Thursday, Jan. 26, 2017 is a day that will be remembered for a long time by Scotts Valley police officers: a day of speed, valor, near-misses, and frustration.
Nearly 32 nail-biting hours after the mountain crime saga began, a bank robbery suspect would be in custody. Miraculously, no one was hurt.
Six days later, on Wednesday, Feb. 1, a 21-year-old man, Cruz Vargas, appeared before a Santa Clara County judge, arraigned on a host of felony charges, beginning with the Jan. 26 robbery of the Bank of America branch in Scotts Valley.
Here is how it unfolded, pieced together from police reports and interviews.
9 a.m., Jan. 26 – Six Scotts Valley Police Department officers gather at City Hall for a 10 a.m. training session with other city employees, on general supervisory, management and leadership principles.
The school resource officer and one patrol officer were on duty.
9:55 a.m. – Less than a quarter-mile away, a silent alarm from the Bank of America at Scotts Valley Drive and Erba Lane is relayed to the officers by a Scotts Police Department dispatcher: robbery in progress.
10 a.m. – A bank manager follows up the alarm with a phone call to a police dispatcher, giving a description of a single male robber wearing a dark hoodie and mask, and of his getaway car, a “white Chrysler sedan.”
The manager also tells police the man said he had a gun “and was not afraid to use it.” No gun was displayed and he was handed an undisclosed amount of cash.
10:03 a.m. – A bystander calls police to say a white Chrysler was headed north up Scotts Valley Drive at a high rate of speed.
10:03 a.m. – Officers rush out the door, and three of the department’s vehicles – one marked car and two unmarked cars – give chase north up Scotts Valley Drive. Other units head down the hill and around the corner to the bank.
10:04 a.m. – Another bystander takes a photo of the getaway car with his phone and which shows the license number, and shows it to the first officers at the bank. The car was identified as a 2004 Chrysler Concorde.
10:04 a.m. – After a 80 miles-per-hour chase northbound on Scotts Valley Drive, police see the Chrysler car turn on to Granite Creek overpass, where the vehicle runs the red light just east of Highway 17, colliding with a vehicle in the intersection before careening on to the freeway headed north, the police in hot pursuit.
The lead pursuit car is a black-and-white police cruiser driven by Scotts Valley School Resource Officer John Hohmann, a 30-year police veteran, followed by an unmarked car driven by Detective Sgt. Wayne Bellville and a second unmarked car driven by Det. Efraim Contreras.
10:12 a.m. – The high-speed chase, at speeds reaching 100 miles per hour, ends abruptly after 12 miles when the white Chrysler makes a 180-degree U-turn, heading back at Hohmann’s pursuit car just south of the northbound Redwood Estates exit on Highway 17, in Santa Clara County.
10:13 a.m. – The Chrysler spins around another 180 degrees, slamming Hohmann’s pursuit vehicle against the concrete center divide.
Hohmann is “pinned in his vehicle, unable to open his driver-side door which is against the median, and directly in front of him is a suspect believed to be armed,” Scotts Valley Interim Police Chief Steve Walpole would recount four days later. “He was in fear for his life.”
10:14 a.m. – Hohmann fires his service weapon twice at the suspect through the front windshield of the patrol vehicle.
Panicked, the man in the Chrysler jumps out of the car’s passenger door and runs back across the right-hand lane, and into the left front of Bellville’s car, which has just screeched to a halt opposite the two wrecked cars. The Chrysler’s motor is still running. He leaves money from the bank heist in the car.
He bounces across the hood of the unmarked car, and runs into a heavily wooded area.
10:15 a.m. – A shaken Hohmann crawls out his passenger door and joins the detective running into the woods, guns drawn, pursuing a bank robbery suspect they still presume is armed.
The officers have no radio communications. Once the Scotts Valley officers cross the summit, they lose all radio communication with their dispatchers because of the mountain terrain.
10:20 a.m. – The driverless white Chrysler inexplicably starts pulling away from the scene, headed north. It travels ¾ of a mile until it stops part of the way around a large hairpin turn.
