WESTMINSTER : Witness Notes Led to Arrest, Police Testify

Quick identification of suspects in an armored-car shooting last month came because a woman in the neighborhood took note of suspicious activity and memorized a car license plate, according to testimony in a hearing at Municipal Court Friday in Westminster.

Garden Grove Police Detective Robert M. Donahue told the court that a woman out on her morning walk near Magnolia and Chapman streets May 16 heard shots and saw a car fleeing.

“She memorized the license plate numbers, went home and wrote down the license numbers,” Donahue said. He added that she then notified police. Police traced the license number, and that led to the identification and eventual capture of three suspects, Donahue said.

Donahue’s testimony came in the first day of a preliminary hearing for two of the suspects, Gilbert O. Green, 22, and Thomas Anthony Chaney, 28, both of Ontario. They and Mark Anthony Blount, 25, of Pomona are accused of attempting to hold up a Wells Fargo Armored Car Services vehicle on May 16 at a 7-Eleven store at Magnolia and Chapman. The suspects have pleaded innocent.

The armored car driver, John Statkus, 25, of Fullerton, was critically wounded by two gunshots in the robbery attempt.

Relatives of Statkus were in court Friday, and they told a reporter that Statkus is no longer in critical condition but that he is seriously handicapped, both mentally and physically, as a result of the incident.

“There were some wrong reports originally on how many times he was shot,” his wife, Carrie Statkus, said. “He was shot once in the forehead and once in the neck.” She said her husband was moved last week from UCI Medical Center in Orange, where he had originally been taken, to an Orange County rehabilitation hospital that she declined to disclose.

John Statkus’ mother-in-law, Donna Winston, said that doctors decided not to remove a bullet lodged in his skull. Winston said the brain injury from the shooting has left her son-in-law barely able to speak and that he has suffered a serious memory loss. She said he also does not have full control of his arms and legs.

Donahue testified that Green, Chaney and Blount had followed the armored car Statkus was driving from the company’s La Habra office to the automated tellers in Garden Grove and Westminster that Statkus had been assigned to replenish with cash. Donahue said Chaney, a former Wells Fargo Armored Car Services employee, had been fired by the firm on May 8. The attempt to rob the armored car May 16 came during its second stop of the day, Donahue told the court.

Donahue said that Green and Chaney, after being read their rights against having to give any sort of a statement, voluntarily agreed to give videotaped statements to the police who arrested them.

But their attorneys, Deputy Public Defender Steve Biskar and Donald Glenn Rubright, a private lawyer appointed by the court, told Municipal Judge James H. Poole that they believe the Green and Chaney were not adequately warned of their rights. Biskar and Rubright said police did not fully explain that free legal representation would be available if Green and Chaney could not afford it.

Poole is expected to rule on Biskar’s and Rubright’s objection to the videotaped statements when the preliminary hearing for Green and Chaney continues at 2 p.m. on June 21. Part of the tapes are scheduled to be shown in court.

A separate preliminary hearing for Blount is scheduled for July 18.