Tip on Guns Leads to Psychiatrist’s Arrest in Irvine

Alerted by an alarmed tipster, Irvine police arrested a psychiatrist Saturday on suspicion of keeping an illegal assault weapon in his car and carrying a pistol to a college class.

Dr. Michael Menaster, a Simi Valley psychiatrist studying for a master’s degree in business administration at UCI’s Graduate School of Management, was carrying the loaded semiautomatic pistol and also had two 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistols and an AK47 assault weapon in his car, said police Sgt. Phil Povey.

Police arrested Menaster, 35, without incident near his Toyota Tercel in a parking lot at the Hyatt Regency Irvine, where a course in his MBA program was being conducted.

A UCI employee on the scene who declined to give his name said Menaster has been a student in the school’s health care services program since January 1998. The two-year program holds classes at the campus and at the hotel, the employee said.

The class, being conducted in the hotel’s Empire ballroom, continued after officers entered and brought Menaster out to his car. Students declined to discuss the arrest.

Menaster was booked into the Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana and his weapons were seized, Povey said.

“He said he had had threats made on his life,” said Povey, adding that Menaster did not seem to have had any prior troubles with the law.

Menaster told officers he had applied for a concealed-weapon permit in Simi Valley but was denied, Povey said.

Povey said a caller alerted police about Menaster on Saturday morning but declined to elaborate.

After the April 20 shooting of students in Littleton, Colo., authorities in Orange County and other communities have fielded many panicked calls from citizens.

The department does not keep statistics on weapons arrests, but they are not uncommon, said another Irvine police official.

“Unfortunately, too many people have weapons these days,” Povey said.

One of Menaster’s roommates, Gina Lorenzo, said guns were a sore subject in the Simi Valley home she and other roommates shared with him.

Menaster told the roommates he bought the guns for protection from patients he feared would turn on him, she said.

“We told him the weapons had to be taken out of the house,” Lorenzo said.

“Apparently, he’s now carrying them in his car. One of the problems we had here was that they were loaded and he was just not being responsible. They should have been locked up.”

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Times staff writer David Reyes contributed to this story.