Northwest ABQ gas station owner unsettled by recent robbery trend
Ron Schorr’s family has owned a gas station in northwest Albuquerque for nearly half a century, but armed robberies are a new — and unsettling — trend. The station has seen three within the last year, the most recent ending with a clerk being shot.
“This isn’t something that’s a normal occurrence for us,” Schorr said. “It’s starting to bleed more up here.”
The Chevron, near Paradise and Unser NW, is far from the more crimestricken areas of the city, he said.
Earlier this week, detectives arrested the second suspect in connection with back-to-back robberies that left clerk Robert “Mike” Stubblefield with a bullet in him.
Bernalillo County sheriff’s deputies say 24-year-old Robert Rivera is charged with robbery with a deadly weapon and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after he took turns robbing Schorr’s station earlier this month with Israfil Madriaga, 20.
Deputies arrested Rivera on Monday. Madriaga is already in custody at the Sandoval County Detention Center, facing charges for multiple armed robberies.
“Hopefully, the court system will do what they’re supposed to,” Schorr said. “We want to make sure that we don’t have to sweat those guys.”
Deputies say Rivera walked into the gas station Sept. 29 and held up Stubblefield while Madriaga waited outside. A week later, Rivera waited outside as Madriaga went in to rob the store and shot the clerk.
“He didn’t say a word, just turned and chambered a round,” Stubblefield told the Journal in a phone interview a day after he was released from the hospital.
The clerk grabbed the gun, trying to point the muzzle away from himself, but Madriaga pulled the trigger.
Alongside the immediate pain came disbelief, Stubblefield said.
“I just couldn’t believe somebody would do that to me after I was nice to them,” he said.
Stubblefield required multiple surgeries, including a rod in his leg, and faces a long rehabilitation.
He told deputies he had seen the suspects in the store “many times” before the robberies and believed they lived in a house that is known as a “community problem” to deputies for felony warrants, drugs and stolen vehicles.
Although Schorr called it a “relief for everybody” to know both suspects are off the street, he said they aren’t the only ones causing problems for the business.
Two people smashed in the windows with asphalt chunks on Oct. 16, then, less than a week after replacing the glass, someone put a claw hammer through the window on Sunday night, climbed in to steal cigarettes and left.
“It’s a small group of folks up here that are ruining the community,” Schorr said. “This whole thing has hurt my business.”
He has made several changes to the family business, both costly and inconvenient, spending $3,500 on steel shutters, having two people working at all times and even closing two hours earlier.
“We’re not going to be hanging around here after dark,” he said. “Not with what’s going on all over town.”
Preliminary reports compiled by the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office and Albuquerque Police Department show there have been 1,546 robberies in Bernalillo County in the first six months of 2017. In 2016, there was a total of 2,079.
Less than 12 hours before Madriaga shot Stubblefield, police say a man opened fire during a robbery at a Circle K in northeast Albuquerque. Bullet fragments struck an employee and bystander; both men survived.
Schorr said “there is no doubt” in his mind that drugs are a driving factor behind the recent rise of vandalism and theft in the city.
“These guys are youngsters, unfortunately, getting hooked up on heroin and meth,” he said. “They can’t hold a job, they can’t do anything, except figure out how they’re going to get their next fix.”
While Schorr applauded the sheriff’s office for its “outstanding” work in catching the two suspects, he worries the justice system may not hold up its end of the bargain.
“Right now, we’re not prosecuting these guys on these petty crimes. We’re letting them right back out to do it again, that’s the big problem,” Schorr said. “We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”