A robber whose ex-girlfriend turned him in for hold-ups and burglaries in La Jolla and Pacific Beach was sentenced Jan. 14 to 38 years in state prison.
Attorney Raymond Aragon, who represents David Allen Grub, 45, urged San Diego Superior Court Judge Melinda Lasater for a lesser sentence of 24 years, saying, “He’s never been in state prison before.”
Deputy District Attorney Dennis Panish said Grub will have to serve 85 percent of his sentence, or 32 years, before he can be paroled. Lasater ordered Grub to pay $445,000 to the victims, mostly for missing jewelry taken in daring daytime robberies in people’s homes in La Jolla and Rancho Santa Fe. She gave him credit for 787 days in jail and fined him $10,000.
Lasater ordered a 20-year sentence for use of a gun in an Aug. 1, 2012 robbery in which he discharged a rifle into asphalt, causing it to splinter and strike the throat of La Jolla homeowner Jay Hawley. Hawley said an ambulance took him to a hospital in which doctors “took out a piece of street from my neck” and used eight or nine stitches to close a wound near an eye.
Grub was also convicted of robbing a real estate agent, Peggy Chodorow, who had just finished showing Hawley’s $7 million home to prospective buyers. Grub took furs, jewelry and other items just as Hawley and his wife returned home and Grub fired warning shots into the pavement.
“My client’s very remorseful,” said Aragon “He got involved with the wrong people.” Aragon added that Grub is not a career criminal and that Grub’s ex-girlfriend only wrote an incriminating letter because “he took up with another woman.” Grub did not testify. “I just want to say I’m sorry,” Grub told Lasater.
“I do understand how meth (use) can…cause very bad things,” said the judge. “I do think his remorse is sincere.”
The crimes were unsolved until Grub’s ex-girlfriend left an anonymous note in the Alpine sheriff’s station on Feb. 21, 2013 that listed the crimes, Grub’s name, his Alpine address and his car license plate number.
Sheriff’s detective Karen Bloch testified the ex-girlfriend wrote the letter because Grub had bragged about some of the crimes. Sheriff’s deputies searched Grub’s home on Feb. 28, 2013, and found stolen property that included a purse taken in a Rancho Santa Fe home invasion robbery. Grub, an electrician, was arrested.
A jury found Grub guilty of all charges Oct. 21, 2014 following five hours of deliberations in a trial that began on Oct. 9. Grub was convicted of burglarizing a Pacific Beach home on May 24, 2012. Stephen Miller returned home at 10 a.m. and saw Grub carrying out a drawer that contained jewelry from his dresser. The jury also found Grub guilty of burglary at a La Jolla Scenic Drive house on April 19, 2012. Panish told jurors Grub got inside by throwing a rock through a window. Grub left his backpack and gloves inside the home, and his DNA was recovered from those items.
Grub was also convicted of burglarizing two homes in Rancho Bernardo in 2012. In both break-ins, Grub cut himself and left behind some blood, which the prosecutor said contained his DNA.
He was also found guilty of stealing a massive amount of jewelry from a Rancho Santa Fe home and with robbing a housekeeper on Dec. 20, 2012. –Neal Putnam