A 22-year-old Santa Monica man was arrested on Monday, Dec. 7, after stealing from a friend and then threatening to kill the friend who had accused him of theft.
At 8:30 pm officers of the Santa Monica Police Department were called out to a residence located in the 600 block of Pico Blvd. in order to investigate a report of “unknown trouble.”
When the officers arrived they spoke with three people who were inside the residence and discovered that one of the individuals, a Santa Monica man, had been accused by the tenant of the unit of stealing items belonging to the tenant.
The officers took the accused individual aside and conducted a consensual search.
The officers discovered two coins that the tenant of the unit had said were missing at that time.
The accused individual told the officers that these coins were his own property and denied any alleged theft.
The officers spoke with the tenant who told them the accused individual would visit his residence periodically and that they would “hang out” together.
He described the stolen coins to the officers and said that when he had accused the suspected thief of taking these coins the suspected thief had become enraged and had threatened to kill him.
The description of the coins that the tenant gave to the officers perfectly matched those that had been found on the accused thief and as a result the officers arrested the accused thief and he was charged with threatening to inflict great bodily injury and grand theft. Bail was set at $50,000.
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.
