July 29, 2020 – Santa Barbara County, Ca.
Nowhere is the housing shortage throughout California more pronounced than in the communities of Santa Barbara and the neighboring college town of Isla Vista. Adjacent to the UCSB campus, Isla Vista is notorious for seasonal residential overcrowding and lack of affordable rentals.
Whether or not that well-documented state of affairs is the reason that 51-year-old Santa Barbara area resident Donald Cameron decided to take up residency in an Isla Vista apartment unit on July 24th remains to be seen.
According to Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department Public Information Officer Raquel Zick, at the noon hour that day SBSD deputies responded to a call from a landlord claiming that “an aggressive subject” had broken into a vacant apartment and refused to leave the premises.
Responding deputies found the apartment completely empty…until they discovered the locked
bathroom door. Verbal contact with Cameron—who had locked himself in the bathroom—was
to no avail. The man simply wouldn’t open the door.
At that point, deputies established a secure perimeter around the apartment building and evacuated other units in the building to assure the safety of other tenants.
As the conversation between deputies and Cameron persisted for well over an hour and as
“negotiations deteriorated,” the implementation of “a chemical irritant” through the bathroom
exterior window became the procedure of choice.
“Two rounds of O.C. (oleoresin capsicum) were deployed” and Cameron quickly evacuated the bathroom without further ado.
Cameron was taken into custody, treated for the pepper spray exposure, and then transported
to Santa Barbara County Jail, where he was booked on charges of burglary vandalism, and
obstructing a peace officer, with his bail set at $50,000.
Photo: Courtesy Santa Barbara County Jail Booking
