Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Donut Hut owner confronts robber, who is shot; suspect arrested

Sothy Seang at the Donut Hut

Steve Marcus

Sothy Seang, 57, takes a break during a slow time at the Donut Hut, 3242 E Desert Inn Rd., Sunday, Nov. 24, 2013. Seang fought with the Cambodian army against the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. He later immigrated to the U.S. He has owned the Donut Hut in Las Vegas for 22 years.

Updated Thursday, May 15, 2014 | 7:10 p.m.

Sothy Seang at the Donut Hut

An exterior view of the Donut Hut, 3242 E Desert Inn Rd., Sunday, Nov. 24, 2013. Owner Sothy Seang, 57, fought with the Cambodian army against the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. He later immigrated to the U.S. He has owned the Donut Hut in Las Vegas for 22 years. Launch slideshow »
Click to enlarge photo

Alfonso Montellano

It wasn’t the Donut Hut’s first run-in with a robber.

After the first robbery, a concerned customer took the shop’s owner Sothy Seang to a gun show at Cashman Field, where he bought a pistol.

Seang, a combat veteran who joined the Cambodian Army as a teenager in the 1970s, scared off the next set of thieves — three masked men — with one gunshot to the wall.

On Wednesday night, the man trying to rob the shop left with a bullet wound, according to a Metro Police arrest report, which outlines the following details:

Seang was in the back of his shop, 3242 E. Desert Inn Road, when his girlfriend Peou Sorn, who works there, called for him.

A man with a bandana covering his face had jumped the counter. He wanted money and he’d indicated to Sorn that he was armed.

Customers told officers the man had also demanded money from them and that they had heard him say he’d shoot if he didn’t get cash.

Seang, mid-skirmish with the thief, told his girlfriend in his native language Khmer to grab the gun.

She snatched a 9 mm pistol and aimed it at the intruder. The man tried to take the gun, and amid the struggle, a single shot was fired.

The man fled. The couple believed the robber had been shot, but they weren’t certain.

Metro Police arrested Alfonso Montellano, 32, after he showed up at University Medical Center with a gunshot wound to his hip and a suspicious story.

Montellano told detectives he’d been at his ex-girlfriend’s house when her new boyfriend arrived. Montellano said he then jumped out the window, hopped in his truck, realized he’d been shot and drove to UMC.

Montellano was read his Miranda rights, after which he told detectives he went to the store unarmed because he needed money. A man came from the back of the store and pulled a gun on him so he turned around to leave and was shot, Montellano told detectives.

Montellano was booked into Clark County Detention Center on four counts of robbery with a deadly weapon and one count of burglary.

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