Publish Date: 2/17/2009
Police: Man arrested after making threats that closed Longmont Wal-Mart
By Brad Turner and Rachel Carter
Longmont Times-Call
LONGMONT — Police on Tuesday arrested a man accused of walking into the tire shop at Wal-Mart, threatening to harm an employee with a gun, and creating a panic that forced hundreds to flee the store.
Police spent more than an hour Tuesday afternoon searching the empty store, 2514 Main St., before arresting Patrick Cordova on suspicion of misdemeanor disorderly conduct and menacing at his home on Twin Sisters Drive.
“No one saw the gun,” Longmont Police Cmdr. Tim Lewis said shortly after Cordova’s arrest. “The family claims there’s not a gun. But we’d like to search the house to make sure.”
Cordova went into the Wal-Mart Tire & Lube shop on the north side of the store at about 2:30 p.m. and said he was looking for an employee he suspected was having an affair with his wife, Lewis said.
Cordova, who turned 51 Tuesday, told a worker he had a 9 mm gun and threatened to “stick it up” the backside of the man he was looking for, but Cordova never showed a gun, Lewis said.
The man was working Tuesday, Lewis said, but he and Cordova never came face to face. Police evacuated the man for his safety and interviewed him for more information, Lewis said.
Cordova left the store after making the threat, police said. Officers cleared the store, forcing shoppers to leave their carts behind.
Police cleared the store because they didn’t know where Cordova went after making the threat, and officers feared he could be inside the 200,000-square-foot building with a handgun, Lewis said.
Officers found Cordova at his home at 1430 Twin Sisters Drive.
Several officers huddled behind cars, trees and neighbors’ houses while other officers approached Cordova’s home. Neighbors occasionally stuck their heads out their front doors to see what was happening, and officers shouted at them to stay inside.
At 3:53 p.m., Cordova emerged from the front door in a blue flannel jacket, put his arms behind his head and surrendered to officers. The man grinned as officers walked him to a patrol car nearby.
Cordova’s shoeless 16-year-old son followed a few minutes later, also with his arms raised. Police did not arrest the boy, Lewis said.
Officers found Cordova’s wife, who was uninjured, and interviewed her.
While police searched the store, employees huddled near the loading docks on the south side of Wal-Mart, trying to stay out of the wind and waiting for the OK to go back inside. One employee got sick during the incident but did not require treatment, Lewis said.
Although they were outside for more than an hour, they apparently kept their spirits up. At one point, a woman climbed a large, rolling stepladder and took a group photo while employees cheered and waved.
Store co-manager Rod Zimmerman said the company trains employees to handle evacuations and made an announcement on the store’s public address system. About 200 customers and about as many employees were evacuated, he said.
Police kept the public out of the Wal-Mart parking lot while the store was closed.
Kevin Vo stood shivering on the sidewalk outside the store Tuesday afternoon, wishing he had grabbed his jacket when police and Wal-Mart managers started clearing the store.
But Vo didn’t even have time to think about it; the 29-year-old was applying acrylic nails for a customer at Regal Nails, which is in the front of the Supercenter, when an officer told employees to clear out.
“I just sat there working on a customer when police came in and said, ‘You got to get the hell out of here,’” Vo said.
Police first allowed Wal-Mart employees into a storage area at about 3:35 p.m. to get them out of the cold wind, and then reopened the store at 4 p.m.
Staff writer Victoria A.F. Camron contributed to this report.
Brad Turner can be reached at 720-494-5420, or by e-mail at
[email protected].
