputy reprimanded the boy and turned him over to his parents. Spokane police shot and killed a 15-year-old boy in 2003 after he pulled a BB gun on an officer. The BB gun was made to look like a Colt .45-caliber handgun, authorities said.

“They don’t look like toys,” Wolfinger said. “They’re dangerous, and this one, obviously, ended up in a fatality.”

Police withheld the clerk’s name pending the outcome of the investigation. It will be up to the Kootenai County Prosecutor to decide whether the shooting was a justifiable homicide.

The store’s owners could not be reached for comment. Relatives of Hatchie, who has no previous criminal history, also declined to comment.

Wolfinger said the store has been robbed at least twice in the past five years.

In mid-September, a masked man entered the store, demanded cash and then bound the clerk before fleeing with an undisclosed amount of cash. No arrest has been made.

In July 2000, a man armed with a pump-action shotgun locked a clerk in the bathroom and took the cash register drawer.