Police are still searching for a suspected thief and the woman
he took hostage in Gilroy’s only stranger kidnapping this year.
Morgan Hill
Police are still searching for a suspected thief and the woman he took hostage in Gilroy’s only stranger kidnapping this year.
A man shoplifting cologne from Kohl’s turned carjacker and kidnapper after security guards chased him from the store at 5:57 p.m. Friday, police said. The man had exited the department store in southeast Gilroy when he noticed a guard following him. He ditched the stolen cologne and ran toward Mimi’s Cafe, also in the Gilroy Crossing shopping complex and less than 250 feet away.
On his way, he encountered a small gray SUV and tried to open its back door, police said. Unable to do so, he rounded the car and climbed in the passenger seat next to a woman in the driver’s seat.
“What’s going on, what’s going on,” the woman screamed, according to a store security guard.
The man then managed to put the car in gear, police said.
“Help me. Help!” the woman yelled, the same security guard said.
The car – which could have a license plate similar to 5ASV516 – then sped off westbound on 10th Street and probably turned north on U.S. 101, police said.
A Kohl’s spokeswoman and a female manager at the Gilroy store who declined to give her name, both refused comment.
The incident is the only report of a kidnapping by a stranger this year, Sgt. Jim Gillio said.
“This is very rare,” he said.
Witnesses described the woman as a heavy-set Latina in her 30s. Police have been checking missing person records from across the country for women that fit this description.
“We still have no word from the female,” Gillio said. “That makes it very concerning to us.”
The suspect was described as a Latino between ages 25 and 30, less than 6-feet tall and 180 pounds with black hair. The unshaven male was wearing a black baseball cap with a white emblem, a plain green short-sleeve shirt over a white T-shirt, black baggy pants and white tennis shoes. Police have also been checking suspect descriptions from other cases across the country to see if they fit the suspect in this case.
“Sometimes when criminals feel that they are desperate and maybe possibly wanted for some other type of crime and want to escape apprehension, they take extreme measures,” Gillio said. “There could be something more serious underlying this guy’s motivation to escape.”
