A man serving a 33-year state prison sentence for a 1996 robbery and hostage standoff at the Davis Food Co-op was denied parole Thursday, according to the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office.
It was the first parole suitability hearing for Ronald Kenneth Martin, 49, who was convicted of seven felonies in connection with the Feb. 22, 1996, offense. He will again be eligible for parole in 2027.
“This was an atrocious crime that has no doubt caused severe emotional damage to these victims,” Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig said. “Our office is committed to representing the interests of victims’ families and public safety at these parole hearings, and when it’s appropriate we argue against the release of inmates who are a danger to the public.”
Martin was armed with multiple handguns when he and an accomplice entered the Co-op building, forced employees into the cooler and ordered the manager to open the store safe.
Retired Davis police Sgt. Scott Smith, working patrol at the time, said Friday that “I remember it like it happened yesterday.”
He recalled that officers responding to a 911 call from a store employee had positioned themselves at both the front and rear of the G Street store, where the suspects initially tried to leave through the front doors after the robbery went down.
“They panicked and shot a round through the window, then ran back inside,” Smith told The Davis Enterprise. A short time later, the back door opened halfway “and all of a sudden bullets started flying from there. We exchanged gunfire, and the door slammed shut.”
Later, the suspects used store employees as “human shields,” surrounding themselves with the workers to protect themselves from police as they exited the building, and threatening to kill them if they weren’t allowed to pass through.
“We weren’t able to confront them at that point,” Smith said. The group moved east across the railroad tracks to a fence backing up to K Street, where the suspects released the hostages and jumped over the fence.
“The next thing you know, the hostages are running back,” Smith said.
An extensive search of the neighborhood ensued by members of the Davis Police Department SWAT team, who found Martin hiding in a dog house in a resident’s back yard, Smith said. His accomplice eluded apprehension.
Smith said the event sticks in his mind because “here you had an extremely violent, extremely dangerous situation unfold. You had the epitome of Davis, the Co-op, being robbed at gunpoint and gunfire being exchanged in the heart of Davis.”
In 1997, Martin made a plea agreement in the case, pleading no contest to seven felony counts and admitting to personal use of a firearm in connection with each offense in exchange for a state prison sentence of 33 years, four months.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Thursday’s three-hour parole hearing was conducted by Skype conference from California State Prison Solano in Vacaville. It ended with the two-commissioner panel of the Board of Parole Hearings finding Martin posed a continued risk to public safety.
According to the DA’s Office, Commissioner Deborah San Juan “told Martin that his insight was cursory, his conduct in prison evidenced lingering problems with antisocial activity, he lacked self-control and he hadn’t developed the tools to avoid returning to prison, if released.”
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene