Lemon Grove

A sheriff’s deputy charged with pulling a gun on his fellow deputies after a traffic stop was ordered Wednesday to stand trial on battery and a weapons charge.

Jose Raimundo Huizar, 28, who is on administrative leave from the Lemon Grove substation where he had been assigned, is to return to court Feb. 19 to get a trial date.

He is charged with exhibiting a gun in a rude, threatening manner Nov. 6 after he left a Lemon Grove bar while he was off duty.

Huizar, who has been with the Sheriff’s Department for six years, is also accused of driving under the influence of alcohol and battery upon a deputy sheriff in the same incident.

His attorney, James Gattey, unsuccessfully asked Municipal Judge H. Ronald Domnitz not to bind Huizar over on the felony weapon charge. Gattey ridiculed the statute which states that a firearm has to be held in a “rude, threatening, or angry manner” for a criminal offense to occur. The defense attorney said Huizar was upset but not angry during the incident.

Gattey remarked that the weapons charge amounts to a violation of “gun etiquette” and posed the question of how someone could hold a gun in a “gentle and meek manner.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Doug Gregg responded that the deputy sheriff who had the gun pointed at him felt threatened at that moment.

Huizar remains free on his own recognizance.