Intruder’s Long Stall Ends in Shower

A Long Beach man was arrested Wednesday after 10-hour standoff that began when he broke into a home and swore he would not come out alive.

James Anthony Scotto then barricaded himself in silence late Tuesday night. He didn’t answer a portable telephone that police tossed through a window. He didn’t acknowledge the requests, blared every five minutes over a bullhorn, for his surrender.

Half a dozen rounds of tear gas that reverberated through the usually peaceful neighborhood didn’t flush him out either, police said.

“We got no response,” Santa Ana Police Sgt. Bob Clark said. “Nothing worked.”

Shortly before 8 a.m. Wednesday, police burst into the front door of the tan stucco home in the 2300 block of North Riverside Drive and found Scotto, 29, sitting in a shower stall. He had turned on the water, probably in an attempt to lessen the stinging effects of the tear gas, police said.

The groggy man was wheeled out of the house on a stretcher as residents cheered.

“He had little to lose,” Clark said, explaining why Scotto remained holed up for so long. “He knew he’d be going away for a long time.”

The nightlong siege began when police first spotted Scotto about 9 p.m. Tuesday at a nearby hotel. Officers had a warrant for Scotto’s arrest on suspicion of manufacturing methamphetamine. The suspect ran when he saw police, who chased him into the Floral Park neighborhood.

A helicopter joined in the search and was hovering overhead when homeowners Gene Sego and Andrea Kastner realized the police spotlight was directed into their backyard. Kastner said she ran to lock a side door in the utility room when she came face-to-face with Scotto, who was looking in the window.

“I saw him back there at the door and we just ran,” said Kastner, 45, who said she and Sego grabbed their dog and dashed barefoot into the street. “We just wanted to get out of there,”

Outside, SWAT members quickly put Sego to work drawing a map of the house after discovering that Scotto had broken into it and refused to come out alive.

As the night wore on, Kastner and neighbor Chris Carter said they couldn’t pull themselves away from the “front-row seat” to the action.

The sound of the tear gas canisters being fired sent their hearts pounding, she said. But the officers’ constant, droning pleas for Scotto to pick up the phone soon wore on their nerves.

“It’s been an incredible night,” Kastner said Wednesday morning. “I have not had any sleep.”

After Scotto was taken by force from her home, Kastner briefly inspected the damage: seven smashed windows, a splintered front door, a shattered shower stall.

Firefighters set up fans to air out the home. Tear-gas fumes were still lingering in the air.

Scotto left behind a bag with a stolen 9-millimeter handgun. A second gun was later found inside a stolen car he allegedly had been driving, police said.

“It was combat,” Carter said of the standoff. “It was better than a movie. By morning, we were so sick of hearing them say, ‘James, pick up the phone. James, talk to us,’ that I was ready to storm in there myself.”

Also contributing to this report was correspondent Jeff Kass