The man accused of shooting four people with a high-velocity air gun in Goleta on Saturday has been arrested and is considered to be in custody even though he’s still being treated for his injuries at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department said Tuesday.
Detectives are working on a criminal investigation — expected to be handed over to the District Attorney’s Office early Wednesday — and an internal investigation of deputies’ actions to determine whether they followed protocol. Two deputies were shot after they confronted the suspect in a vacant lot. A third deputy was not injured.
The suspect, 42-year-old Charles Peart Quinn, believed to be a transient, has been booked on multiple felony charges, including a count of armed robbery, four counts of assault with a deadly weapon, three counts of assault with a deadly weapon on a peace officer and three counts of battery with injury on a peace officer.
Sheriff Bill Brown told Noozhawk on Tuesday that Quinn has an “extensive” criminal record and is a registered sex offender in Florida.
His booking photo that accompanies this story was taken by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office in Florida in October 2009, since Quinn is still a patient at Cottage Hospital.
Quinn, who has no known local address, allegedly shot two young men with a high-powered air gun in the Camino Real Marketplace on Saturday afternoon when they refused to give him money. The men were treated for minor injuries on Saturday.
Sheriff’s Department spokesman Drew Sugars said Tuesday that the gun looks like a handgun, without any orange plastic, and fires BB-sized ammunition at high velocity that can go “deep” and penetrate skin and muscle. He added that it was a CO2 semi-automatic, high-velocity air gun, a replica of a real handgun that shoots steel BB-sized projectiles at 400 feet per second.
“The main point that we released the information, is we don’t want people thinking it’s the old Red Ryder from A Christmas Story,” Sugars said. “These are very modern, very sophisticated automatic weapons that can hold up to 15 rounds — you can just keep shooting.”
Quinn was soon confronted on Saturday by sheriff’s deputies who parked on Storke Road near the vacant lot across Hollister Avenue from the shopping center and ordered him to drop his weapon. He shot at the three deputies, hitting two of them.
“One of the commanders I work with who was on the scene said it sounds like almost a lower-caliber, like a .22,” Sugars said. “It definitely makes a noise.”
He said all three deputies returned fire with their service firearms, which are .40-caliber semi-automatic pistols, and hit him “multiple times.” He said he couldn’t disclose the exact number but that it was “definitely plural.”
Sugars said it’s also unclear how close the four men were to one another during the shootings, but that Quinn wasn’t very far into the field.
“Between these two investigations, there’s a lot of information that can’t be shared,” Sugars said.
Brown offered a few more details to Noozhawk after Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting and said Quinn hit one deputy in the forearm and one through the cheek, shattering one of his teeth, and that the bullet lodged in his gum.
“The deputies returned fire and neutralized him at that point,” he said. “He is at Cottage Hospital, and it appears as though he’ll survive.”
A search of Quinn’s name at the courthouse yielded no record of any crimes committed in Santa Barbara County.
“The deputies are all doing fine, and in good spirits,” Brown said.
The three deputies remain on paid administrative leave and are likely to return to work after the investigation, if their actions are found to comply with department policy, Sugars said.
The deputies have been identified as Mohsen Amjadi, who has been with the department for five years; Robert Baisa, who has been with the department for 7½ years; and Justin DiPinto, who has been with the department for 3½ years.
“At this stage in the process, it appears that everything that was done was done in a reasonable manner,” Brown said. “We’re very thankful that the deputies, and the citizens, were not hurt any more than they were.”
Officer-related shootings are not very common, at least in Santa Barbara County, Sugars said. The last one was in March 2008 when deputies shot Donald George, 64, at his Via Gennita home after responding to a disturbance call from his wife. George reportedly was holding a gun and refused to drop it, and he died in surgery after being shot multiple times. Before that, there was a 2004 incident in Orcutt.
Anyone with information about Quinn or who may have had contact with him recently is asked to call the Sheriff’s Department’s Anonymous Tip Line at 805.681.4171.
— Noozhawk staff writer Giana Magnoli can be reached at gmagnoli@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk or @NoozhawkNews.