Sears Officials Looking Into Alleged Roughing Up of Shoplifting Suspect : Investigation: An eyewitness says two guards at the South Coast Plaza store used excessive force.

Officials at Sears, Roebuck said Monday that they are investigating an altercation at their South Coast Plaza store over the weekend that led to a citizen’s arrest of two security guards who allegedly roughed up a shoplifting suspect.

Although the suspect, who reportedly had struggled with the employees, remained hospitalized Monday, store officials and police said they doubt that excessive force was used in apprehending him.

An eyewitness to the incident said he helped two security guards pin down the shoplifting suspect as he left the store about 5:30 p.m. Sunday but was then shocked to see the guards slam the suspect’s head against a wall at least four times.

The witness, Robert McDonald, 40, of El Toro, said the man’s face was bloodied. But police said the suspect, Robert Gregory Smith, 33, did not appear to be hurt beyond a cut lip, although he was taken into custody at Western Medical Center-Anaheim complaining of pain.

Hospital officials refused to allow a visitor Monday night to see Smith, saying his condition prohibited it. They would not say what his medical condition is.

Smith, whose address is unknown and who is on parole on a conviction that officials would not disclose, is being held in the hospital jail ward on suspicion of robbery, Costa Mesa police said. They would not identify the merchandise he is accused of trying to steal. The robbery allegation was based on Smith’s alleged use of force.

Sears officials said that after speaking with their employees and other, unidentified bystanders, they have no evidence to substantiate McDonald’s account.

“Following our preliminary investigation, our findings have failed to support the charges filed against the two agents, and both remain on their jobs,” said Gordon Jones, a spokesman with Sears’ corporate office in Chicago. The in-house review is continuing, he said.

Costa Mesa police said they, too, were skeptical about the allegations.

“We think this is possibly an overreaction to all the publicity about police brutality and arrests,” said Lt. Jim Watson, watch commander at the time of the incident.

Added Police Sgt. Robert Durham, field supervisor at the scene, “The only injury I could see on him was a split lip. . . .”

“I really can’t decide whether it happened or not--there were no other witnesses other than McDonald that came forward, and the security guards are all obviously saying this isn’t what happened,” Durham added. “And we weren’t there, so we really don’t know what happened.”

Nonetheless, at the insistence of McDonald, officers at the scene cited the two Sears employees on suspicion of assault and battery and released them without bond. Watson said that in such a case, the officers legally had no choice but to arrest them.

Costa Mesa detectives said Monday that they probably will not investigate the matter any further, leaving it instead to the Orange County district attorney’s office to determine whether the charges should be pursued against the guards.

Police identified the two Sears employees as Armand Castellanos, 24, of Santa Ana and David Hermann, 24, of Westminster. Castellanos declined to comment and Hermann could not be reached.

An employee in the Sears security division in Costa Mesa said, “We’ve been instructed by the corporate office not to talk about this.”

According to McDonald’s account of the incident, Castellanos and Hermann--in street clothes but equipped with walkie-talkies--were chasing a man from the store and ended up pushing him into McDonald’s 8-year-old son, who was using a pay phone just outside a store exit near the Sears Auto Center.

In an interview, McDonald said that as the suspect tried to break free from the grasp of the two Sears employees, McDonald helped pin him down until he could be handcuffed.

But even after Smith was handcuffed, McDonald said, one of the guards punched Smith in the face. Then, as the suspect continued to shout obscenities, the guards told him to “shut up” and together slammed his head and body into the wall at least four times, McDonald reported.

Once Smith was on the ground, the guards then sat on him as he screamed “my back, my back!” according to McDonald’s account.

“There was no question this was excessive,” said McDonald, a sign salesman who was at the mall with his son and daughter. “It just didn’t seem rational.”

McDonald said he called 911 to get help for the suspect during the altercation. But after police arrived, he said, he was angered to find that they did not want to arrest the two guards. After he insisted on making a citizen’s arrest, Castellanos and Hermann were taken to a police substation at South Coast Plaza and ordered to appear in court at a later date.

Durham said McDonald was so angry that “he was threatening to beat up the security guards if we didn’t arrest them. . . . We just kept him away from them and said, ‘We’ll do whatever you want.’ ”