August 24, 2021 – Santa Barbara County, Ca.
The current housing shortage throughout the Central Coast may play a factor in the August 23 rd arrest of 26-year-old Halbert Rodriguez; he may have simply felt the presence of a roommate too cloistering and no longer worth tolerating in spite of the fact that the roommate was paying his fair share of the rent.
Or Rodriguez may have forgotten the distinction between real life and cinematic action movies wherein heroes and villains commonly go at each other with broadswords or light sabers.
Whatever his motivation, when he went after his roommate with what Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department Public Information Officer described as “an unsharpened sword,” the roommate apparently had no weapon of his own with which to defend himself. As a result, the roommate suffered “serious injury” by the time deputies were summoned to the scene at approximately 12:40 p.m., alerted to a call for service that indicated “a possible stabbing.”
Upon arrival, the bleeding victim informed deputies that Rodriguez had attached him and was holed up in a nearby residence. A brief investigation ensued and the deputies “spotted the suspect” in the doorway of the indicated residence.
A verbal request by the deputies for Rodriguez to “step out and speak to them” went unheeded as things quickly evolved into a potentially violent standoff situation. It didn’t take long for SBSD K9 units, Air Support, Special Enforcement Teams and the Crisis Intervention Team to arrive on the scene.
With all those resources unable to extricate Rodriguez peacefully, only the arrival of Rodriguez’s mother to the scene defused things as she spoke to him and gave him some reasonable maternal advice. An hour later, Rodriguez stepped outside and was taken into custody without further incident.
Photo: Courtesy www.knifepulse.com
