Photo: Stock Image
The evening of December 5th in downtown Santa Barbara should have been marked by seasonal holiday shoppers enjoying the city’s State Street Christmas Tree and twinkling lights throughout the retail venues.
Instead, according to Santa Barbara Police Department spokesman Sgt. Ethan Ragsdale, violence broke out on a public sidewalk pursuant to “an argument between an adult male victim and two suspects” which left the victim seriously injured from multiple stab wounds.
An 8:45 p.m. 911 call to SBPD Emergency Dispatch brought uniformed officers to the scene, just a block of the city’s primary retail thoroughfare. Upon arrival at the scene, officers quickly determined that 18-year-old Jesse Andrew Mendoza and 24-year-old Matthew Mendoza-Bimbela, both residents of Santa Barbara, had been embroiled in a verbal altercation with the victim, the upshot of which is that one of them attacked him and “stabbed the victim multiple times during the argument.”
Both Mendoza and Mendoza-Bimbela were located just blocks away from the violent scene and taken into custody. Both men were transported to Santa Barbara County Jail, where they were book on charges of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and additional “criminal enhancements.”
