Ex-Officer Pleads No Contest in Attack

A former Torrance police officer pleaded no contest Thursday to charges of battery and false imprisonment for a January attack on a woman outside a Lancaster auto-repair shop.

Roland Sabara of Lancaster entered his pleas before Antelope Municipal Judge Ian Grant, Deputy Dist. Atty. Chesley McKay said. A plea of no contest is the equivalent of a guilty plea, for criminal court purposes.

Under a plea agreement, Sabara will spend 90 days in state prison to receive a full psychiatric assessment and will be on probation for five years, McKay said.

If the plea agreement is accepted in an April 29 sentencing hearing, and the psychiatric tests are considered satisfactory by the judge and prosecutors, an additional charge of attempted kidnaping will probably be dropped, McKay said. Otherwise, Sabara, who is free on $30,000 bail, could be sentenced up to one year in jail and fined up to $10,000, McKay said.

Neither Sabara nor his attorney, Michael Eberhardt, could be reached for comment. A six-year veteran of the Torrance department before he resigned, Sabara was arrested at his Lancaster residence after witnesses gave sheriff’s deputies his license plate number and said he had grabbed a 25-year-old Antelope Valley College student as she walked to a car outside the Bob Howle Automotive repair shop, where she had visited a friend.

The off-duty officer had been prowling the Lancaster area in his wife’s car that day, McKay said, and had previously harassed at least five other women, including a secretary who worked in the auto-body shop.

Sabara cornered the secretary in an alley but she escaped, and he followed four 14-year-old girls walking home from Antelope Valley High School, gesturing for them to get into the car, McKay said. Three of the teen-agers ran to one girl’s home and called police, while the fourth watched Sabara stop his car and get out.

Minutes later, Sabara grabbed the woman outside the auto shop as she tried to get into her car, the prosecutor said.

The victim freed herself, got into her car, drove into the parking lot of the auto-repair shop and screamed until mechanics from the shop came out, including one who got Sabara’s license number, the prosecutor said. Sabara was arrested at his home.

Sabara resigned from the Torrance department several weeks after his arrest.

The Lancaster incident was not Sabara’s first brush with the law. After slamming his truck into a Redondo Beach home in August, 1990, Sabara pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of hit-and-run driving and was sentenced to two years probation and ordered to pay a $612 fine.