California man arrested for false 911 call claiming officer was shot

By Felix Cortez

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    PRUNEDALE, California (KSBW) — A swatting call in Prunedale led to a large police response after a Prunedale man falsely reported seeing an officer get shot at the Safeway shopping center.

Monterey County Sheriff’s deputies said Cesar Espinoza, 25, called 911 around 1:30 p.m. Friday, claiming he had witnessed an officer being shot during a fight over groceries outside the Safeway in the Pruentree shopping center.

“And you can only imagine what goes through anybody that’s hearing that radio traffic, what’s going through their minds,” said Andres Rosas, a Monterey County Sheriff’s spokesperson. “So in this particular case, there was an immediate multiagency response to that shopping center, fearing that an officer had, in fact, been shot.”

Nearly a dozen law enforcement units, including CHP, state parks, and sheriff’s deputies, responded to the Prunedale shopping center.

Fortunately, it was a false emergency, and nobody had been shot. Espinoza was arrested at a nearby Chevron, where a manager described the chaotic scene.

“At first, you know, just a couple of cop cars, which everybody is used to seeing, a couple of cop cars,” the manager said. “But when they kept rolling in and the Parks Department, parks, park Security or somebody, just everybody under the sun started pulling in. So I think at one time we probably had eight or nine cop cars here, not to mention, you know, the bodies of So now it was, had the customers wondering what was going on.”

The false 911 call was a swatting call, typically made to bring about a large police presence to a particular address. Espinoza may have had a reason to make that call, as he had just been involved in a family quarrel at a home off Highway 156.

“The possibility exists that, yes, something happened at the house and, you know, maybe an attempt to get law enforcement to respond to another location to give him time to get away,” said Rosas. “We don’t know if that’s what happened.”

A witness expressed concern about the resources diverted due to the false call.

“Yeah. And we got all our resources over dealing with this. When you know that many officers, I imagine they could be doing a lot of other important things in the community. So it’s hopefully he gets his.”

Espinoza also had three outstanding misdemeanor arrest warrants, which may further explain the alleged swatting call.

He has been booked into jail for reporting a false emergency.

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