Hospital Security Guard Tackles Alleged Donation Jar Thief
Española NM Feb 29 2020
When a man tried to run out of Zia Credit Union with a donation jar containing $171 for a young boy with leukemia, bystander Stephen Gregory instinctively tackled him to the ground.
Española Police Department Officer Dustin Chavez arrived on Valentine’s Day to find Gregory wrestling on the floor with the alleged robber, named only as J.B. in a criminal complaint, because he was underage.
Gregory, a former corrections officer and Army National Guard member who now works as a security officer at Española Hospital, said they struggled for five to 10 minutes before law enforcement arrived.
Chavez wrote that he handcuffed J.B., but when another officer tried to move the juvenile’s handcuffs from his back to his front, he fled toward a car in the parking lot.
Officer Cody Latin reportedly tased J.B. in the back as he tried to get into the passenger seat yelling “go, go, go,” before Latin and Sgt. Cody Martinez forced the alleged would-be getaway driver—Daylon Garcia—out of the car at gunpoint.
Garcia was charged with assisting the escape of a prisoner, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, conspiracy to commit robbery, and robbery.
Online court records do not show charges against J.B., likely due to him being a minor. He reportedly told Latin that Garcia forced him to commit the robbery.
Initial reports stated J.B. had a knife, but Gregory said it did not come out in the fight if he did—Gregory’s only injury was a cut from the shattered donation jar.
Gregory said he was second in line to pick up a paycheck when J.B. entered the credit union with his face concealed and made a beeline for the counter.
He said that when the hooded teen grabbed the donation jar, his training kicked in.
“That stuff has been drilled into you for years, you just react off it,” Gregory said. “I don’t really feel much about it. I do that stuff at work, I’ve done that stuff for years, so it’s just another thing, you know.”
Zia Credit Union CEO Dwayne Herrera said they have changed their procedure for collecting donations and may station a security guard in their Española office, partially in response to the incident.
He said staff is trained on what to do in the event of an armed robbery, but “we can never guess what a bystander in the lobby is gonna do.”
Herrera said the jar was put out after a request from a member regarding her sick grandson.
“We try to do what we can to help out our members and our community,” he said. “Our members can be pretty generous.”
