Palm Springs police drove a felon to Desert Hot Springs, where he committed another attack

After it took a decade for Micaela Montez to sock away enough savings to afford opening a taco truck in Desert Hot Springs, she admits she’s protective of her new family-run business.

So when a man approached her truck on a Thursday morning while tying a white rag around his face, she quickly warned her daughter and granddaughter to look out and grabbed a knife. As the man tried to force his way in, she wrestled with him and fought to close the truck's side door, which she usually keeps open for fresh air, especially in the summer heat. In a last-ditch effort to keep him out, she swiped at him and he fell to the ground.

It was the kind of attack that would shake any business owner, not to mention a grandmother protecting her relatives. And it was the first experience in the six months since they opened that left the women concerned about the safety of the bustling but typically secure gas station parking lot where they work.

Nothing like that had ever happened before, Montez said. She knew most of the locals, even the people in the area experiencing homelessness, who she and her daughters would feed for free or tell them to repay them when they could. She had never seen the man before, and it unsettled her thinking there could be strangers violently targeting her family and her business.

What makes them all the more upset: The previously convicted felon who attacked them was brought there by the police. And it wasn't the last time.

When Montez spoke with the owner of the gas station soon after the July attack, he reviewed security camera footage and showed her that the man had been dropped off by a Palm Springs police officer. Additional footage shows him walking toward her food truck while wrapping the makeshift mask around his face.

Since the attack, she has observed and collected footage of two additional drop-offs by deputies from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. That department did not respond to The Desert Sun's request for comment for this story.

And her daughter, Pilar Paniagua, fought off a fourth man, who became belligerent and broke the truck’s window and security camera after threatening to rob the place.

"I was telling him to leave, when he told me he was from Sacramento and was dropped off by the police," Paniagua said. "He didn’t know where he was or why he was left here. I don’t think he had anywhere to go."

Desert Hot Springs Mayor Scott Matas said he has long heard rumors of people being dropped off in his city by law enforcement agencies from other jurisdictions, and the gas station confrontation and the video footage provided evidence of it.

"It's really baffling to us why they would do something like this," Matas said. "And what it comes down to is that our business owners don't feel safe."

Interim City Manager Doria Wilms added that neighboring police departments need to not endanger other cities.

"We've got a public safety agency, that should be responsible for public safety, putting our residents at risk," said Wilms.

Palm Springs Police Department Lt. Gus Araiza said an officer from that department did drop off Cruz at the gas station parking lot. He said that officers were dispatched to Ocotillo Avenue, where a man was reported swinging a stick. Officers found Cruz and offered to give him a ride somewhere if he needed it.

"The subject didn’t commit a crime in our jurisdiction," Araiza said. "And we thought we were just providing him some help by taking him to the destination he wanted to be at."

‘We've invested everything’

Each day, except Wednesday, Montez serves fish and shrimp, octopus and clam tostadas and ceviche, alongside steak and chicken burritos, to the construction and road workers laboring in the area. Just before 10 a.m. they lay out tables, covered with colorful blankets, and plastic stools as they prepare for the lunch rush, where people seek out her mariscos from her native state of Michoacán, Mexico.

Her two daughters, her son and husband pitch in to help, but Montez runs the show in the south corner of the Valero gas station parking lot where the trailer they work out of is parked. Traffic rushes through the intersection of Dillon and Palm roads, and feeds a steady stream of motorists to the gas station and the convenience store, where the food's aroma often lures people over. Montez is confident in her new restaurant’s ability to succeed, and with the cost of the truck and the permits to do business, the stakes are high for her family.

"We’re very happy being here, it’s a good intersection," Montez said in Spanish, her daughter translating. "The owner of the gas station is a good person. We’ve invested everything and want this to work."

Her anxiety about the attacks and want for answers about why police are dropping off strangers in the parking lot motivated her to speak publicly. She said she’s typically a quiet and busy person and only called the police on the day of the attack at the urging of the gas station owner. She said she even attempted to give the man a burrito when he was later milling about the lot after the attack, but he threw it away and left. When she reviewed the footage, she was left with more questions than answers and suspicion about each new face that approaches.

