By Mairead Perez and Noe Herrera
SANTA BARBARA, CA – A man’s victim, who is also his grandmother, went to bat for him here Monday in Santa Barbara County Superior Court, asking his charges be dropped.
(NOTE: The Vanguard will not identify the defendant to protect the identity of the victim.)
On August 26, ****** was charged with willful cause of mental and physical harm in the wake of a domestic dispute between ****** and his grandmother, in which the former held a loaded gun to his head and threatened to kill himself.
Subsequent communication with the victim despite an emergency protection order resulted in a second charge of violating a family court order.
Both of the charges are misdemeanors.
In her statement to the court, the victim explained how she and ****** had an emotional dispute in which he shoved her before leaving the room and 
returning with the firearm with which he threatened to shoot himself.
While the altercation eventually de-escalated, ****** once again became irate upon discovering that his grandmother had later hidden the gun from him, leading her to reach out to a life crisis hotline.
The authorities were contacted and ****** was placed under arrest. He went into custody peacefully and, upon pretrial release, he went to live in Arizona with his father where he continues to reside.
Deputy Public Defender Lauren Gartrell and the grandmother asked Judge Adams to remove the emergency protection order and to drop both charges.
Deputy District Attorney Sherwin Nadjm argued that there were concerning risks that were associated with reducing the emergency protection order.
DDA Nadjm said ****** willfully violated the emergency protection order, and read aloud a text he had sent his grandmother, “I’m coming over and I don’t care if I go to jail.”
In addition, DDA Nadjm raised the concern of ****** assembling a “ghost gun” he used in his suicide threat.
PD Gartrell argued there were no indications that his texts were threats, but that he simply wanted to communicate with his grandmother.
Addressing Nadjm’s point on the “ghost gun,” PD Gartrell argued it had already been disposed of and an order to restrict access to firearms had already been filed.
The victim pleaded that she wanted ****** to continue on with his adult life and asked for the count of elderly abuse to be dropped as well as a lift of the restraining order.
The victim had a close relationship with her grandson, she said, whom she had lived with for 26 years with no prior incidents. She also repeatedly mentioned that her original call for help was meant for ******’s own safety and that she had no intention of having him arrested.
In her statement, she said she felt betrayed by the authorities upon learning that her concern for her grandson had led to his arrest.
Judge Thomas R. Adams agreed to reduce the emergency protection order to a No-MATH (molest/annoy/threaten/harass) order, which would allow peaceful contact between ****** and his grandmother.
But charges apparently remain, and the case will return on Oct. 18.
