A would-be 180-pound female bandit likely pegged pint-sized Denise Shull a pushover when she tried to rob Shull Tuesday evening.
What the robber hadn't bargained for was that punching the 98-pound manager of Sun Credit would prove her undoing.
Shull said Wednesday she was closing up her shop in the 1900 block of North Carson Street just after 7:30 p.m. Tuesday when she got into her car to leave.
Almost immediately, Shull's driver-side door flew open and she saw a woman with a stocking over her face and gloves on her hands.
At first Shull thought it was a joke, she said. But when the masked woman punched Shull in the chest, then reached across her to snatch a bank bag off the front seat, the fight was on, said the 43-year-old woman who used to work at the Carson City Jail.
Shull grabbed the woman by her neck and got her onto the ground where the two struggled over the bank bag.
Shull wrested the bag away and tossed it back into her vehicle. Her next goal was to detain the suspect until police arrived.
But after Shull ripped the mask off, the robber got away and ran north screaming for her male accomplice.
"So I was just running after her," said Shull, laughing at the spectacle of it all on Wednesday.
At the end of the sidewalk, Shull said, she tackled the assailant again and gained control of her. Before she knew it, she said, a man emerged from a vehicle parked in the north lot and started punching her in the head and trying to pull her off.
"But I wasn't letting go," she said.
The struggle was witnessed by the manager of a cigarette shop nearby, and he intervened, chasing off the man who fled in a vehicle. Shull said she noticed that the license plate was covered with cardboard.
When officers arrived Shull was still on top of the woman, relieved that backup had arrived.
"When it all was happening, I was laughing. But then when she punched me, and the adrenaline came, and she started calling someone else to help, I was like, 'Hell no!'" said Shull. "She probably thought, 'I'm just gonna grab this money from this little girl. I'm gonna run around there, our plates are covered and nobody will know we did it.'"
Christian Rodriguez, 41, former office manager of Sun Credit, was arrested on suspicion of felony strong arm robbery. Shull said she'd never met Rodriguez, but had heard of her since taking the job two months ago.
Rodriguez's boyfriend, Victor Hugo Gomez-Cano, 36, was arrested a short time later hiding behind rocks on Lone Mountain above the cemetery, according to police. He was booked on suspicion of felony conspiracy to commit robbery.
Shull said she hopes that the prosecutor will see that Gomez-Cano wasn't just an accessory, but a full participant.
"Don't let him get away with this. He was trying to protect her and beat me," she said.
And though she said she never thought about how she would react in such a situation, she wasn't surprised by the outcome.
"That's how I am even though I'm tiny and everything. Over the whole entire thing I wasn't scared ever, I know that sounds stupid, but I just was pissed," she said. "I was like, 'You open my car door, you punch me. It's on.'"
