Christopher Cota, 30, is being accused of attempting to murder a Santa Maria Police Department officer following a fight with multiple officers in the early hours of March 25.
Officers were dispatched to a report of a suspicious man, potentially under the influence of narcotics, on the 1000 block of East Main Street. They identified the man as Cota and found he had multiple active $25,000 warrants for his arrest, according to Sgt. Michael McGehee, who was the field sergeant on the scene.
When an officer located Cota, Cota allegedly became combative and began fighting the officer.
“He reached up on several different occasions and grabbed an officer’s gun in an attempt to disarm the officer,” McGehee told the Sun.
Backup units arrived and, following an altercation, arrested Cota. Two officers and Cota sustained minor injuries from the struggle, and they were all treated at Marian Hospital.
“He was resisting arrest and actively fighting, striking at the officers,” McGehee said. The two injured officers sustained “small cuts and bruises” to their hands, he said, and Cota had “minor cuts and bruising to his legs and other parts of his body,” but no broken bones.
McGehee explained that a police officer’s gun holster is secured so an officer has to manipulate it in specific ways to pull out the gun. Though Cota allegedly had a grip on the officer’s holster, he wasn’t able to retrieve the gun from it.
“But he grabbed it and was able to pull the officer’s belt,” McGehee said.
Cota was booked into the Santa Barbara County Jail.
This article appears in Mar 30 – Apr 6, 2017.
