Santa Rosa police ID suspects in failed armored car facility heist

Santa Rosa police detectives identified two felons Sunday using fingerprints and tattoos, two days after they were arrested on suspicion of a failed pre-dawn Friday heist of an armored car facility.

One of suspects, Milton Gamez-Fierro, 41, of Santa Rosa, was shot twice in the upper body by a Santa Rosa police officer after pointing a handgun at the officer outside GardaWorld on Northpoint Parkway just before 3 a.m., said Lt. John Cregan.

Gamez-Fierro stumbled away after being shot but collapsed in a nearby creek, where he was found wearing a ski mask and latex gloves, Cregan said. A handgun and a Taser were found by him.

His alleged accomplice, Jesus Gomez-Rosales, 29, of Los Angeles County, was found by Santa Rosa police and Sonoma County Sheriff’s deputies shortly after, hiding in an armored car within the facility, Cregan said. Latex gloves and a handgun were located nearby.

Gamez-Fierro was taken to a local hospital where he is expected to survive. Gomez-Rosales was brought to the Santa Rosa Police Department for interrogation early Friday.

Gamez-Fierro had a false identification card at the time he was apprehended, and could not be interviewed initially because of his medical condition, Cregan said. Gomez-Rosales also provided detectives with a false name, forcing authorities to wait on fingerprint and tattoo analysis before identifying the two.

The attempted holdup occurred just before 3 a.m. at the Northpoint Parkway address for GardaWorld, near Stony Point Road. In a 2011 robbery at the same location, a heavily armed man and an accomplice stormed in behind an armored truck, bound terrified employees and made off with a duffel bag of $1 million. Nearly a year later, three men were later arrested in that heist.

In Friday’s attempted robbery, two armed GardaWorld employees were able to distract the suspects before locking themselves into a walk-in safe full of currency where they sounded the alarm, Cregan said. They were uninjured and did not use their weapons.

The suspects didn’t take any cash, just two mobile phones from the employees, Cregan said.

An officer arrived minutes after the alarm was triggered and, after seeing Gamez-Fierro point a handgun at him, fired multiple rounds, Cregan said. Detectives found one of the bullets had entered a residence on Edgewater Drive, behind the GardaWorld facility, and struck a television, Cregan said. No one was injured.

Gomez-Rosales told detectives he had arrived Santa Rosa from his home in Los Angeles County on Thursday to find a construction job in the fire-rebuilding effort, Cregan said. The two had met through a mutual acquaintance that same day, Cregan said.

Gomez-Rosales was booked in Sonoma County Jail on suspicion of robbery, assault on a police officer, false imprisonment and kidnapping with bail set at $1 million. He is currently on felony probation for a drug arrest in Southern California.

Gamez-Fierro will likely be released to the Sonoma County Jail later this week pending clearance from doctors, Cregan said. He is on federal felony probation for robbery.

The name of the officer who shot Gamez-Fierro will be released once a threat assessment is done, Cregan said. The officer was wearing a body camera at the time of the shooting.