XPost: talk.politics.guns, alt.society.liberalism, sac.politics
XPost: oc.general

The day’s breads and pastries were baked. It was hot. And she
needed to charge her cell phone.

So Donaji Beltran took a short break from her family-owned
bakery in Garden Grove and walked to her parked car, where she
would be able to charge her cell phone and enjoy a few minutes
of cool air-conditioning.

The simple decision Wednesday afternoon may have saved her life.

Shortly after she stepped away from her shop, a man walked into
the bakery to rob it: the same man who later would be accused of
stabbing to death four people in Garden Grove and Santa Ana.

“If I had been behind the cash register, he would have killed
me,” a shaken Beltran said Thursday.

When Beltran, 45, first saw the man walk into her family’s M
Bakery late Wednesday afternoon, she thought he was a customer.

“So, I got out of the car to see what I could offer the client.”

But as she reached the doorway, she saw him behind the counter,
attempting to break into the cash register.

“What are you doing,” she asked him.

“He said, ‘This place is closed.”

“What?” she responded.

Then he lifted his shirt and pointed toward his waistband. She
believes she saw a weapon. She doesn’t remember specifically
what it was. It happened all too fast.

That’s when she ran off to a neighboring dentist office,
yelling: “My bakery is getting robbed! I’m being robbed!”

Staff at that office quickly locked the front door and called
police. Beltran peeked out through the window. She saw the man
carry out her cash register, put it in his older-model Mercedes
Benz with tinted windows, and drive off.

Garden Grove police arrested Zachary Castaneda, 33, for the
stabbing spree that left four dead and two wounded. Police
officials could not say what motivated Castaneda, a documented
gang member with a criminal history, to attack people in what
they said appear to be random acts of violence.

“I’m still in shock,” Beltran said Thursday. “I couldn’t sleep
last night. I have a headache. I’m tired. This has been very
traumatic.”

Ironically, Beltran is not typically alone at the bakery. Her
husband’s family has owned M Bakery, also known as Casa
Croissant, for some 25 years, and they just opened last month a
second one in Orange. Relatives and workers are at the sites
from early morning until nighttime baking some 50 different
types of breads and pastries. Customers’ favorite: “cuernitos” –
or croissants.

“Twenty-five years and nothing has ever happened,” she said.

The man who came in to her bakery didn’t just want to steal, she
said. “He came to rob and kill,” she said. “This man wanted to
kill everyone.”

Back at her South Orange County home Thursday night, Beltran
said she was still feeling a bit scared. But she was also
feeling lucky.

https://www.ocregister.com/2019/08/08/stabbing-spree-in-garden- grove-a-bakers-short-break-from-the-heat-may-have-spared-her-
life/

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