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Two police officers drew their guns on a suspected car thief in the parking lot of the Showers Drive Walmart Tuesday morning, according to one witness and the police department’s spokeswoman.
Mache Creeger, a Ladera man, said he came upon the scene at about 10:15 a.m. on Tuesday, May 22, while on his way to shop at the big box retailer, located at 600 Showers Dr. “I was obviously startled,” Creeger said to the Voice.
According to Creeger, two police trained weapons on two men as they sat in an “older, somewhat beat-up car” parked in the Walmart parking lot. The police yelled instructions at the men, eventually taking them into custody without incident.
A slightly different sequence of events was described by Liz Wylie, public information officer for the Mountain View Police Department. She told the Voice that only one man was arrested, and that he was out of the car and walking toward Walmart when officers ordered him to stop.
Official details were sparse, as full police report has yet to be written. But Wylie did confirm that officers drew their guns on the unnamed suspect, explaining that police always take extreme caution with individuals suspected of stealing cars. “Historically, a lot of people are armed who steal cars,” Wylie said.
On top of that, she added, car thieves commonly run, and have been known to use stolen vehicles as a weapon against authorities, she said.
Weapons drawn in the Walmart parking lot is pretty stupid given all the innocent people that could get hit by a stray round. Once rounds are fire, who knows where they will wind up. Better to have tailed the suspects and pulled them over in a coordinated stop elsewhere. We don’t need the Wild West in Mountain View.
BTW, is this near the Day Worker Center?
This is why I shop at Target. Glad to see the MV-Voice locked this article down to only registered users.
Don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings with insensitive remarks and have my post deleted.