A Santa Fe man accused of walking into a Pecos gas station on Saturday and robbing it at rifle point met his match in store owner Glen Post.
The lesson to be learned from the incident: Don’t mess with Post or you might just end up in the dog house like 26-year-old Zebadiah Romero.
Police say Romero managed to get out of Pecos River Station, located in San Jose, with a cash drawer after threatening three people inside the business with a rifle. That’s when things got interesting.
Post grabbed his loaded .45 caliber handgun and chased after the suspect. He fired a warning shot into the air and yelled at the man who had just robbed him, telling him to stop or he’d shoot. Police say Romero turned around and fired his rifle in Post’s direction, but missed.
Post fired back, striking Romero in the left thigh area. Romero fell to the ground, dropping the cash drawer, then he got up and ran from the scene.
Unwilling to let Romero get away, Post and a store patron jumped into a pickup and followed him as he ran along a fence line to a property on the west side of the store.
Romero ducked into a dog house, but when police arrived, Post was able to point out exactly where he was hiding, and Romero was pulled out of the dog house and taken into custody by state police.
The dramatic story is chronicled in a probable cause statement filed in San Miguel County Magistrate Court by state police agent Deriek Woody on Monday.
Romero was treated at the scene by paramedics and then airlifted to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe. He was booked into the San Miguel County Detention Center after the hospital released him, and is now facing five felonies: armed robbery, a second-degree felony, and three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and a single count of embezzlement of a motor vehicle, all fourth-degree felonies. Online court records show that Romero’s bond has been set at $10,000 cash.
The robbery occurred shortly before 1 p.m. on Saturday. State police were notified of a robbery in progress and told that the suspect had a .30-.30 caliber rifle and that he had pointed it at the store clerk, at the store owner and at a female customer who was in the store.
Witnesses told police that the suspect fled from the store on foot after getting the cash drawer. That’s when Post confronted him.
The embezzlement of a motor vehicle charge stems from a black 2012 Smart Car that state police observed parked along the road near the store.
Investigators ran a check on the car and discovered that it had been reported stolen.
Authorities say Romero, a former employee of the store, took the vehicle from Furry’s GMC Chrysler dealership on Jan. 20 under an agreement to purchase it. The dealership reported that Romero never made the necessary down payment, prompting it to file a stolen vehicle report with Santa Fe police.
At the time of his arrest, Romero was on unsupervised probation for attempted possession of a controlled substance.