Cop Shop

A man in a wheelchair was robbed of his iPod Monday in Mesa as he headed down the street.

Robbers got away with jewelry from a Mesa store Saturday.
According to a Mesa police summary of the robbery, employees of Hortas Joyeria, 848 S. Alma School Road, said two men – one armed with a handgun – came into the store and ordered them into the bathroom in the back.
While one man stood by with the gun, the other took the merchandise.
Both men were described as Hispanic. One was about 38 years old, 5 feet, 8 inches, 180 pounds, short black hair and wearing a black jacket. The other was about 35 years old, 5 feet, 5 inches, 210 pounds, black short hair and black baseball cap.

Four men, one wanted on a felony warrant, were arrested in Chandler early Sunday after allegedly stealing beer from a convenience store.

Maricopa County Sheriff’s Dep. Pellino had stopped their vehicle for speeding on Arizona Avenue south of Elliott Road about 3 a.m., police said. Three suspects were detained without incident, but the fourth fled on foot.

Pellino lost sight of the man and called for assistance, prompting authorities from neighboring agencies to respond and set up a perimeter. Soon after, a Gilbert officer and his K9, Mike, found the man hiding near 33 E. Comstock Dr.

Robert Heathcoe, 22, refused to surrender, and so Mike bit him on the arm. Heathcoe, wanted for one felony and two misdemeanor warrants was arrested and his wounds treated at the scene by Pellino.

Authorities said the men had committed a beer run at a nearby Circle K, 751 N. Arizona Ave. in Gilbert.

Gilbert police arrested two men who were trying to block a tow-truck driver from hooking up a DUI suspect’s car Sunday.
Jose Nava Perez, 39 and Reynaldo Nava Perez, 38, were each booked on suspicion of aggravated assault after the 11:45 p.m. fight with a Gilbert officer.
The incident began a half hour earlier when police arrested Aurelio Perez, age unknown, near Arizona Avenue and Germann Road.
As Aurelio Perez was getting processed at the DUI command center a tow-truck driver reported that several people were blocking him from towing Aurelio Perez’ car.
The two men at the car began arguing with the officer who arrived and they were approaching him in a threatening manner, according to a Gilbert police summary of the incident.
Reynaldo Nava Perez began struggling with the officer and Jose Nava Perez rushed in to join.
The officer delivered a palm strike to Jose’s face, knocking him to his back, but he got back up and rushed again.
This time he got a jolt from a stun gun. Officers from several agencies responded to help out.

With time winding down on the Holiday DUI Task Force’s operations, the statewide crackdown on drunken driving continued with another 182 arrests on Saturday.

Since the Thanksgiving weekend, the task force has posted more than 2,500 arrests. Monday - New Year’s Eve - is the last night.

On Saturday officers made 14 arrests for aggravated DUI, the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety said.

A drunken-driving offense is considered aggravated when the motorist has two previous DUI offenses in the last seven years, if the motorist has a suspended, canceled or revoked license or when there is a passenger younger than 15 in the vehicle.

More than one-quarter of Saturday’s arrests were classified extreme, with blood-alcohol content levels exceeding 0.15. Of all arrestees, the average BAC was 0.142.

Of the task force’s 2,522 total DUI arrests, 780 have been for extreme DUI.

A robber who said he had a bomb got away with several bottles of prescription drugs Thursday from a Mesa pharmacy.
The bomb turned out to be a grocery bag filled with magazines, according to a written Mesa police incident summary.
The robber, described as a white, blond man in his twenties, ordered the clerk at Arizona Discount Pharmacy, 1059 N. Mesa Drive, to fill a bag with oxycodone and oxyContin, which are pain relievers that cause euphoria and are addictive.

Two Phoenix men were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of stealing televisions from a Mesa Wal-Mart and threatening an employee.

Dale Eugene Robinson Jr., 20, and Brent Allen Dansby, 21, were taken into custody at a Tempe residence. They were booked into jail on suspicion of aggravated robbery, and the merchandise was recovered from their vehicle.

According to Mesa police, the two men were spotted at Wal-Mart at 1710 S. Greenfield Road, wheeling a shopping cart with two unpaid-for TVs to their vehicle. A loss-prevention officer confronted the pair and twice asked for a receipt. That’s when the suspects threatened to punch the employee.

A third request prompted Robinson to ask Dansby to go to their car and get a gun. The men then ran to their car, loaded the televisions inside and fled.

The employee provided an accurate description of the getaway vehicle to police, and authorities followed the vehicle to Tempe.

A Mesa police car was struck by a red light runner Wednesday.
According to a Mesa police summary of the incident, the officer was westbound on 6th Street at about 10:15 a.m. when a southbound pickup truck ran a red light at Mesa Drive and collided with the right-rear wheel well of the patrol car.
The officer was treated for light headedness and stiffness and released. The pickup driver was uninjured.

All four security checkpoints at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport’s largest terminal were shut down briefly Wednesday night when federal screeners lost sight of a man who had been flagged for a secondary check. The man was quickly found by police and was eventually cleared to fly, said airport spokesman Mike Set. It was not clear what caused screeners to flag the man in the first place, he said. “They probably found something that they thought needed to be looked at a little closer,” Set said.

The shut down began a little after 7 p.m. at the airport’s Terminal 4 and lasted for eight minutes, he said. It was unclear how the screeners, who are employed by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, lost track of the man. The incident, which originally was called a “security breach,” came in the midst of one of the heaviest travel periods of the year. Travelers who were flying out of Terminal 4 likely faced small delays because of it, Set said.

A fire that gutted a Mesa day care center earlier this week is being blamed on an accident.

Shining Star Preschool, 810 E. Southern Ave., suffered $100,000 in damage during Monday’s blaze. No one was in the building at the time, as the school was closed for Christmas.

According to Mesa deputy fire chief Mike Dunn, the fire began in the kitchen and spread to a classroom. Other parts of the building had smoke damage.

Investigators concluded the preschool workers inadvertently triggered the fire while loading supplies into the kitchen. Someone bumped a knob on the stove, turning on a burner, and the heat eventually set a cardboard box on fire.