Man Accused Of Ramming Police Station Gates Was Former San Bernardino Police Explorer
SAN BERNARDINO (CBSLA.com) — A San Bernardino man was in custody Thursday after allegedly ramming the gates of the San Bernardino Police Department with his pickup truck.
Police say Louis Manuel Iniguez rammed both the E Street and D Street gates of the Police Department parking lot with his green Toyota Tundra truck around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday afternoon.
Surveillance video shows a truck driving into the gates at a moderate speed before backing out of the driveway and driving away.
A post on Twitter appeared to show slight damage to both the Toyota truck and a police gate.
It's unclear why the 35 year old man tried to crash the gates. pic.twitter.com/0MScPg7b9s
— Doug Saunders (@crimeshutterbug) February 25, 2016
Iniguez, who is in his mid-30s, was arrested on suspicion of felony vandalism by San Bernardino police near 9th Street and Arrowhead Avenue within minutes of the incident, authorities said.
According to investigators, Iniguez lives a few blocks away from the police station and has no criminal history. He was a San Bernardino Police Explorer in the 1990s before he "aged out of the program around the time he was 21 years old", police said.
While Iniguez did not provide a statement about any motive to investigators, police say "depression issues" and "possible mental illness" may have played a role in the incident.
There was no evidence to suggest any larger plot to attack the police station or San Bernardino personnel, according to investigators.