Cameron Aulner was at work, his first day on the job in a big-box retailer, when he heard someone yelling, “Stop that man!”
At first, Aulner, who uses a wheelchair, was going to back off, but then the person shouted, “Stop that man; he grabbed a girl!”
So Aulner put his wheelchair in the fleeing man’s path, grabbed the suspect’s shirt and tackled him into a soda machine.
“Anytime anyone disrespects a woman, especially a little girl, that really strikes home with me,” he said Thursday.
Aulner and the man who shouted, Chris Bevin, held the suspect until police arrived.
Kevin Salyers, 34, was arrested and was being held on suspicion of sexual assault of a child. He is accused of groping a 10-year- old girl in the Sept. 19 incident at a Westminster Wal-Mart.
Bevin was in the toy department shopping with two of his children when he heard a girl screaming for help, according to court documents.
Bevin went toward the girl and heard her describing a man who had touched her inappropriately. He spotted a man matching the description and started chasing him, according to an arrest affidavit.
Bevin was shouting for help as he ran. Then Aulner, who works at the Comcast sales table near the front of the store, got involved and made the tackle.
Aulner, 22, was injured in an accident when he was 14, breaking his back in a fall from a two-story roof.
Kieran Nicholson, The Denver Post
