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Silverthorne police identify suspects in armed robbery of Kum & Go

Silverthorne police obtained arrest warrants for two suspectsthis week, following an armed robbery at Kum & Go in July.
Elise Reuter / ereuter@summitdaily.com |

Two arrest warrants were signed on Monday, concerning two suspects involved in an alleged armed robbery at a Kum & Go in Silverthorne. Police were dispatched to the gas station just after 5 a.m. on July 31, saying a masked man had entered the back door of the store with a gun, demanding cash.

“We’ve had several robberies at Kum & Go and we’ve been able to solve all those robberies,” Silverthorne Police chief Mark Hanschmidt said.

The two suspects, Edward Yazzie and Shereace Juarez, face charges of aggravated robbery and theft, but may face additional charges later. According to Colorado law, aggravated robbery is a class-three felony if it involves the possession or use of a deadly weapon.



Silverthorne police detective Theresa Barger said Yazzie is currently in custody, and was out on parole from a previous incident at the time of his arrest. She noted that Juarez also has a prior criminal history, which she used to find Yazzie’s identity.

According to her investigation, the man entered the store around 5 a.m., while the woman waited in the car. Hanschmidt said Yazzie stuck a gun to the clerk’s side, and took “a carton of cigarettes and a minimal amount of cash.”



Barger noted that according to a store clerk, just prior to the robbery, a few people were reportedly asking for gas money at the Kum & Go, between 3:30 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. They also tried using a credit card, which was declined.

“They gave up and drove off,” Barger said.

FOLLOWING THE TRAIL

From there, Barger said she noted the suspects’ Cadillac matched a description of the car the two drove away in after asking for money. Looking through surveillance video footage from multiple stores in Silverthorne, she was able to follow the car leaving south on Highway 9.

At one point, the video shows the car driving behind Target; nearby, just behind Vista Subaru, police located a cash drawer from the register.

“It was very consistent,” Barger said. “We have video of the car driving by the cash drawer in the same area.”

She noted that on the video, as police were dispatched to respond to the theft reports, the Cadillac was driving past the road to Wildernest, where it slowed down seeing the police vehicles. From that point, she thought the two might have left on Interstate 70.

“Whenever you’ve got an interstate running through your front door, you kind of become a target,” Hanschmidt said.

Just 10 minutes later, the car turned around and the woman entered a Shell Gas Station, where she paid $20 for gas. She said the car then turned south into the northbound lane of Highway 9, in an attempt to prevent security cameras from capturing the vehicle’s license plate.

However, Barger was still able to discover Juarez’s identity, using information from the declined credit card the man tried to use at Kum & Go. After obtaining a search warrant for the credit cards, Barger found Juarez’s name matching DMV records of the Cadillac.

“We were able to follow the car after we started putting it all together,” Barger said.

She noted after discovering records of Juarez’s prior criminal history, she was able to pull up the names of men she had been arrested with, and found Yazzie’s name as one of them.

“I look at this as hard work from detective Barger,” Hanschmidt said. “She put all of this together.”


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