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Palo Alto police are looking for suspects who assaulted a custodian at Stanford Research Park parking lot early Saturday morning, knocking him unconscious, and stole his vehicle, according to a news release from the Police Department.
The vehicle, a Toyota 4Runner, was found ablaze later that morning in Oakland, police said.
According to the police, the custodian — a man in his 50s — was emptying trash cans into the dumpster on the 700 block of Page Mill Road at about 6 a.m. on March 9 and had left the car idling near the dumpster. He reportedly noticed a sedan idling in a nearby parking space with a person whom he described as a white female inside, police said.
As he returned to his car, he heard a male voice from behind him and then felt a blow to the shoulder, police said, before he fell to the ground and lost consciousness. According to police, when he woke up, both his vehicle and the other car, a light brown sedan, were gone.
The custodian told the police that he did not see the male suspect and could not provide any further description of the woman or her car.
According to the news release, an Oakland Police Department officer spotted the stolen vehicle at about 9 a.m. that morning on the 600 block of Embarcadero West. The 4Runner was ablaze and unoccupied, police said.
Palo Alto police said there have been no similar cases reported recently in the city. They are asking anyone with information about the incident to call the department’s 24-hour dispatch center at (650) 329-2413 or leave an anonymous tip at paloalto@tipnow.org or (650) 383-8984.