A man involved in a business dispute with a woman in Palo Alto allegedly stole her cell phone and ran her over with his golden 2005 Honda CR-V while escaping the scene last week, police said on Friday.
Juan Carlos Valdivia. Courtesy of the Palo Alto Police Department.
Officials and the fire department responded to an emergency call at around 11:30 a.m. on Sept. 24 in Block 3400 of El Camino Real near the Creekside Inn and found a woman in her forties sitting on the pavement. The vehicle she hit had fled the scene. Paramedics took the woman to a hospital. She sustained serious injuries – multiple broken bones – that required hospitalization, but she is in stable condition, police said in a press release.
The woman, a cashier at a nearby spa and massage store, and the man, a patron, got into an argument when the man said his credit card receipt did not match the tip he’d added, according to police. He took his receipt and copies of the receipt and went out.
The woman followed the man and called her manager on her cell phone. When he got into his car, she tried to take the copy of the sales receipt from him. The police said he tried to take her cell phone away when he was about to drive off.
When she tried to hold her phone, she fell. She ran over one of the rear wheels of the man’s car as he fled. The woman’s cell phone could not be found and police suspect the man successfully took it from her during the fight, police said.
