Man arrested after running off with officer’s Taser
MOUNTAIN VIEW >> A man out on bail and suspected of having mismatched license plates on his car briefly overpowered a police officer and ran off with her Taser before being arrested Monday afternoon, authorities said.
The altercation started unfolding around 2:20 p.m. when a patrol officer in the 500 block of Cypress Point Drive spotted a silver BMW with different license plates affixed to the front and back of the vehicle, according to a news release from Mountain View police.
As the officer was examining the car, a man claiming ownership of the BMW walked up to the officer and sought to explain the plate issue by saying he was “in the process of fixing the vehicle but had not yet been able to register it under his name,” police said.
The man reportedly “became increasingly agitated” while speaking with the officer about who owned the car, and in defiance of the officer’s orders to stay put, the man started walking away toward another vehicle.
The officer, now joined by another officer, tried again to tell the man to stay where he was, and asked him to sit down, police said. Without warning, police said, the man broke into a run and tore through a nearby parking lot, and the two officers gave chase.
When the officers caught up with the man, they tried to subdue and detain him, but police said he “rolled back on top of one of our officers and pinned them to the ground,” then “grabbed our officer’s Taser that they tried to deploy, jumped up and ran away again.”
A second foot chase followed, but ended after the suspect stopped running then got down on his knees “and later threw the Taser to the side,” police said. No injuries were reported.
The suspect was identified as 36-year-old Richard Gescat of Mountain View. He was booked into Santa Clara County jail on suspicion of resisting arrest with force or violence, disarming a police officer, and a registration compliance violation. He was also booked on suspicion of committing a felony while on bail, stemming from an unrelated arrest in Santa Cruz County, authorities said.
Gescat is being held on $86,000 bail, according to jail records.