Photo: Brian Christopher Schotz
SANTA BARBARA — While most of those who enjoyed the revelry of ringing in The New Year were heading to bed once Santa Barbara’s bars and restaurants closed their doors at 2:00 a.m. on January 1st, 43-year-old local resident Brian Christopher Schotz was apparently just beginning his workday.
According to Santa Barbara Police Department spokesman Ofcr. Anthony Wagner, Schotz—a probationer pursuant to prior burglary convictions—“matched the description of a suspect depicted in security video” from multiple burglaries within the city that were reported to have occurred just hours earlier.
It was at 4:30 a.m. on January 1st when a burglar alarm brought the cops to Dargan’s Irish Pub in downtown Santa Barbara. The immediately ensuing investigation led to the discovery of “a cash register from Dargan’s” along with a crowbar suspected to have been an implement of forced entry in the earlier burglary of the Oreana Winery and the Test Pilot Tiki Bar, both popular tourist venues in Santa Barbara’s “Funk Zone.”
Surveillance videos from all three commercial locations indicated that “entry was made via the front doors” and portrayed the perpetrator as “a person resembling Schotz who was wearing gloves and carrying a crowbar.” When Schotz was observed leaving the area adjacent to Dargan’s, he was promptly detained. It didn’t take cops long to determine that he was in possession of a “large amount of cash, gloves, and methamphetamine.”
With that evidence in hand, Schotz was transported to Santa Barbara County Jail, where he was booked on multiple charges of commercial burglary and possession of methamphetamine.
Photo: Courtesy Santa Barbara County Jail Booking
