Robber-chasing shop manager ‘very happy’ cops nabbed suspect
The Page One photo on yesterday’s Boston Herald — a white getaway van bobbing in a Revere pool — was all an Everett convenience store manager needed to see to know the gun-toting robber he chased off with a baseball bat Tuesday night was behind bars.
“It was such a relief they caught him,” Kiet Ngo, 49, told the Herald yesterday. “I didn’t know they caught him last night. I knew this morning when I opened the store; there is the front page of the Boston Herald, and there is the car crashed into somebody’s pool. That’s when I knew they got him. I was very happy.”
Malden District Court Judge Matthew Machera set Gianni Mazza’s bail at $100,000 during his arraignment yesterday morning on charges of attempting to commit a crime, resisting arrest, and a host of other charges stemming from a high-speed chase from Everett into that Revere swimming pool.
Ngo said he was about to close the store at about 9:45 p.m. when a masked man — who police later identified as 42-year-old Mazza of Peabody — entered the store with a small handgun and demanded cash.
“We went back and forth, back and forth — he tried to jump over the counter, so I grabbed the chair and hit him three times and he fell,” Ngo said. “He ran away, and I chased him with a baseball bat.
“I’ve been robbed five times before,” Ngo added. “This time I decided to hit back.”
When police spotted Ngo running with a baseball bat last night at about 9:45 p.m., Ngo pointed to Mazza, who was hoofing it down Elm Street, Middlesex Assistant District Attorney Shannon Jurgens said.
Mazza jumped into the white van and took off, veering onto a sidewalk to avoid a police cruiser, Jurgens said — driving as fast as 70 mph while running stop signs and red lights on his way into Revere.
“Eventually he took a right turn on a dead-end street in Revere,” Jurgens said. “Once on that dead end with nowhere to go, he took a turn into a yard, crashing through the fence and into the pool of that residence.”
Mazza took off on foot but was found by the Chelsea River two hours later. A small fake handgun was found in plain sight in the van as it was towed from the pool, Jurgens said. She said Mazza has multiple convictions for armed robbery and has done state prison time, including a five-year sentence following an Essex County conviction in 2002.
Mazza has two kids, 4 and 2, with his wife, Karina Mazza. The two are separated, but Karina Mazza called her husband her “best friend” and said he has a problem with heroin.
“I am just upset. I have two children asking for their father,” Mazza said. She saw her husband’s van on the news Tuesday night and said, “Oh my God, I thought he was dead.”