|
Home Search |
Published on Thursday, January 22, 2004
in the Naples Daily News
A man who took a Florida Highway Patrol trooper's shotgun from the front of his car and told the officer he was trying to get the gun to kill him was arrested Tuesday night, authorities say.
Troopers arrested Otto Arturo Sarmiento, 43, of 3191 Santa Barbara Blvd., Golden Gate, and charged him with aggravated assault on a state trooper, depriving an officer of protection, petty theft and driving under the influence.
Arrest reports give this account:
Trooper Iran Sandoval stopped Sarmiento at Collier Boulevard and Immokalee Road around 11:30 p.m. after a security guard reported that he was driving west in the eastbound lanes of Immokalee Road. Sandoval tried to stop Sarmiento's van, but couldn't.
Sarmiento, who listed his job as a security guard, pulled into the McDonald's parking lot when the trooper got behind him with his emergency lights on. Sarmiento nearly drove over a concrete parking stone.
Sandoval asked Sarmiento to get out of the van after he smelled alcohol on his breath. Sarmiento stumbled out of the van. The trooper could see beer bottles in the vehicle.
Sarmiento told the trooper that he was fine, just mad at his wife and mother-in-law. He then failed several sobriety tests and Sandoval arrested him. Sandoval handcuffed him in the front because Sarmiento begged him to because he had a heavy physique.
As Sandoval was doing an inventory of Sarmiento's van and then walked back to the patrol car, he noticed Sarmiento sitting back down. When the trooper reached his car he noticed that Sarmiento had taken the shotgun from its rack and three rounds were on the front passenger seat. Sarmiento had slid open the unlocked Plexiglas window between the front and back seats to reach the gun.
The shotgun was laying across the front seat. Sandoval said he didn't know why his window was not locked.
Sandoval then pulled Sarmiento out of the patrol car to handcuff him in the back and found Sarmiento holding one of the rounds in his hand.
"I just wanted to kill you," Sarmiento told the trooper. "... You're lucky you saw me."
He then called the trooper names and kicked the prisoner cage on the ride to the jail. Once at the jail, the trooper noticed that Sarmiento had taken his FHP ball cap from inside the car and tried to keep it away from Sandoval as he laughed.
Sarmiento's Breathalyzer results were 0.18 percent and 0.19 percent. In Florida, 0.08 percent is considered legally drunk.