Sometimes it hurts to ask for help. Just ask Charles Lamont Wright.
Wright, a 28-year-old North Richmond resident, sat in his girlfriend's car last week at a Hercules roadside after she ran out of gas. The girlfriend decided to call 911 for help, police say.
While not the usual way of summoning a tow, police applaud her initiative. Nearby El Cerrito, after all, sought both in connection with a January takeover robbery.
"(Wright) was also a parolee at large. He was wanted before we identified him," El Cerrito Detective Sgt. Scott Cliatt said. "He gave a relative's name, but fortunately, Hercules PD is on the same radio channel with Pinole. Pinole had our information, and had subsequently identified Wright as a suspect in a robbery in their city."
Wright, arrested Feb. 17, now awaits court proceedings in County Jail in Martinez, charged with robbery and false imprisonment. He joins 22-year-old North Richmond resident David Lopez, arrested the day after a Jan. 24 heist attempt at Allied Cash Advance in El Cerrito.
Prosecutors declined to file charges against the girlfriend, whom police suspected at the time of her arrest.
Police say three men in hooded sweatshirts barged into the business, on the 10700 block of San Pablo Avenue, ordered everyone to the floor and tried to hold up the place.
They left with no cash -- the safe was on a timer -- and only personal effects. El Cerrito police quickly forwarded surveillance camera footage of the robbery to neighboring police departments, and North Richmond sheriff's deputies quickly identified the suspects.
El Cerrito police received further confirmation of their identities from fingerprints left at the crime scene, and a witness took down the license plate number of a stolen rental car used as the getaway vehicle. Richmond police stopped the car two hours later, driven by someone uninvolved in the robbery.
El Cerrito police now seek one more suspect in the robbery. They declined to release more information about him to preserve elements of their investigation.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
