Page 43 - AreaNewsletters "Oct 2021" issue

Hospital. Both o cers were shot through the abdomen and given “scant hours to live.”
Meanwhile, the devious Perez evaded capture. While dozens of Denver and State Police set-up roadblocks and scoured the area for him, he spent that night hiding in a boxcar. He went to work the next morning to collect his paycheck of about $5 and then went to a diner in Denver for breakfast, letting it “slip” to other patrons that he was going to the bus station to go to Brighton. Instead, Perez started walking to Mexico, sleeping in a boxcar for a second night and then in a big pine tree for the third.
Meanwhile at Denver General, doctors were afraid to operate on Begley and Ohruh because their conditions were still precarious, but despite their condition they told detectives that they thought Perez was the woman’s son and believed he was neither armed nor dangerous. Before they had time to gure out what was going on or to search anyone, Perez “whipped out a gun” and shot both o cers.
Perez had been arrested twice in 1944 in Denver for “petty kni ngs” in taverns but was released when no one could ever identify him. Denver Police had
his mugshot, however, and Begley and Ohruh positively identi ed Perez as the man who had shot them.
By the fourth day (Thursday), police and DA squads continued to press the search
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for Perez, but it was the same old story. There were plenty of leads, plenty of people who thought they had seen Perez, but Perez remained elusive.
By Thursday night at 10pm, Perez
was so hungry that he walked into the B&B Café, operated by a Mr. and Mrs. Howard Barker in Castle Rock, to order hamburgers to eat and take with him. The B&B Café was open mostly around the clock, and two recently returned
war veterans, Dale Ridenour, 22, and Martin Nelson, 23, were having a late cup of co ee when they noticed Perez and thought he looked like the fugitive wanted in Denver for shooting two police o cers. Ridenour’s brother, Perry, sauntered
over to their table, and he happened to have the newspaper with him. The three men looked at the picture of the wanted fugitive and believed that the man in the third booth across from them was the shooting suspect, despite Perez’ attempt to
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The heroic citizens who recognized Perez.
Castle Rock “AreaNewsletters” • October 2021