From the Daily Sound 02-27-10:
Man tells police to shoot him, gets Tased
A 65-year-old man was arrested on Thursday for allegedly discharging a handgun inside his Mesa home, and for resisting arrest, telling police when they arrived, “Go ahead and shoot me,” a Santa Barbara police spokesman said.
“It was a very touchy situation,” said Lt. Paul McCaffrey. “Officers showed a lot of restraint, under the circumstances.”
Police were dispatched to the 100 block of Mohawk Rd. shortly at 5 p.m. after a resident reported hearing shots fired. When officers arrived, McCaffrey said they discovered that the shots were fired at a nearby residence in the 100 block of Palisades Dr.
Officers spotted the man, whose name was not released, in his back yard, and asked him to exit his home. At first, McCaffrey said the man refused, but he eventually stepped onto the front porch.
At this point, McCaffrey said the man told police to shoot him.
Once police noticed that the man’s hands were empty, they shot him with a Taser and took him into custody.
Police searched the home and found a loaded .357-caliber Magnum sitting on a chair near the front door.
“The gun was near the guy,” he said. He added later, “It’s hard to know what was in the guy’s mind.”
The incident occurred in the midst of a bloody standoff in Fresno County during which one sheriff’s deputy was fatally shot and two others were injured — facts that weren’t lost on the officer’s who responded to the Mesa incident.
“We got him in custody, we took the gun, we weren’t hurt,” he said. “The officers handled it properly.”
