Anonymous hero had the 'Midas' touch

Christopher J. Wentworth (Rochester Police photo)

ROCHESTER - He didn’t want his picture taken and he didn’t want to give his name, but a Midas worker is a hero today after preventing a deranged Rochester man from entering VIP Auto Parts and creating a potential hostage situation after a bizarre chain of events near the Lilac Mall on Tuesday morning.

The Midas worker had extra incentive to intervene. His wife works at VIP and was inside the store at the time of the incident.

Police first responded to the report of a disturbance in the Hannaford’s parking lot around 9:40, but by the time they arrived just a few short minutes later, it was pretty much all over except the arresting thanks to the Midas worker’s and others heroics.

From what police pieced together after a quick investigation, the fracas started out when the subject, 43-year-old Christopher J. Wentworth, of 82 Chestnut Hill Road in Rochester, began terrorizing folks in the Hannaford parking lot.

The area of the Hannaford's parking lot where the initial confrontations occurred. (Harrison Thorp photo)

According to police, the suspect first approached a male victim who was seated in his vehicle and began a verbal confrontation. Police say Wentworth then took out a black “crow bar” type object that was approximately two-feet long and struck the victim in the chest. As the victim was trying to get back into his vehicle the suspect struck the victim in the leg multiple times with the object causing bruising, police said.

The suspect then approached another male who was unloading a delivery truck at the front of the Hannaford’s and waved the blunt object at this victim in a threatening manner.

“I could see that,” the Midas worker said. “He was trying to take away the guy’s (delivery) dolly.”

Police said the suspect then hit this delivery truck victim in the head with a large bag of popcorn, which the Midas worker said Wentworth actually went into the supermarket to get

“Yeah, it was one of the really big bags of popcorn,” he said.

 According to police, the suspect then turned and walked toward two older males who were putting groceries in the trunk of their vehicle and began swinging the wooden club at one of the males. One of the men apparently retrieved a handgun from the vehicle, police said.

The Midas worker said at one point he heard someone in the Hannaford parking lot yell, “He’s gotta gun, he’s gotta gun,” which could’ve been when the suspect reacted to seeing the man get his firearm out of the car, the Midas worker thought. Soon after he heard what he thought might be a gunshot but in reality, he said it could’ve been the suspect hitting a car with his club.

At any rate, at this point he yelled at the receptionist to call police and soon after saw the man running across Route 125 toward him and the railroad tracks between Midas and an oil-change shop just north of Midas.

“I went out there and kept him from getting away (toward the tracks and into woods) and he ran toward VIP where my wife works,” he said. “I wasn’t going to let him get in there.

“He went through the first set of double doors and he thought the second set was locked. It wasn’t, but he was maybe confused. I ran in to where he was and dragged him out and a group of us sort of half-surrounded him. He had nowhere to go but back on the highway. He dropped his club and I picked it up.”

The worker said within seconds the police were there and the man was taken into custody without incident.

Spaulding High School was put in lockdown mode during the incident as a precaution.

Wentworth was charged with four felony counts of second-degree assault, three counts of felony criminal threatening and one count of simple assault.

The first victim who was struck in the chest and leg was transported to Frisbie Memorial Hospital with what are described as nonlife-threatening injuries.