Investigators say the injured man is a burglary suspect, Jeremy Williams.
Several of the people who stopped the suspect are recovering from cuts and bruises they received while struggling to hold him down until police arrived. And they say for anyone looking to steal, theirs is not the place.
Sharah Wright says she, and a handful of other neighbors, woke up to screams for help around 5:30 Wednesday morning.
"I just ran outside and I saw people on top of somebody and I just starting yelling 'I'm going to call the cops,'" Wright said. "The people who were on top of the guy were like 'yes, please call the cops.' and the guy kept trying to get away and yelling 'get off me!'"
Wright says at that point the suspect, Williams, was pinned down about a block from the crime scene. Moments before that Marco Gutierrez, who was waiting for his ride to work, saw the suspect running down the street, with the victim's son chasing after him. So, he says he put his foot out to trip Williams. That's when other neighbors jumped in to pin Williams to the ground.
Gutierrez says he injured his knee in the struggle and cut his knuckles defending himself as he held Williams down until police arrived. Wright says that's when she figured out who the neighborhood heroes are.
"Everybody started saying 'no, we caught him stealing out of our garage and they stopped him.' and I knew that the guy on the ground was the bad guy, obviously," Wright said.
Just about everyone in the two apartment buildings there say they've been broken into at some point in recent months. Some say it's happened multiple times.
Now they're glad to have Williams as proof of what could happen if someone else decides to rip them off.
"It makes me feel a little bit better to know we're all out looking out for each other," Wright said.
Williams faces charges for burglary, drug possession and probation violations. He's out on parole, Madera Police said, through AB-109.
