A prison chaplain was severely beaten during the robbery of the electronics department of a Wal-Mart store in Pueblo where he was working early Tuesday morning.
Pueblo police Sgt. Eric Bravo said Omar Griffin-Belhac, 21, of Colorado Springs and Rashad Wilson, 22, of Fountain went to the electronics department at 2:34 a.m. and asked the 66-year-old clerk to see iPod devices. As the man bent over the case to open it, the suspects pummeled him, breaking both eye sockets, his nose and his jaw and causing multiple fractures to other facial bones.
“It was an unprovoked attack,” Bravo said.
The store clerk remains hospitalized in serious condition.
Griffin-Belhac was arrested in Colorado Springs on Wednesday. In an interview with Pueblo detectives on Thursday, he confessed to the beating and also said nine i Pods had been stolen, Bravo said.
Bravo said the victim is a volunteer chaplain for the Colorado Department of Corrections. The victim worked the late shift at the 24-hour Wal-Mart so he could do his volunteer prison ministry during the day.
Bravo said Griffin-Belhac and Wilson are former Colorado State University-Pueblo students who enrolled hoping to make the football team but were kicked off campus for disciplinary reasons.
Griffin-Belhac is being held at the El Paso County jail in lieu of $250,000 bail on a charge of robbing an at-risk adult.
Police are still looking for Wilson and the alleged driver of the getaway car, Akeem Ali Thomas, 24. Thomas is Griffin-Belhac’s cousin.
Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Wilson and Thomas is asked to contact the Pueblo Police Department at 719-553-2498.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
