Well, it sounds like at least one person had a fun time on New Year's morning down in San Jose, Calif. See, 29-year-old Coco Bennett was arrested after a two-hour standoff that began around 8 a.m. yesterday morning when he was seen wielding an assault rifle on a residential street on the south side of the city. When Bennett drove off in his white pickup, police eventually followed him into a train station parking lot where took off his clothes, got out of the car brandishing a samurai sword and told officers, "You're going to have to kill me."
Based on Bennett's nudity, sword-waving and incoherent statements, officers from the San Jose Police Department didn't have much trouble determining that "there was some mental illness going on, possibly drug influenced." SJPD officers called for backup which included everything from the riot-suppressing vehicle to their Crisis Intervention Team, which normally handles these sorts of mental illness situations. While the intervention team officers took their time trying to convince Bennett to drop the sword and put his pants back, a crowd of onlookers and media crews showed up to gawk at the whole thing.
Bennett finally brought himself down around 11 a.m. when he took off running towards a fence, still naked and swinging the sword. He dropped the weapon when he clumsily fell down trying to climb over the fence and police managed to subdue him.
Bennett was treated at a nearby hospital for minor injuries sustained during his fall and arrest. Officers found an AR-15 rifle with magazine and live ammunition in his truck and booked him on charges of suspicion of brandishing a weapon and possessing an assault rifle. No word yet on just which insane, extreme paranoia-inducing drug du jour he might have been on, if any.
KTVU has a video report.
Remarkably (or perhaps not) this is San Jose's second samurai sword-related crime in the past six months: Back in August, a homeless woman was killed by an unknown, but apparently disturbed, suspect wielding a samurai sword outside of a Walgreens store. The suspect in that incident was never found and there's no word yet on whether police suspect this was the same sword.