La Puente Councilman Held on $1-Million Bail

A La Puente City Council member was being held in jail Wednesday on $1 million bail after an incident in which he allegedly scuffled with and brandished a gun at a former girlfriend.

Edward Rodarte, 26, a Walnut Valley Unified School District police officer, was arrested Tuesday night as he drove from his home to a La Puente City Council meeting a mile away.

Sheriff’s deputies said they decided to stop Rodarte in his car rather than confront him at home because they considered him armed and dangerous. They said they found a loaded .45-caliber handgun in his vehicle and, during a subsequent search, numerous other firearms in his home.

Rodarte’s arrest stemmed from an incident shortly after 3 a.m. Sunday at a former girlfriend’s house on Kern Avenue in East Los Angeles. Sheriff’s Lt. Ron Mills said Rodarte entered the home, scuffled with the woman, made numerous threats, waved a handgun in her face and yanked her telephone from the wall.

“The victim received minor injuries,” Mills said.

Rodarte was booked on suspicion of burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, making terrorist threats, destruction of phone equipment, domestic battery and intimidation of a witness. Mills said a burglary charge is automatic any time someone goes on private property with intent to commit a crime.

Mills said the arrest was not made until Tuesday because the victim, who fled the scene, did not notify deputies immediately after the incident.

Sheriff’s investigators have submitted the case to the district attorney’s domestic violence unit. Rodarte was scheduled for a court appearance today.

Meanwhile, he was placed on leave from his job, a school district spokesman said. Rodarte, the spokesman added, did not carry a gun as part of his school police duties.

Rodarte also has been a technical reserve officer with Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollenbeck station since 1993. A a department spokesman said Wednesday that he was not authorized to carry a gun in that capacity.

Elected to the La Puente City Council in March 1997, Rodarte became one of the youngest mayors in the nation last year. He soon ran into political trouble, however. His City Council colleagues stripped him of his mayoral title in November, four months before the end of his term, for allegedly intimidating a female city employee to make her proofread a brochure for his property cleanup business.

He denied threatening the employee and said he was booted from the mayor’s seat--a largely honorary position--because he was stealing the political spotlight from his older colleagues.

Rodarte grew up in Compton and moved to La Puente when he was 12.

At age 20, he was elected vice president of the California School Employees Assn. for the Walnut Valley Unified School District. He then became a La Puente city commissioner before running for the council.