July 13, 2022 – Ventura County, Ca.
The reputation among criminal peers must suffer tremendously when one has stolen a car from an old man and is ultimately reduced to a doomed attempt at running away from the cops on foot.
According to Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. Beau Rodriguez, however, that’s exactly what happened to 24-year-old Fillmore resident John Anthony Gonzalez. It all started in the early evening of July 5th when deputies attached to the Fillmore Patrol Station and the Sheriff’s Gang Unit were made aware that “an elderly victim’s vehicle was stolen from a residential garage.”
The immediately ensuing investigation led to the discovery of the stolen vehicle just 90 minutes later “parked, unoccupied” on a Fillmore street some distance away from the scene of the theft. Undoubtedly realizing that if the car was quickly returned to the victim when they discovered it, the cops took more of a wait-and-see approach and simply kept their eye on the stolen vehicle.
They didn’t have to wait long. Just two hours later, deputies watched from the shadows as “Gonzalez entered the stolen vehicle.” But as the cops swept in to make contact with him, Gonzalez promptly alighted from the car and high-tailed it on foot in an obvious attempt to avoid arrest. As fast as Gonzalez may have been in the prime of his youth, he wasn’t fast enough and “after a short foot pursuit” he was taken into custody at a W. Ventura Street gas station.
Gonzalez was transported to Ventura County Jail, where he was booked on multiple arrest warrants, burglary, theft of a motor vehicle, elder abuse, vehicle tampering, and resisting arrest.
