ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Albuquerque police officers were called to the Pizza Hut on Juan Tabo after a masked man armed with a handgun cornered an employee in the parking lot and made him open up the safe inside.

“We see there is video surveillance that is available but it wasn’t available to the officers that actually responded to the call, so my investigator asked the DIVRT team to go and retrieve that video so we can look and see any identifying information of the offender,” said Josh Wood, a sergeant with APD’s robbery department.

DIVRT is the Digital Image and Video Recovery Team.

Wood says he only has four detectives on his robbery unit, so having an extra group available to gather evidence helps their investigations.

The suspect in the Pizza Hut robbery, Cristian Orozco, ran through the back parking lot and then down an alley – where there were even more cameras.

“They started following that same pathway the individual took off on, and they saw in the alley there were more cameras from a Domino’s down the street,” said Andrew Jaramillo with APD.

That surveillance video captured Orozco walking through the parking lot next door, taking off his mask, and going into the back door of a nearby Wendy’s – where police later found out he worked. But they would have never known that without the help of DIVRT.

“It solved the case,” Wood said. “The DIVRT team member who went out and got video from the Pizza Hut, they took the initiative to go find surrounding video from surrounding businesses that showed the offender walking south through the alley.”

Once police identified the suspect as Orozco, they found out this wasn’t his first run-in with the law. Police say he was wearing an ankle monitor while he robbed the Pizza Hut at gunpoint.

“The icing on the cake was that ankle monitor,” Wood said. “We were able to contact his probation and parole officer and they provided GPS points of him going from his place of employment to the Pizza Hut to commit the robbery, and back to his place of employment.”

Orozco is back in jail in Taos County for his parole violation and warrants. He will have to come back to Albuquerque eventually to face his latest charges of armed robbery.