After Good Samaritan intervenes, police question why suspect was on the street

Jan. 1—Jeremy White was just getting breakfast.

The 34-year old metal fabricator was stopping by the 7-Eleven on South Transit Road and High Street Thursday morning at around 6:30 a.m. before going to his shift when he noticed what he called, "a very suspect" character looking around the parking lot while a woman was getting her purse together, unaware that she was about to be robbed.

White said he pulled his truck into a parking spot parallel to the victim just as the would-be robber, Danny Merrit, 41, who has no present address, flung open the passenger door and grabbed the woman's purse in a tug-of-war between him and the victim before ripping it our of her hands and running down the street.

But White wasn't having it.

White jumped out of his truck and pursued Merrit down West High Street, eventually tackling him and holding him on the ground while the victim sat on his legs.

"I dove on top of him," White said. "We ended up rolling into the middle of the street! I'm on top of him, holding him. He's trying to grab on me. Trying to swing on me."

By the time the police had arrived on the scene, approximately 6:45 a.m., White had knocked Merrit unconscious after telling him several times to stop pulling his hair.

"I said, 'Stop pulling my hair,' and I'm holding him," White, who has long hair, said and demonstrated how he struck Merrit with an elbow to the back of the neck, ricocheting his head into the pavement.

"He wouldn't listen to me," White said and noted that he couldn't take his grip off Merrit in the case he had a weapon.

White also said that when he graduated high school he enrolled at Niagara County Community College for a career in criminal justice, but he found the classes challenging.

"I wanted to pursue that, but I was never really good at school," he said. "I was more hands on and I ended up doing some trade stuff and getting some knowledge of framing, plumbing and concrete. I work at a fab shop with metal, so I learned everything just coming up."

Lt. Marshall Belling of the Lockport Police Department was one of the responding officers and said that he appreciates White's help.

"I've seen it (happen) a few times in my career," Belling said of similar situations where citizens intervened in a crime. "But I feel like we're in a society where people are more often taking their camera out and filming something as opposed to stepping in and helping out. I think it's awesome."

Merrit is charged with a class E felony possession of stolen property and class E felony charge of grand larceny.

Merrit has been released from custody on the charges, as he was for the last three arrests he was charged with, said Lockport Police Chief Steve Abbott.

According to Abbott, on Nov. 23, Merrit was charged with arson when he set fire to his own shirt in an M&T Bank parking lot, because he was cold. Before that he was arrested for menacing with a weapon on Oct. 13, and in July he was arrested for disorderly conduct and endangering a child.

"Why he's still on the streets and able to rob someone's purse?" the chief said. "I do not know."

Abbott said the bottom line was that judges should have the right to set bail to suspects like Merrit, but the way the laws have changed have made that impossible.

"Our hands are cuffed and we've got to get them un-cuffed so we can do our job," Abbott said. "These men and women here are doing a fantastic job, but they're catching them, and the rules are releasing them."

Abbott said White's behavior was rare.

"Not everybody thinks that way," he said. "A lot of people, they get scared and they don't want to get involved and that's part of the problem."

The system is not doing any favors for suspects like Merrit either, according to Abbott.

"He definitely needs help," he said. "But he's not getting any when he gets an appearance ticket, goes before a judge, gets released, and then it's, 'On to my next crime.' "

White said it was pure instinct that led him to be the Good Samaritan that morning, but also expressed pity for Merrit who he suspected was using drugs.

"When you get to that rock bottom to do stuff like that, because you're feeding your habit?" White said. "It's not a good situation."