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JOSEPHINE COUNTY Man with gun causes scare in Merlin Sheriff's office says it has identified man who allegedly shot out a car window, pulled gun on driver Comment By Melissa McRobbie Grants Pass Daily Courier MailTribune.com By Melissa McRobbie Grants Pass Daily Courier Posted Sep. 8, 2015 at 2:49 PM By Melissa McRobbie Grants Pass Daily Courier Posted Sep. 8, 2015 at 2:49 PM » Social News MERLIN — Authorities are searching for a gun-wielding man who terrorized a handful of people in Merlin on Sunday, shooting out a woman's car window outside Baldini's Restaurant & Lounge and threatening others near the Monument Market. Josephine County Sheriff Dave Daniel said this morning that his deputies have identified a "person of interest" in the case, but said the man isn't in custody and that he couldn't yet release the man's name. "The Sheriff's Office is very aware of it … He is not under the radar," Daniel said. He declined to provide specific details, saying deputies are still working on the case. Nicole Strykowski's encounter with the man occurred while she was eating lunch with her mother at Baldini's around 2:30 p.m. Sunday. She knew almost everyone at Baldini's that day, but there was a man sitting at the bar whom she didn't recognize. "He was one of the few faces at the bar I didn't know," she said. Sheriff's dispatch records would later note that the man drank a beer and a tequila shot at the bar. Around the time Strykowski's food arrived, the man left the restaurant. A short time after that, someone told Strykowski the driver's side window of her 2014 Subaru Outback had been shattered. Her car was parked right out front, and when she went outside to investigate, she heard a pop. "This customer — and I still don't know his name or how to thank him — he instantly reacted and said, 'That was a gunshot,'" Strykowski said. She darted back inside and employees sprang into action, locking the doors, telling everyone to get down on the floor and calling 911. "The staff was so fast," she said. Meanwhile, the gunman drove off in a black pickup truck. Strykowski said shards of shattered glass from the window were lodged in the passenger-side door. "There's literally glass sticking out all over it," she said. At the nearby Valero station next to the Monument Market, the stranger then pulled a gun on a customer in a U-Haul. "He just pulled up to the pump," Valero manager Shawn Johnson said of the U-Haul driver. "He was waiting to get served, and then a guy came walking over and stuck a gun in his face." The U-Haul driver peeled away and fled, he said. Grants Pass resident Laurie Clair, who was waiting for her friend to come out of the market, heard yelling and then saw the U-Haul go flying over a curb and thought for a second it might tip over. Then she saw a man walking from the gas station toward a black pickup truck that was parked next to her own car. He had something in his hand that looked like a gun, she said. "He came around the backside of the black pickup truck, right towards me and he was yelling at me and screaming at me," she said. "I thought he was going to hurt me." She jumped in her car and locked the doors, and the man got into his pickup and left, briefly blocking in her car as he pulled out. Shaken, Clair called 911 and gave a report, then decided to continue with her plan to go look at some property in the Colonial Valley area. But as she and her friend were driving along Soldier Creek Road, she saw the man in the black pickup again. She said he saw her too, and made a U-turn to follow her. Heart pounding, she turned onto another street and headed back to Merlin while her friend called 911 again, she said. He stopped following them at that point, Clair said. "I stepped on the gas and got the heck out of there," she said. She now feels anxious whenever she thinks about Sunday, and can't remember clearly what the man looked like, other than that he was a stocky "older man" with dark hair. "I try to picture him in my head and it goes blank," Clair said. Strykowski said a friend who was tending bar at Baldini's on Sunday told her the gunman had said he felt like harming people. "It was really scary, but no one got hurt and that's the most important thing," she said. "I will forever have a place in my heart for people who work at Baldini's." By Melissa McRobbie Grants Pass Daily Courier MailTribune.com By Melissa McRobbie Grants Pass Daily Courier Posted Sep. 8, 2015 at 2:49 PM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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