Good Samaritan Inadvertently Helped Fraud Suspect While Palo Alto Police Searched
PALO ATLO (KCBS) — A good Samaritan in Palo Alto inadvertently helped a wanted man evade capture for over four hours on Monday, after the suspect tried to pass a bad check at a bank, police said.
Good Samaritan Inadvertently Helped Fraud Suspect While Palo Alto Policed Searched
Lt. Zach Perron told KCBS that police received a call early Monday evening about a man trying to pass a bad check in a Bank of America branch located at 530 Lytton Avenue,
"It was a possible fraudulent transaction in progress that the bank called us about, which is something they do routinely," he said.
But Perron said there was nothing routine about the events that followed as the suspect managed to evade officers by jumping over a fence where he encountered the homeowner convincing him that he was a victim of an attack and was need of assistance.
The homeowner cooked the man dinner and even agreed to drive him to the train station; but as the two men walked out of the house four hours later, police spotted the suspect and arrested him in 500 block of Everett Court.
"We're not going to cut any corners in that situation and fortunately we had the staffing to be persistent for the amount of time that it took," Perron said.
Palo Alto police used the AlertSCC phone notification system to send recorded messages to 286 homes and businesses in the neighborhood. While the homeowner received the call, he didn't the description matched the suspect, according to police.
The suspect, identified as Dominique Arnett Tab, 35, of San Francisco, is also wanted in Oklahoma on child sex-crime charge.
