Alleged burglary suspect refutes Carson City deputy's report: ‘Everything in their statement is untrue'

Chris Gorby is an estate liquidator based in Carson City, and Thursday started like any other day for him, Gorby said, as he prepared an estate sale near North Roop Street and Hot Springs Road.

As he was preparing the sale, he learned that his estate sale signs had been incorrectly placed on Carson City street sign poles instead of on stakes, and he said he quickly jumped in his car to right the issue.

“I was heading over to start fixing my signs because I know they’re not supposed to be on (city-owned) poles,” Gorby said. The signs had been posted for less than an hour, he said, when he learned they’d been placed on the poles.

When Gorby got to the location of the signs, he saw that a Carson City Public Works employee was already on scene, removing the green arrow signs from the poles.

“I walked over and said, ‘Hey man, I’m sorry, I’m fixing them right now,’ and he turned to me and said, ‘You’re not getting these back.’”

Gorby said that the employee was immediately aggressive with him and “had a major attitude.”

Gorby said he tried to reason with the employee, and attempted to take the signs back, at which point the employee “walked right into me, like he was trying to walk through me, and I pushed him away from me.”

This, Gorby said, is the only time he ever initiated physical contact with the employee, contradicting a sheriff's deputy’s report that claimed he “battered” the employee at two different locations.

“I never hit him, I never took a swing at him, not once,” Gorby said.

The employee jumped into his work truck and drove off, and Gorby followed in his own car.

Gorby said that the employee stopped over off of Winnie Lane and got out of the truck to take pictures of Gorby’s car.

“While he was doing that, I ran over to his open door and reached in to grab my signs,” Gorby said. “And when I reached in, this dude comes up and puts me in a chokehold and starts yanking me backwards.”

Gorby said he held onto the steering wheel and kept saying, “Give me my signs,” when Carson City Sheriff’s Office deputies arrived.

According to Gorby, the deputies initially wanted to arrest him for battery, which Gorby was shocked by.

“I told them if anything, I was going to press charges against (the employee) for battery,” Gorby said.

Gorby attempted to explain that he was only trying to retrieve his signs, at which point deputies informed him that once the employee had taken his signs, they belonged to the employee.


“That just blew me away,” Gorby said. “I asked them, ’So you’re telling me, if I go over to that house right there and put their bike in my car, it’s now mine?’ They wouldn’t even listen to me. They treated me so terribly, they wouldn’t even talk to me about what had happened.”

Gorby said that, for whatever reason, they were unable to arrest him on the battery charge, and so they pivoted to alleged felony burglary of a motor vehicle because, Gorby said, he tried to get his signs out of the employee’s truck.

Gorby said that the entirety of the arrest report statement does not reflect what really happened during the incident prior to his arrest.

“They said I pulled him out of his truck, which never happened,” Gorby said. The report also stated that Gorby attempted to open a locked door to retrieve his signs, which he also refutes, stating that the door to the truck was already open when he tried to take his signs back.

The report also stated that Gorby told deputies he "entered the truck and was holding onto the steering wheel preventing (the employee) to drive away.” Gorby said that the employee was never attempting to leave, but was already on the phone with deputies and was waiting for them to respond.

“Everything in their statement is untrue,” Gorby said.

Gorby said that when he went down to the sheriff’s office after he posted bail to file charges against the employee for battery, he was completely dismissed by the deputy.

“(He treated me) like I was wasting my time,” Gorby said. “He didn’t take pictures of my injuries — I’ve got bruises all over me from this guy, I’ve got a scratch on my face, and they just basically dismissed it.”

Gorby believes the deputies have no intention of following up on Gorby’s police report despite the physical evidence of the battery by the employee.

To date, no one has contacted Gorby regarding the report he filed. In addition, the Sheriff’s Office told him they wouldn’t be able to provide the police report of his arrest for at least a week, according to Gorby, who has still not received a copy of the arrest report from the sheriff’s office.

Gorby also has tried in vain to retrieve his signs from Public Works, but has continuously been told that the signs no longer belong to him.

“I don’t see how they can say that it’s their property,” Gorby said. “He even took signs from the electrical poles which Carson City does not own.”

Gorby also believes that his signs were targeted by the employee, because there are dozens of citizen-posted signs on poles that have been up all across town both before and after his arrest.

“I’ve been going around taking pictures of all the garage sale signs that are up, and right on the corner of the Public Works' Warehouse street there are five different pink signs posted that have been there since Sept. 9,” Gorby said. “So he was targeting me. I don’t know why — it could be because my signs are kind of big, so they might stand out more than the others, but it doesn’t make sense they would be taking my signs and leaving all the others.”

At the time of publication, Gorby has not received any information as to his own charges, or the charges he filed against the Public Works' employee for battery.