(WSVN) - A man who made headlines for stopping a robber at a California Starbucks may now be sued by the suspect.
Cregg Jerri was inside the Fresno-area coffee shop in July when police said 30-year-old Ryan Flores entered the restaurant in a Transformers mask, approaching the cashier with a gun and a knife.
Jerri sprung into action, grabbing a chair and using it to hit Flores from behind. The two men then wrestled, and Jerri was stabbed in the neck. But he eventually managed to wrangle the knife from Flores, using it to stab him several times before the suspect ran away. Police later found him hiding in a canal.
While Jerri was hailed as a hero by police for stopping the robbery, Flores’s mother Pamela Chimienti says her son may sue him for what she called excessive force.
“He has seventeen total stab wounds, lacerations and defensive wounds,” Chimienti said. “The guy, in my opinion, went from a Good Samaritan to a vigilante. Stabbing somebody that many times, it doesn’t take that many stab wounds to get somebody to succumb to you.”
Fresno’s police chief Jerri Dyer says he cannot believe the would-be armed robber is planning to sue.
“To say that Craig Jerri’s going to be sued for intervening in an armed robbery and being stabbed in the neck? That is ludicrous,” he said.
Meanwhile, defense attorney Charles Magill says he believes Flores will have a tough time finding representation, should he decide to pursue a case against Jerri.
“Good luck finding an attorney that wants to represent a young robber who’s going to be convicted of robbery,” Magill said. “That’s not gonna sell very well to a jury.”
Flores is being held on $150,000 bail, and is due back in court in October.
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