“Try ‘John Dorsey,’” I said. “And to narrow it down, can you also add ‘Nat’s bar’?”

She typed in the information and started the search. It came back with thirteen hits and I asked her to bring up the first one. It was dated April 7, 2000, and reported events from the day before.

ONE COP DEAD, ONE HURT IN HOLLYWOOD BAR SHOOTING

By Keisha Russell

Times Staff Writer

Two Los Angeles police detectives on a lunch break and a bartender were gunned down in a Hollywood bar yesterday when a man entered the establishment and attempted to rob it at gunpoint.

The 1 p.m. shooting at Nat’s on Cherokee Avenue left Detective John H. Dorsey, 49, dead of multiple gunshot wounds and his partner, Lawton Cross Jr., 38, in critical condition with head and neck wounds. Donald Rice, 29, a bartender working in the lounge, was shot multiple times and also died at the scene.

The suspect, who wore a black ski mask, escaped with an undisclosed amount of cash from the cash register, said Lt. James Macy, of the Officer Involved Shooting unit.

“It appears this was about a few hundred dollars at most,” Macy said at a press conference staged outside of the bar where the shooting took place. “We can find no reason for this guy to have started shooting.”

Macy went on to say that it was unclear whether Dorsey and Cross had attempted to stop the robbery, thereby causing the shooting to start. He said both detectives were shot while sitting in a booth in the dimly lit bar area. Neither had drawn his weapon.

The detectives had been conducting an interview in a business near Nat’s bar when they decided to take a lunch break in the bar, according to Macy. There was no indication that either man had been consuming alcohol in the bar.

“They went there as a matter of convenience,” Macy said. “It was the unluckiest decision they could have made.”

No other patrons or employees were in the bar at the time of the incident. A person who was not in the bar saw the gunman fleeing after the shooting and was able to provide police with a limited description of the suspect. As a safety precaution the witness was not identified by police.

I stopped reading to ask the librarian if I could simply print the story out.

“It’s fifty cents a page,” she said. “Cash only.”

“Okay, do it.”

She hit the PRINT command and then leaned backwards in her seat to see if she could see down the aisle to the reference desk. Standing, I could see it better.

“You’re still clear. Can you do one more for me?”

“If we hurry. What is it?”

I raced through my memory banks trying to come up with a name that would work for what I wanted to do next.

“How about the word ‘terrorism’?”