Photo: Ruben Perez
A burgled storage room at Carl Thornton Park in Santa Ana was turned into a den of stolen weapons by a local man. The situation came to light when a concerned citizen called the Santa Ana Police Department on the evening of December 10th, 2018 in regards to criminal threats that had been made to him.
The concerned citizen told authorities that, upon seeing that a man had forced entry into the park’s stockroom, he had tried to speak with the male suspect about the situation. The citizen said that the unknown male had then threatened him, saying that he had a “strap.”
Santa Ana police officers responded to the location and attempted to talk with the man in the storage room, later identified as Ruben Perez, aged 37 and of Santa Ana. The suspect proved to be uncooperative and officers had to employ minor use of force.
A search of the stockroom that Perez occupied at the park revealed that the space had been made into living quarters and that it contained a profusion of stolen goods, including weapons.
Found items included a loaded 54-caliber handgun (stolen), about 18 magazines of various calibers, all loaded with ammunition, and a weight vest with the weights removed and the empty pouches loaded with gun magazines to facilitate access. Of these magazines, one was an extended magazine capable of holding 31 rounds of 9mm ammunition.
Police arrested Perez and transported him to the Santa Ana Detention Facility, where he was booked for a variety of charges
