Santa Monica police arrested a local resident on Saturday, Aug. 9 after recklessly firing three bullets from his apartment balcony for no apparent reason.
Officers of the Santa Monica Police Department responded to numerous calls informing them that gunshots had been heard in an upper level apartment in the 1500 block of Fifth Street at 6:05 pm on this day.
The officers rushed to the location and discovered three spent shell casings on the ground in an adjacent alley.
A few seconds later the officers spotted the suspect (who fit the description of a man involved in an earlier disturbance report at the same building) walk onto the balcony of an apartment in the building but quickly step back inside.
Some officers ran up the stairs and as they were about to knock on the door of the suspect’s apartment.
Meanwhile, an officer who was still positioned in the alley saw the suspect walk out onto the balcony again.
This officer engaged the suspect in conversation. The suspect admitted to firing his handgun and under the direction of the officer the suspect returned to the inside of the apartment and exited the front door into the arms of other awaiting officers.
The front door of the apartment slammed shut after the suspect exited, so the officers, concerned that there might be victims inside the apartment, broke it down and searched the apartment. There were no victims present.
The officers then checked local hospitals to see if stray bullets had hit anyone, but thankfully none were reported.
The officers retrieved the suspect’s gun from the apartment and deduced from the position of the spent casings that the suspect had fired in a westerly direction.
This 42-year-old Santa Monica resident was arrested and charged with negligent discharge of a firearm.
Bail was set at $35,000.
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.