Det. Contreras arrives next on the scene. He sees two police vehicles stopped in the highway, and the suspect’s car slowly pulling away. He also sees two bullet holes in Hohmann’s car, and fears the worst. He has no radio signal.
Driving between the two cars, Contreras follows the Chrysler at speeds up to 40 miles per hour, then stops at a distance once the getaway car slams to a stop. Since the car had driven away, he assumes it is still occupied.
10:22a.m. – The detective stands there, a solitary figure in the middle of a silent Highway 17, with his gun drawn on the Chrysler Concorde, for an estimated nine minutes. Then fellow officers arriving at the scene confirm that the car is empty.
10:30 a.m. – Belville and Hohmann lose the fleeing suspect in the trees and dense underbrush.
10:30 a.m. – The California Highway Patrol blocks both north and southbound lanes of Highway 17, from the Summit to Bear Creek Road at the Lexington Reservoir.
10:32 a.m. – Reinforcements begin to arrive – five more Scotts Valley officers including Interim Chief Steve Walpole, the Highway Patrol, Santa Clara County Sheriff’s deputies, and the FBI, plus a Highway Patrol helicopter – beginning a mountain manhunt that would be suspended nearly 10 hours later, and come up empty in the cold and darkness.
11 a.m. – Residents of Lexington Hills on the east side of Highway 17 and Redwood Estates west of the highway are directed to stay inside – “shelter in place” – and lock their doors, until further notice. Students at Lexington Elementary School are on lockdown for most of the day.
4 p.m. – A photograph of the suspect taken by the Bank of America security camera is released to the news and social media.
8:15 p.m. – Santa Clara Sheriff’s deputies call off the extensive manhunt, and say they will resume it in the morning, as temperatures begin to drop into the 30s.
8:22 p.m. – Highway 17 is reopened to traffic in both directions. Some motorists have been stranded five hours.
10 p.m. – The manhunt resumes, after a man breaks into a home in Lexington Hills and, holding the residents at knifepoint, steals a change of clothes and takes off in their minivan, which he ditches about 30 minutes later in the same neighborhood when it is disabled by police spike strips. The suspect again eludes deputies and police dogs.
Friday, January 27
6 a.m. – A police-issued silver 2009 Chevy Malibu is stolen overnight in the same neighborhood.
5:30 p.m. – Three people are seen riding in the Chevy Malibu near Japan Town in San Jose; all three are taken into custody. Police determine one of them is the Scotts Valley robbery suspect. One of them is released, and the other held on an unrelated warrant.
Monday, January 30
10 a.m. – Vargas is booked into the Santa Clara County Main Jail on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, felony evading, burglary, carjacking, auto theft, and receiving stolen property. He is being held without bail.
A robbery notebook:
- The last time a Scotts Valley police officer discharged his weapon was in 1990, when Interim Chief Walpole’s father was chief, and a Scotts Valley officer fatally wounded a shooting suspect after a pursuit that ended in downtown Santa Cruz.
- “I’m just really glad that none our officers was injured, and that there were no other injuries,” said Walpole this week of the bank robbery and its aftermath.
- A gun the suspect told Bank of America tellers he had was never found.
- Santa Clara County will be conducting the investigation of the discharge of Hohmann’ weapon.
- Scotts Valley brought in a counselor on Saturday for officers involved in the incident. “It was pretty traumatic,” said Walpole. Officers also held a debriefing and sat down for some peer counseling, he said.
- The Scotts Valley Police Department lost the use of one of its six police vehicles for an indefinite period.
- Scotts Valley does not have dashboard cameras in its vehicles, which might have recorded the incident. “We are looking into that,” Walpole said.
- Hohmann, who retired in 2013 after 30 years as a Scotts Valley officer, returned in December to serve as the Police Resource Officer for Scotts Valley High School. Walpole is in his first full month as interim chief, and Belville just moved this month to head the investigations unit.
- Thursday, the day of the robbery, was Walpole’s 45th birthday, but the day’s events postponed the celebration until Friday evening, when the chief could also cheer that his suspect was behind bars.
