Thief, Minimarket Worker Have Tussle

A thief intent on robbing a service station and minimarket got into a tussle with a female employee early Monday before escaping with just a few packs of cigarettes.

Senior Deputy Jim Aguirre of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department said the thief, who witnesses said was in his mid-20s and wearing a blue knit cap, entered the building about 5:30 a.m. through a window he smashed that separates the store from an attached carwash.

Aguirre said Shelly Mathews, an employee of the Mobil station on Petit Street near the Ventura Freeway, came face to face with the thief soon after she opened the station for business.

“He attacks her and they fight on the floor,” Aguirre said. “She really wasn’t injured. She’s not that big of a gal, but she must be awful ornery.”

Aguirre said a customer who had stopped to get gas noticed the skirmish inside the store and blared a car horn, Aguirre said.

The thief then ran away after grabbing some cigarettes, he said.

Aguirre said the incident was the second theft at the minimarket since it opened in summer.

Mathews, who lives in Ventura, would not comment on the incident. Her husband, Chris, the store’s general manager, said she was shaken up but unhurt.

“He tackled her,” Chris Mathews said. “It happened so quickly. He pulled some hair out of her head and they knocked over a sunglass rack.”

Chris Mathews, who was not at the minimarket during the incident, said the store is not equipped with an alarm system, but he insisted that will now change.

If it wasn’t for the customer honking the horn, it may have been a lot worse for his wife, he said.

“It’s just one of those things,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that it had to come to this, but Camarillo is not as safe as people think. . . . Between the two, Shelly wrestling with the guy and the horn, I think it spooked the guy.”