The Commerce Police Department wants its handcuffs back, and it has other reasons to seek a 20-year-old Commerce man who escaped from the back of a police car.
Francisco Rodriguez-Lopez, 20, his hands handcuffed behind his back, somehow got his hands in front of himself, managed to roll down a window in the police car while officers worked a burglary case and escaped.
The incident occurred at about 8:40 one night at the Natural Beauty Supply store on North Elm Street. Police had been summoned to the scene by the owner, who reported she thought someone was inside.
An officer clearing the store was in a room containing women’s undergarments when he found Rodriguez-Lopez and ordered him to “show his hands.”
But the suspect tried to run by the officer, which resulted in a scuffle, the officers trying to get him handcuffed and the suspect yelling for the store owner to tell police who he was.
When the suspect was in custody, the owner, a 49-year-old Asian female, told police that he was a man who wanted to date her. She refused. She also said the man had been in the store earlier, but she thought he’d left.
Rodriguez-Lopez — or Lopez-Rodriguez, police aren’t sure — was in the police car just three to five minutes before he escaped. He is characterized as “homeless.”
If he is captured, he will be charged with escape, theft by taking, obstruction, burglary and stalking, the report indicated.
