NORTH HOLLYWOOD : Man Sentenced for Brandishing Guns

A North Hollywood man who pleaded guilty to menacing friends of his estranged wife with loaded guns has been sentenced to a year in jail.

Commissioner Mitchell Block in Van Nuys Municipal Court also sentenced the man, Michael Akira John, 34, to three years of probation, ordered him to stay away from the victims and to receiving counseling. John also was barred from possessing a gun, Deputy City Atty. Elijah Richardson said.

John, who pleaded guilty to three counts of brandishing a firearm and two counts of carrying a loaded firearm in a motor vehicle, is scheduled to surrender on March 17.

According to the city attorney’s office, John’s wife left him on Nov. 25 and moved to a battered women’s shelter. On Dec. 10, when three of her friends arrived at the couple’s Whitsett Avenue apartment to retrieve her belongings, John ordered them at gunpoint to enter in single file.

He emerged from a bathroom wearing a military-style flight suit and carrying four .45-caliber semiautomatic pistols--two in holsters on a web belt, one in his belt, and one, cocked, in both hands, the friends told police.

John, who seemed despondent over his wife’s decision to leave, threatened to kill her and his mother-in-law, Richardson said. The friends phoned police, who stopped John in his pickup truck at Bellaire Avenue and Hatteras Street. Inside the truck were John’s 10-year-old son and two .45-caliber semiautomatic pistols and a .22-caliber rifle fitted with a banana clip.