Bail was set at $70,575 for a 19-year-old resident of Watts on Monday, March 24 after physically abusing his live-in girlfriend while on a walk in Palisades Park.
Officers of the Santa Monica Police Department who were on patrol in a marked police vehicle received a report of a possible sexual assault in progress in the area of Ocean Avenue and Pacific Street at 10 am on this day.
The report stated that a witness had seen a man and a woman in some kind of physical altercation, so the officers sped to the scene.
Upon arrival they came upon a couple that fit the description and began to question them.
The female half of this pair told the officers that she had been arguing with the male half (her live-in boyfriend) about his infidelity as they had been strolling along the beach that evening.
She said that she had at one point attempted to walk away, but the live-in boyfriend had tried to hold her back.
She added that she had managed to break away and enter the driver seat of her vehicle, but that the live-in boyfriend had tried to grab her car keys and forcibly pushed her to the other side of the vehicle.
It was then that she had managed to escape his grasp and drive the car to towards the arriving officers.
The officers examined the woman and observed noticeable injuries to her face and hands.
The officers then spoke with the live-in boyfriend and deduced that there was enough evidence to arrest and charge him with cohabitant abuse.
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.