Star Athletes Appear on Robbery Charges

As a championship wrestler and his soccer-star girlfriend were charged Thursday with bank robbery, their lawyer said the woman may have had nothing to do with the holdup.

Todd Hoult and Tabetha Garibay appeared in a U.S. magistrate’s office shortly after noon to face charges that he robbed a Westlake Village bank Dec. 14 and she drove the getaway car.

The two arrived at the hearing in handcuffs--she in a short pinstriped skirt and white Angora sweater, he in jailhouse blues, escorted by FBI agents.

While Garibay, 20, walked sullenly into the building housing Magistrate Willard R. McEwen Jr.’s chambers, Hoult, 23, sauntered between his FBI escorts, making faces at a news photographer.

“Todd has expressed a lot of concern for Tabetha rather than himself,” said Shawn Perez, a Dana Point attorney who spoke on behalf of Hoult and the Garibay family. “He was frantic when I spoke to him this morning. Here’s a kid who really cares about this girl. . . . He said, ‘There’s no way she was involved in a bank robbery.’ ”

Perez said Garibay did not even want to be bailed out of the Ventura County Jail. “I think she just wanted to crawl in a hole and die after this all happened,” he said.

Meanwhile, Perez said, tabloid TV shows are clamoring for an interview with him and an explanation of how the accomplished college athletes came to face federal bank robbery charges that could put them in prison for up to 20 years.