A 38-year-old Santa Ana man is accused of pointing a laser at the Orange County Sheriff’s helicopter “Duke.”
Gustavo Valencia Lopez was booked into the Santa Ana City Jail Monday on a felony charge of discharging a laser at an occupied aircraft, police say.
The “Duke” Air Support team relayed to Santa Ana police dispatchers around 8:35 p.m. Monday that a male adult was pointing a laser at the helicopter from Thornton Park. 1801 West Segerstrom.
The helicopter guided officers on the ground to the location, where a man was with his wife and two children in the playground area, where a laser pointer was found buried in the sand, police say,
Officers then arrested the man, who was identified as Lopez.
Here is video of what deputies in the air saw from the ground:
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.