Paniagua described with frustration her own encounter with another man she said had been dropped off by the police soon before he wandered over to the truck. She said he asked for an order of a couple tacos and demanded more after saying they weren’t enough to satisfy his hunger. He began arguing with her, speaking in an erratic way she had trouble following. He told her he was from Northern California and didn’t know why the police left him there. She suspected he was drunk.

"My mom was telling him to eat his food so he could sober up, but he got really aggressive," Paniagua said. "He got on the phone and started talking to someone about robbing the truck. When I told him to go away, he broke the pickup window and smashed our security camera."

While the Desert Hot Springs police were questioning her about the confrontation, she spotted the man leaving the convenience store with a beer. He was arrested, and she doesn’t know what happened to him from there.

‘We need to work together’

The Desert Sun reviewed footage from what appears to be three separate drop-offs by a police officer from Palm Springs and deputies from the sheriff's department, one of which preceded the July attack against Montez.

The Valero lot is located in Desert Hot Springs, which has its own police department. It's unclear why the two other departments would be dropping off detained people in another police department's jurisdiction.

In one on Aug. 1, a police vehicle can be seen parking just out of the camera’s view in front of the convenience store. A uniformed sheriff’s deputy walks over to the passenger side of the vehicle and opens the back door. Someone carrying a drink gets out of the car and wanders towards the gas pumps before walking in the direction of the taco truck.

In another, on Sept. 12, a sheriff’s department vehicle parks in just about the same place, but this time in view of the camera. A deputy, again, opens the back passenger door and a person exits the vehicle with little apparent interaction with the deputy. The person turns, looks around and gets out their phone before walking off.

On July 13, just before 11 a.m., a Palm Springs police car pulls up near the convenience store, and an officer gets out and opens the rear door. A man wearing a black shirt, camouflage shorts and a white shirt or towel around his neck gets out of the car. The two exchange a fist bump, before the officer drives away moments later. In a second video, shot from a camera on the taco truck, a man wearing what appears to be the same black shirt and camo shorts approaches the truck while tying the white cloth around his face.

Montez said the video was shot moments before he attacked her and her family members as he attempted to force entry into the truck. The threat of violence to her family and its consequences for her business are what concern Montez the most.

A Desert Hot Springs police report on the arrest of the man, Maurice Charles Cruz III, shows he has a Desert Hot Springs address more than three miles to the north of the gas station. Officers reviewed the footage and noted in the report that a Palm Springs patrol car can be seen dropping the man off.

"It is unknown who the (suspect is) or why Palm Springs Police Department dropped him off there," the report reads.

Cruz was on probation at the time for evading arrest, assault with a deadly weapon and a DUI. He was arrested in Desert Hot Springs on July 17 in connection with the attack on Montez's business. He told police that officers in Palm Springs contacted him after he was released from Desert Regional Medical Center. He said the officer offered him a ride to Desert Hot Springs and he took him up on it. He pleaded guilty to attempted robbery for the taco truck confrontation and was sentenced to 180 days in county jail.

Matas, the Desert Hot Springs mayor, said police found Cruz had been listed in various places as a transient, including in the city of Rialto about 60 miles west.

"Why would he be dropped in the outskirts of our city three miles from his listed residence?" Matas asked. "Palm Springs and the sheriff's department can't be dropping people off in the corners of our city."

"He doesn't live at the Valero gas station," added Wilms. "And it was 115 degrees outside."

For Matas and Wilms, the gas station confrontation is a symptom of a much larger social issue every city in the region is working to address, one that they say will require regional collaboration.

"We're all dealing with unhoused individuals and we need to work together on this," Matas said. "Our partner agencies in neighboring jurisdictions can help us by communicating."

For Montez, Paniagua, and others in Desert Hot Springs, minimizing the threat of violent crime is absolutely critical in their labor to turn their young investments into the successful businesses they dream of creating.

"They come from other cities and are getting dropped off here," Paniagua said. "No one has the right to intimidate or scare someone like that, period. We want it to stop."

Christopher Damien covers public safety and the criminal justice system. He can be reached at christopher.damien@desertsun.com or follow him at @chris_a_damien.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Why Palm Springs police gave a felon a ride to Desert Hot Springs