MARTINEZ — If a man hadn’t stepped in goo on March 22, 2023, 44-year-old Abdul Raouf might still be alive.
That’s the picture painted by eyewitnesses who have described a terrifying ordeal whereby 39-year-old Gregory Rossignon fired shots outside his girlfriend’s home, threatened to kill people, and fatally shot Raouf, a clerk at an E-Z Stop on Power Avenue in Pittsburg, outside the store. Rossignon was already in a bad mood, but his anger only intensified when Raouf allegedly told his girlfriend she couldn’t clean off Rossignon’s dirty shoe inside the convenience store.
During the ensuing confrontation, Rossignon allegedly shot the clerk. At the start of trial, Deputy District Attorney Mary Knox called it an “execution” preceded and followed by other violent crimes.
“(Rossignon) shoots Mr. Raouf twice in the chest at point blank range,” Knox said in her opening statement, describing surveillance video that jurors were to be shown.
Rossignon has been charged with murder. His lawyer, Bobby Bell, has a two-pronged defense: He didn’t do it, or if he did, Rossignon’s mental health history will demonstrate he “lacked the mental state” required by state law to prove murder.
Rossignon lived with his girlfriend a short distance from the convenience store. Multiple eyewitnesses, including a woman who lived at the home, described how he and his girlfriend argued that day and that Rossignon fired shots outside the home to make his point, then — noticing a friend’s van parked nearby — walked over and demanded that he and his girlfriend be given a ride to the store.
The woman, a family member of Rossignon’s girlfriend, wept on the stand as she recounted the incident.
“I’m not trying to be here,” she said. “My family has been through enough already.”
Once at the store, Rossignon allegedly told his girlfriend to go into the store and clean off his shoe. When she came out, apparently irate that Raouf had rudely kicked her out, she and Rossignon exchanged words, authorities say. Then Rossignon allegedly confronted Raouf and killed him.
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Afterwards, Rossignon ran to his friend’s green van, demanded a ride, and fled the area. On the way, he threatened to kill all three others inside if they told what they saw.
“I was scared to death,” one woman who was in the van testified on the first day of trial.
Rossignon ended up in Modesto, where he looked up an ex-girlfriend. He spent several days there laying low, listening to a police scanner, hoping the cops wouldn’t track him down. Eventually the woman was able to sneak out and alert police, who arrested Rossignon after a standoff.
“She basically had to escape out of her own apartment,” Knox told the jury.