On Saturday, March 17, at 1:15 p.m. officers of the Santa Monica Police Department went to the Sprint Store located in the 700 block of Wilshire Boulevard in order to investigate a (phoned in) report of a battery that had just occurred.
When the officers arrived, they detained a suspect and then spoke with the manager who was the victim in this case.
The officers learned from the manager that a man had entered the Sprint Store with his cell phone and had requested that someone in the store assist him with a problem regarding his cell phone.
The manager and another employee examined the phone and determined that the phone was malfunctioning as a result of some water.
The manager then informed the suspect that he would have to go through the insurance process in order to obtain a replacement phone. The suspect, upon hearing this (clearly disastrous) news, became enraged, and when the manager attempted to return the phone to him he slapped the managers hand, causing the phone to fly about 15 feet across the store.
It was then that the manager had sprinted to his own phone and called the police.
The officers, in response to the manager’s desire for a citizen’s arrest, took this man off to jail.
This 25-year-old Santa Monica resident was then charged with assault and battery. His bail was set at $20,000.
Editor’s Note: These reports are part of a regular police coverage series entitled “Alert Police Blotter” (APB), which injects some minor editorial into certain police activities in Santa Monica. Not all of the Mirror’s coverage of incidents involving police are portrayed in this manner. More serious crimes and police-related activities are regularly reported without editorial in the pages of the Santa Monica Mirror and its website, smmirror.com.
