The bullet still lodged in his leg, John Gibbs recounted Wednesday what happened when he tried to stop a man from driving off with an elderly couple's Pomeranian.

"The passenger leaned out. He said something like, 'Back off.' And then - boom!," said Gibbs of Sierra Madre, who was resting at his mother's Monrovia home.

Shortly before 6 p.m. Tuesday, the elderly couple was walking their dog near Fifth Avenue and Duarte Road when a man confronted them and tried to snatch their dog, police said.

Gibbs, 45, was talking to his mother in her front yard when he spotted a man following the couple and then accosting them.

"All of a sudden he grabbed the leash and yanked it out of their hand," he said.

Gibbs chased the man as he ran toward a white Nissan Altima with several people inside, he said. The man dropped the dog and jumped inside the car through an open rear window, Gibbs said.

That's when the passenger in the car pulled a gun, he said.

The shooter fired one round, which hit Gibbs in the upper left thigh, before the car sped off.

A bleeding Gibbs limped back to his mother's house and waited for paramedics to arrive. He is expected to recover fully, he said.

Tuesday night, El Monte police arrested four men who they believe were involved in the attempted dog-napping, as well as another robbery that night.

Police identified the suspects as Albert Garcia, 55, of Alhambra, Jason Garcia, 34, of Alhambra, Kekai Larsen, 26, of Los Angeles and Joseph Duran, 23, of Los Angeles.

The four were booked on suspicion of robbing the owner of an importing business at gunpoint on the 9900 block Gidley Street minutes before the attempted dog-napping, El Monte police Detective Ralph Batres said.

The car used in that robbery was later found to be the same car used in the attempted dog-napping, Batres said. A fifth suspect remained at-large. Police have not recovered a gun, Batres said.

Gibbs, who works as a mechanic for the Los Angeles Police Department, said he could feel the slug pushing up against the joint between his hip and thigh bone, but he was still walking around as he waited Wednesday afternoon for an appointment with a surgeon to remove the bullet.

Paramedics told Gibbs he could have died had the slug hit the femoral artery in his thigh.

"They said if it would have hit that I would have bled out," he said.

Gibbs mother, who feared retaliation and did not want to be identified, said she was proud of her son, but she wished he hadn't chased the robber.

"No dog is worth getting shot," she said.