No arrest appears to have been made by Española City Police after a Walgreens employee was allegedly hit in the head with a glass bottle, after grabbing a man she accused of serial shoplifting and not letting him go.
Officer Marcos Gallegos responded to Walgreens on Oct. 25, after the man allegedly hit the worker in the head and when he got there, he looked for the man, but couldn’t find him, and walked into the store. There, the victim was lying on her back on the floor. Gallegos wrapped the cut on her head, then told dispatchers he needed an ambulance, he wrote in an incident report. It is not clear from his report if she was conscious or unconscious.
A witness who works at the store saw the victim and a customer arguing.
He went over to help but by the time he got there, the unidentified assailant had hit the victim in the head with the glass bottle.
“(Witness) stated, once she was hit in the head, she fell to the floor and was bleeding and the male individual ran out of the store,” Gallegos wrote.
The victim was taken to the hospital and there, the officer asked her what happened.
She told him she saw a man who is a “well known shoplifter” and told him to leave and he got aggressive with her.
He was trying to steal an unidentified item, so she approached him and told him to leave again and once she approached him, he grabbed a glass bottle and hit her over the head. She did not know the man’s name, but said he goes into the business “every other day to steal.”
When Gallegos watched the surveillance footage, he saw the victim arguing with the unidentified man, then saw the victim grab the man.
“While grabbing the male, the male tried pulling away from her to leave but (the victim) was not letting him go so the male grabbed the glass bottle and struck her with the bottle over the head,” Gallegos wrote.
He did not specify what type of glass bottle was used and whether it shattered.
Gallegos gave the Walgreens manager his business card and told him to call when they figure out the man’s name so he can file charges against him.
He made no notes about saving the surveillance footage as evidence.