Sheriff’s deputies: Passer-by stabbed after tackling suspect in Santa Rosa theft

While driving with his 3-year-old daughter in Roseland on Saturday, Daniel saw a man in a yellow jacket running along Sebastopol Road, pursued by a store employee.

“If someone’s getting chased, he isn’t doing good,” Daniel, who declined to ?give his last name, explained later, holding a paper towel to his neck where he’d been stabbed after helping catch the man suspected of stealing an iPad.

Daniel refused emergency aid but said he intended to get medical attention after being stabbed with what a sheriff’s sergeant described as a screwdriver. The young man was credited with tackling the suspected thief and holding him until a store employee and other onlookers came to his aid.

“Outstanding work” is the way Sheriff’s Sgt. Rey Basurto described the joint effort.

“We probably wouldn’t have apprehended the suspect without their assistance,” Basurto said.

The incident began shortly before 2:30 p.m. when a man went into the California Accessories and Computer Repair store in a strip of warehouse storefronts behind 989 Sebastopol Road. The man asked a female clerk to see a new iPad, then took it and ran away, store employee Chris Hernandez said.

The clerk cried for help and Hernandez gave chase, running west toward Stony Point Road. That’s when Daniel, a Sonoma County resident and a student at an academy for state correctional officers, came on the scene.

Hernandez saw Daniel pull his car over to the sidewalk and urged the man to surrender. Instead, the man jumped off the sidewalk and crossed Sebastopol Road.

Daniel zipped his car across the street after the man, got out of the vehicle and overtook him. “He tackled him like a football player,” Hernandez said.

But as they made contact, the man swung a screwdriver and with it stabbed Daniel in the neck. Hernandez said he quickly took the screwdriver from the man and held him, later receiving help from two other men who had seen the commotion.

Sheriff’s deputies arrived and arrested the man on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and burglary, Basurto said. The man identified himself to deputies as Hector Alfonzo Rodriquez, 24, a Mexican citizen, Basurto said.