Suspect Flees to Office, Then Surrenders

A suspected robber cornered at the Patagonia corporate office in the 200 block of West Santa Clara Street on Friday morning gave himself up after a brief standoff with police.

A few employees who had come in early for work talked to the man who ran into the company’s office.

“He said ‘I’ve got people chasing me,’ ” said Ric Hatch, a company sales representative. “He really wanted a cigarette and I told him we don’t allow smoking in the building, and if he lit up the alarms would go off.”

The incident began about 7 a.m. when two men in a van reportedly stolen from Oxnard on Thursday night robbed the McDonald’s on Harbor Boulevard in Ventura.

One of the suspects went into the store, while the other man waited in the van.

The first man passed a note to the cashier and lifted his sweatshirt, revealing what the woman thought was a gun, said Ventura Police Lt. Brad Talbot.

She passed him an undisclosed amount of cash and he ran to the waiting van.

When the van was spotted about a mile and a half away, Officer Sam Arroyo and Cpl. John Garner gave chase.

The officers--in two patrol cars--sped behind the van until it crashed in a parking lot near the Main Street bridge over the Ventura River.

The driver jumped out and ran into the river bottom, Garner said, and was caught there. He was identified by police as 32-year-old Richard Glass of Ventura.

The other man dashed up a hill, over California 33, into the bushes behind the Patagonia corporate headquarters and then into one of the office buildings.

There were only a handful of employees in the building, as about half a dozen police officers surrounded the office and a Sheriff’s Department helicopter circled overhead.

Several employees who had come in early rushed out of the building.

But Greg Bellisime, who works in the company mail room, said he began to talk to the suspected robber.

“First he wanted me to get him a car,” Bellisime said. “He said he wanted to go on one of those high-speed chases. I told him, ‘No way, man, you know how those always end. They have this place surrounded, just give yourself up.’ ”

Bellisime then decided to leave, and the man asked him to tell the police that he didn’t have a gun.

After Bellisime walked out the building, Sgt. Larry White called the man on the phone and, posing as a Patagonia supervisor, asked him to give himself up because he was scaring the employees.

The man, identified by police as 30-year-old Timothy John Nabors of Oxnard, then walked out of the building with his hands over his head, police said.