Paul Bass Photo
Officers arrest accused brick-thrower in Wells Fargo lot after a struggle.
When Ron Patel heard the glass smash Friday afternoon from a window at his Beverage Boss store on Whalley Avenue, he checked outside. There, he said, he found a man who’d tossed a brick.
The chase was on.
Patel ran after the man down Whalley Avenue. Some of his employees joined the chase. Someone called the cops. Sirens blared up and down the avenue.
The pursuers followed the alleged brick-thrower a few blocks west into the parking lot of the Wells Fargo at Norton and Whalley.
At that moment, Officer Krzysztof Rusczyk pulled his cruiser into the lot. He got out to approach the pursued man. Assistant Police Chief Al Vazquez arrived, too, and joined him.
Vazquez said the man ignored orders to stop. They went to arrest him, and the man started fighting the officers, Vazquez said. He said the man put up a struggle and kept reaching toward a duffel bag he was clutching.
A small crowd gathered. The police finally subdued the man around 3:15 p.m., handcuffed him, arrested him. Information about the arrestee’s age and hometown was not immediately available.
“We didn’t know if he had a gun, or what he had,” Vazquez remarked at the scene.
Officers retrieved a knife (pictured) from the duffel.
“He was fighting,” Patel, who watched the arrest, said afterward. “They [police] did a good job.”
