By ETHAN ROUEN
Day Staff Writer/Columnist, Police/Fire Reporter

Plainfield,CT - Robert L. Stewart did not obey a shotgun-toting robber
Wednesday night when the man ordered Stewart and other patrons to huddle behind the bar. The thief shot Stewart when he stayed where he was. He had not heard the man's instructions, or the gunshot.

Stewart is deaf.

At about 9:15 p.m. Wednesday, Stacia Webber threw a drunk and belligerent man out of her bar, the Sportsman 2 Caf? on Railroad Avenue in Moosup, she told police. The man returned 15 minutes later wearing a green ski mask and carrying a shotgun, Webber said. "He was wearing the same clothes and had the same build," she said. "The only difference was the ski mask, which had two eyeholes cut out."
There were eight regulars in the bar, including Stewart, 36, a cook at Mitchell College in New London, who had been coming in on Wednesdays to shoot pool for about 5 years, Webber said.

Four of the patrons ducked behind the bar as the armed man, whom police later identified as Edmund H. Hernandez, 27, of 39 Parent Hill Road, Moosup, demanded money from the register. The other four patrons were trapped in a corner, a double-barrel shotgun blocking them from their friends. The trapped men placed their hands on the bar as Hernandez approached them. "He poked the gun in the side of one of the guy's faces and yelled, `Get against the wall. Get behind the bar. Get against the wall. Get behind the bar,'" Webber said.

Two of the men followed his directions. Another ducked into the bathroom. Stewart did not move. Hernandez fired the gun into Stewart's right shoulder at point-blank range, Webber said. The buckshot hit him in the face and went through his shoulder and into a wall. Hernandez ran out the front door with an undisclosed amount of cash as Stewart crawled behind the bar, Webber said.

"Bob asked, `What did I do,'" Webber said. "I'm glad everyone knew Bob so he saw all familiar faces." Patrons were able to see Hernandez's license plate, and police from Plainfield and the State Police Troops D and E arrested him a short time later.
He was charged with criminal attempt to commit murder, first-degree assault, first-degree robbery, first-degree larceny, criminal use of a firearm, first-degree reckless endangerment and second-degree threatening. He was held on $500,000 cash bond and arraigned Thursday in Danielson Superior Court.

Stewart, a Moosup resident, was taken to The William W. Backus Hospital and later transferred to Rhode Island Hospital, where his mother, Phyllis, said he is expected to make a full recovery after several surgeries to his face and shoulder.

The Sportsman 2 was closed Thursday, but Webber came in to clean the blood from the bar and pick up the buckshot that littered the floor and walls. She chain-smoked as she examined a blood stain and marveled at a place on the ceiling where a bone fragment was lodged.

"I've owned the bar 10 years, and nothing like this has ever happened," she said. "This is a small town. This kind of stuff only happens on TV."
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