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Slaying suspect worked at Hickenlooper eatery

April M. Washington And Sarah Langbein, Rocky Mountain News

Published May 11, 2005 at midnight

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A man suspected in the killing of a cop and the target of a massive manhunt worked with false documentation at the Cherry Cricket, a restaurant co- owned by Mayor John Hickenlooper, police said Tuesday.

Raul Garcia-Gomez, 19, an illegal immigrant, failed to show up for work Monday morning at the restaurant in the Cherry Creek retail district after the fatal shooting of police Detective Donald Young and the wounding of Detective John Bishop early Sunday morning.

Lee Driscoll, the mayor's business partner, said Tuesday that the company learned last month that Garcia-Gomez provided the restaurant with two forms of identification, but the Social Security number he provided turned out to be false.

Driscoll said Garcia-Gomez's name was on a list he receives annually from the Social Security Administration. It indicated Garcia-Gomez's information did not match its records.

"I learned this morning (Tuesday) that he worked for the restaurant when I got a call from the general manager . . . who said the police were questioning people," said Driscoll, president of the Wynkoop Brewing Co., the parent company of the mayor's restaurants.

"He worked as a dishwasher. He worked for us about 10 months. He looked like a stellar employee from what I can determine from his file."

Driscoll is among three business partners who manage Hickenlooper's trust that oversees 10 restaurants and other financial holdings.

The restaurant is owned in part by Hickenlooper, but the mayor is not involved in day-to-day operations at the Cherry Cricket.

Driscoll said neither he nor the restaurants' managers had spoken to the mayor about Garcia-Gomez's employment.

Hickenlooper said Tuesday that he learned of Garcia-Gomez's ties to the Cherry Cricket after he was briefed by his chief of staff, Michael Bennet.

"Certainly, in the restaurant business everyone is like family," he said. "It's stunning to believe someone a part of the family could commit such a heinous crime."

Hickenlooper said he will not get involved in addressing the hiring practices at the restaurants in the trust.

He said those decisions will be made by Driscoll and each establishment's general manager.

"I'm not instructing the restaurants to do anything," Hickenlooper said. "They're their own ship, running their own course. The reason I put them in trust was so that I could focus my attentions on running the city. My only interest is catching the guy and bringing him to justice."

Cherry Cricket managers told police that Garcia-Gomez presented a resident-alien card when he applied for the job, according to a police source close to the investigation. The card was handed over Monday and gave the police their first photo of the suspect - albeit an unclear one.

"You could see that this card was fake," said the police source, who added that the card was falling apart and typewritten.

Police continued to stake out the Cherry Cricket on Tuesday to see if Garcia-Gomez would be brazen enough to return for a paycheck he hadn't picked up.

Driscoll said he believed the restaurant complied with the letter of the law. It took a copy of Garcia-Gomez's Social Security card and a copy of his resident-alien card that appeared to be in order and legal. The card included his photo, fingerprint and a seal from the U.S. Department of Justice that appeared official.

Driscoll said the company is currently meeting with the management of all its restaurants to provide them with a list of workers whose information did not match Social Security's records, but had not yet met with the Cherry Cricket's management.

Employers need only check two forms of identification "that reasonably appear to be genuine," according to federal immigration rules.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo on Tuesday blasted the Hickenlooper administration's handling of the case.

The Littleton Republican said U.S. immigration officials should have been contacted after each of three traffic citations issued to Garcia-Gomez in Denver because police could not confirm his legal status.

"Denver's sanctuary policy prevents local law enforcement from cooperating with federal officials on immigration matters, despite federal law which explicitly prohibits such a policy," Tancredo charged in a news release.

Tancredo also questioned whether the Cherry Cricket had taken proper steps to verify Garcia-Gomez's legal status when he was hired.

Tancredo had his own brush with such questions in September 2002 when reports surfaced that some of the workers who helped on a basement remodeling project at Tancredo's home were illegal immigrants.

Tancredo maintained at the time that he simply hired a contractor and didn't have "the foggiest idea of whether the people hired by the company I hired were illegal."

Driscoll said the restaurants in Hickenlooper's trust employ more than 500 employees in an industry in which turnover is common.

"Everyone knows there's an issue of illegal aliens working a bunch of jobs in this country, and particularly in the restaurant business," he said.

"Once John decided to run for mayor, we did the research to make sure we understood the law clearly in this office."

Suspect

• Name: Raul Garcia-Gomez

• Description: Hispanic male, 5-foot-6, 150 pounds, short shaved dark brown hair, brown eyes, thin mustache, tattoo on left hand

• Vehicle: Last seen driving a white 1995 Dodge Neon, four doors with temporary Colorado tags