Santa Barbara – Love is a funny thing. When it’s going well, there’s no better feeling. But when it goes badly, when romance becomes a sharply-pointed triangle of passions, those feelings occasionally lead us into irrational behaviors that may become criminal in nature.
Jose Bernal
That appears to have been the case on the morning of September 22nd, when Jose Juan Bernal (36) followed his ex-wife’s boyfriend on the way to work and confronted him with what could have only been feelings of ill repute.
Displeasure to a degree that a fight ensued, pursuant to which—according to Santa Barbara Police Department Public Information Officer Sgt. Riley Harwood—Bernal stabbed the boyfriend in the chest with “a piece of bamboo that had a three-inch piece of metal affixed to the end.” The boyfriend-victim defended himself by using his belt and belt buckle as a weapon, whereupon Bernal left the battle to retreat to his ex-wife’s residence.
While visiting the former love of his life, now the object of his rage, Bernal exchanged heated words with her only to discover that when it was time to depart, his vehicular egress was restricted by the arrival of the boyfriend’s car blocking it where it was parked. When the victim-boyfriend announced that he intended to prevent Bernal from leaving the scene so that he could speak with representatives of local law enforcement whom the boyfriend had already called, Bernal summarily fled the scene on foot.
Responding officers, however, acting upon the boyfriend’s description, soon located Bernal nearby and arrested him on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. A search of Bernal’s vehicle—still blocked by the boyfriend’s car—revealed an illegal destructive device Harwood described as fabricated from “batteries, wiring, toilet paper, and a butane lighter.” With that discovery made, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department Bomb Squad was summoned to the scene. Upon careful examination of the device, it was dismantled without further incident.
Bernal’s romantic passions were summarily quelled as he was booked into Santa Barbara County Jail for assault with a deadly weapon and possession of a destructive device near a public place or private home, with his bail set at $50,000.
Photo: Courtesy Santa Barbara County Jail Booking
Read more:
edhat Santa Barbara: Assault with a Deadly Weapon
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