Two men almost duked it out during a Ponderosa High School track meet after arguing about the proper deployment of GI Joe. Now the El Dorado County district attorney has to decide if a crime, other than being bad role models, has been committed.
Trouble started about 5 p.m. March 5, as a 44-year-old man watched the track meet. He later told a deputy that his little boy ran up and reported that a man in another section of the bleachers had tossed his toy GI Joe onto the baseball field. The man then told El Dorado County sheriff's deputies that he confronted the other man and asked him if he had indeed tossed his son's toy.
The other man, described only as a 50-year-old Pollock Pines resident, told the unhappy father that he had indeed tossed the boy's GI Joe because it was "irritating him," according to a police report. He then pointed at three other children nearby and stated that they also were irritating him. After another moment or so, the Pollock Pines man announced that the man standing in front of him was beginning to irritate him, the report says.
At that point, the man allegedly stood up and slugged the father in the jaw, causing him to fall backward down the bleachers, according to the report. The Pollock Pines man then left the area and the father called the Sheriff's Department.
A deputy interviewed the Pollock Pines man's wife, who was still sitting in the bleachers and eventually contacted the man himself. They told the deputy that a group of children had been playing without supervision in the bleachers. They were tossing their toy action figures around, and the Pollock Pines man had been hit with one several times. The third time, he grabbed the toy and tossed it over his shoulder onto the ball field behind him. One of the other children found this so entertaining that he also started throwing their GI Joes off the bleachers, they told the deputy.
The Pollock Pines man also told the deputy that when the angry father showed up, he tried to reason with him. But the father was standing very close and shaking his finger 6 inches from the other man's face, according to a deputy's report. The Pollock Pines man said he finally stood up and pushed the man's finger away from his face, and the angry father took a tumble down the bleachers.
The deputy also interviewed the boy whose GI Joe was tossed. The boy's version of what started the conflict pretty much backed up the statements provided by the couple from Pollock Pines.
The incident was dumped into the district attorney's lap for further action, if any.
Man rocks on to jail and hospital
Maybe you could call it the "rock, fist, car window" game but whatever a Sacramento County man was trying, it landed him in the hospital and in trouble with the law, a Rancho Cordova police report indicates.
Armen Sarkissian, 29, found out the hard way that the human hand is no match for auto glass when he used his fist and some rocks to smash two car windows on March 5 at an apartment complex on the 2500 block of Capitales Drive, according to police.
A nearby patrol officer caught Sarkissian in the act while out on an unrelated call, said Rancho Cordova Detective Sgt. Pete James. The two cars belonged to a woman who lives in the complex but doesn't know Sarkissian, James said.
Sarkissian had allegedly been in a fight at the complex recently, James said, but it appeared the vandalism was unrelated to the fight.
When Sarkissian was taken to jail, the jail nurse found he'd broken his hand and discharged him to UC Davis Medical Center for treatment, James said. In light of his crime, officers decided to "un-arrest" Sarkissian and instead issue him a warrant for felony vandalism and probation violation, James said. That way, he said, officers didn't have to spend time waiting for him to receive treatment and could get back to their patrol.
BB gun attacks shatter windows
Folsom police investigated about a half-dozen vandalism reports March 10 involving car or business windows that were shot out by someone with a BB gun.
Call The Bee's David Richie, (916) 608-7455.
