Shopkeeper chases down robbery suspects

CONCORD — A shopkeeper took the law into her own hands Wednesday when she took to the roads of Concord after four men robbed her store.

She says she would do it again. Maybe.

Police say Maria Cristina Rojas Salinas is lucky to walk away from the incident with only a bullet hole in her minivan. And they warn other business owners facing similar circumstances against taking the same kind of action.

It’s the second time Salinas has taken action to protect her business. On March 30, she shot a man who attempted to rob the store at gunpoint.

Salinas says she did what she had to do Wednesday when she jumped into her van and chased the bandits until they abandoned their car and scattered in the woods along Interstate 85, where police took them into custody.

Concord Police arrested three men for the robbery and attempted shooting of Salinas. A fourth, Javier Gonzalez, 21, of 2500 Eastway Drive Apt. 5G, Charlotte, remains at NorthEast Medical Center in fair condition after shooting himself in the leg.

When released from the hospital, Gonzalez faces the same felony charges as the other three men, police said. Each is charged with armed robbery; assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill; and shooting into an occupied vehicle.

Police charged Ubiel Contrera Romero, 21, of the Holiday Inn on North Tryon Street, Charlotte; Alex Guardado, 19, of 2121 Canterwood Drive; and Carlos Enrique Chiguila-Marquez, 24, of 5800 Orr Road, Lot 31, Charlotte.

The events that led to their arrest began to unfold around 10 a.m. Wednesday shortly after Salinas arrived at Cristy’s Mexican Store, the shop she and her husband, Cebastiano Hernandez, own at 160 Davidson Highway just off U.S. 29.

While her husband and their small children were at the couple’s other store on McGill Avenue, Salinas said she was going through her usual morning routine to get the small store ready for business when she noticed three men had come to the door.

She said hello

Recognizing Gonzalez, she said hello, but none of the men answered. So she walked toward the register that was behind a glass counter filled with small merchandise. That’s when she noticed Romero was right behind her.

“I was like, ‘Oh this is no good,’ ”she said. She bent down quickly to get her .38-caliber revolver from a bag behind the counter, she said, but Romero took it from her hand and said ‘OK señora, give me the money.’ ”

That’s when she saw the barrel of the .12-gauge shotgun Marquez hid under some cloth and leveled at her across the counter, she said. And that’s when she decided she’d better do what the men told her.

Little money

When the men learned the register held little money, they demanded gold jewelry, which Salinas said she doesn’t sell at her Davidson Highway store. So they took the rings off her fingers and a chain from around her neck.

Then they started grabbing whatever merchandise they could carry off the crowded shelves of the store where compact discs and candles share space with candy and tortillas, and T-shirts hang from the ceiling bearing pictures of low riders and Jesus.

After the men had been in the store 10 to 15 minutes, Salinas said, a friend of hers pulled into the parking lot and the fourth man, who had been waiting in the car, began to blow the horn.

Men flee store

The men fled. Salinas followed. After finding her keys, she told her friend to call the police and ran out the door to give chase minus her gun, which Romero handed to Gonzalez during the robbery.

Pulling out onto Davidson Highway, Salinas fumed. When the men stopped at a red light at Central Avenue, she bumped them from behind and waved, just so they’d know she was there.

“They don’t look at me, and I was mad,”she said. “I tried to make them look at me.”

They did. And that’s when one of the men leaned out of the passenger-side window of the blue Chevrolet Impala and began shooting at her, she said. Salinas said the man shot at her “all the way up through here,”gesturing toward Davidson Highway.

Follows from afar

Staying at a distance, she said she was too angry to be scared that a gunshot would hit her. But police later found how close the man did come to shooting Salinas. A bullet glanced off her windshield in front of the passenger seat, making a small circle of splintered glass.

In spite of the gunfire, the angry store owner kept up her pursuit along Davidson Highway and past Interstate 85 — where the men had to turn around because a mobile home was blocking the road — and onto the interstate.

She chased them north to the U.S. 29 exit. After unsuccessfully trying to get around a truck to exit, she said, the men drove the wrong way up an entrance ramp and onto U.S. 29. They then pulled onto Goodman Circle behind the Waffle House restaurant.

Car is abandoned

The men finally abandoned their car by the side of the road and ran into some woods beside I-85, with Salinas close behind in her minivan. Concord and Kannapolis police officers, Cabarrus County Sheriff’s deputies and State Bureau of Investigation agents formed a perimeter around the area and quickly arrested the men.

Gonzalez had a bullet wound in his thigh, Concord Police Capt. Monty Blackwell said. The man apparently shot himself in the leg when he tried to pull Salinas’ revolver from where he’d tucked it into his belt, Blackwell said.

After the arrests, police found a third gun the men had, he said.

Police: Don’t do this

Blackwell said law enforcement officials fired no shots when apprehending the men. And he decried Salinas’ chasing the bandits and risking her life.

“This is something we tell everybody:Let them have the money, let them have everything,” he said. “This lady didn’t feel that way ... She’s a very strong-willed individual and takes it personally when you steal something from her.

“... She’s been lucky twice ... and sometimes your luck runs out.”

Blackwell said police tried to get the same message across to Salinas after her first run-in with a robber in March. She shot that man in the neck. Authorities charged her with assault, but a grand jury declined to indict her.

Trying to do right

Salinas said she was only trying to protect her family’s livelihood in March. And Wednesday, she said, she was only making sure that the men who robbed her didn’t get away, if she could help it.

“If I didn’t follow them, ain’t nobody going to find them,” she said. “I would call the police, by the time they got here, they was not going to find them.”

Salinas and her husband employ a man to provide security for their stores. He wasn’t at the store Wednesday when the robbery occurred, but they said he’ll be there a lot more often now.

Do it again?

Salinas said if confronted with similar circumstances — if someone is trying to steal what she and her husband have worked hard to build — she’d probably take matters into her own hands again.

“If they take my gun, I don’t got nothing to shoot them with,” she said, “so I’ll chase them.”

Asked if she really meant that, she paused a couple of seconds, then said quietly, “I don’t know.”

Contact Scott Jenkins at 704-797-4248 or sjenkins@salisburypost.com .