By HILLARY DAVIS
Sun Staff Reporter
Friday, November 23, 2007
*To see this story as it originally appeared in the Daily Sun, click here

It was a crisp Monday morning, and Jose Melendez had just opened up his Fourth Street shop. A man came in. He asked for a pre-paid phone card.

Melendez had seen the man before. He was one of many, many customers he has served at the Mexico Lindo, a carneceria, or Mexican market that sells meat, piñatas and this and that. He had no reason to believe the man would want to harm him. But when Melendez turned around to grab a card, he felt a crack to his head. An explosion went off in his skull. He turned around and the bat came at him again, slamming into the top of the head.

The shopkeeper fell to the ground.

SUSPECTS UNDOCUMENTED

Flagstaff police named Mario Ezekiel Herrera, 38, and Ramon Sanchez, 36, suspects in the Nov. 12 robbery after serving a search warrant on a Mobile Haven trailer home last week. They found several pieces of evidence that tied the men to the crime, and a similar one at a Kentucky Fried Chicken two weeks earlier, but the men themselves have been elusive.

Police said the men were in the country illegally.

It's hard to say how much impact undocumented immigrants have on local crime, because Flagstaff police do not track how many arrestees are in the country illegally -- it's just not their job, said Sgt. Tom Boughner from the Flagstaff Police Department.

Boughner said even anecdotal evidence of immigrant-driven crime is spotty, although he knows immigrants commit offenses.

"There's no doubt that illegal immigrants commit crimes, but how many ... how prevalent, is unknown," he said.

BOUND WITH TAPE

Laid out on the creaky wooden floor behind the counter, Jose Melendez bled. And bled.

He was conscious but fading, dazed from the blows to the head.

He remembers his attacker wrapping tape around his hands and feet, raiding his till, and even plucking his wallet from his pants. The rest is a blur.

Was that a gun he pointed at him? The man was talking, in Spanish, to an unseen partner -- what was he saying? Was it "debo matarle?" Should I kill him?

His gushing head near a well-worn armchair and his feet near a box of hair conditioner bottles, Melendez, a father of five, thought of his family -- his daughter, a bubbly 7-year-old who comes into the store every day after school and helps out for a couple of dollars. His youngest, just 4.

He gave his life to God. Then he blacked out.

BRUTAL VIOLENCE GETS POLICE ATTENTION

The Mexico Lindo hit and a similar one at the KFC on East Route 66 late on the night of Oct. 28 forcefully grabbed police attention.

Armed robberies are not particularly uncommon in Flagstaff -- just a week and a half before the KFC robbery police had collared four women and two teenage girls in connection with a string of robberies at eastside businesses, where the ringleader brandished a gun.

But these ones were brutally violent. In the KFC robbery, a lone employee closing up was ambushed as he left the restaurant, pistol-whipped and forced to open the safe. He was wrapped several times around the shoulders in duct tape. He suffered a bad gash over his eye.

"We're most anxious to identify and locate these suspects because of the high degree of violence," Boughner said. "In both instances there were serious injuries to the victims, though they were apparently compliant with the suspects."

Melendez said he would have cooperated with the robber without unnecessary violence.

"I never expected him to hit me with a bat from behind," he said this week. "I think that's cowardly."

FLOOD OF WELL-WISHERS

Jose Melendez came to. It felt like he'd only blinked his eyes but he'd been out for at least five minutes. He needed to get up. He needed help.

He slid his blood-slickened hands out of the tape bindings and found the phone. His glasses had been lost in the scuffle and blood stung his eyes, so he guessed where the 9 and 1 buttons were.

Melendez said he lost a quart of blood.

"If I would have stayed knocked out a long time I would have bled to death," he said.

He received stitches and staples to the gashes on his scalp. The stitches came out on Saturday. The staples come out today. But for some dizziness when he stands up, he's doing well.

Just one week after the attack, Melendez was back behind his counter. He was a little nervous but he has faith in his customers, most of whom are good people.

He has lots of regulars, many who have come by in the past week just to offer good wishes. They care for the Navy veteran who came to the United States as a child and spent much of his life, unscathed, on the rough streets of East Los Angeles before moving to Flagstaff in 1999.

"Estas bien?" one man asked as he checks out.

"Mejor, gracias," Melendez replied.

NO QUESTIONS ASKED

Melendez, a 52-year-old naturalized citizen, doesn't ask his customers about their immigration status. He is happy to provide what he has found to be an appreciated service, offering traditional foods and goods to Flagstaff's growing Mexican and Mexican-American community.

Mexico Lindo started out almost eight years ago in the suite now occupied by Dorothy's K9 Grooming in the shopping strip across the parking lot. In 2004, Melendez moved his meat case and stacks of tortillas, chilis, and novelties to the shingled, stand-alone building just off Fourth Street.

Sometimes assumptions about Latinos -- Are they illegals? Are they criminals? -- bother Melendez, but not usually.

Of the immigrants who do commit crimes like the one against him, he said, "There's always gonna be some rotten apples in the basket."

His attack has shaken his view of Flagstaff, but he doesn't plan on leaving anytime soon. And he is sure that police will catch their men.

The holidays will hold more meaning for Melendez, who said he has become a better person experiencing the positive that arose from the negative.

"You look at life in a different way," he said. "You kind of enjoy every moment even more."

THANK YOU

It was a crisp Monday morning, and Jose Melendez opened up his Fourth Street shop. A man came in.

He was not there to hurt him. He was there to support him. Melendez thanked God for the man, his return to normalcy.

"I want to say thank you to him for being the first customer back," he said.

Hillary Davis can be reached at 556-2261 or hdavis@azdailysun.com.