A Sierra Highway traffic stop in March led to a Los Angeles man being held to answer this month to a weapons charge and resisting arrest.
Christopher Evan Coleman stands charged with one count of resisting arrest and being a felon in possession of a handgun after his April 10 preliminary hearing in San Fernando.
A California Highway Patrol officer testified that he joined another officer at a traffic stop, near Davenport Road, where Coleman had refused physically and verbally to get out of his vehicle.
“He was resisting by saying that he was not going to get in the back of the patrol vehicle,” according to testimony from Officer Jairo Carpio in the hearing transcript. “Yeah, he just kept saying that.”
Multiple officers ultimately managed to take Coleman — listed as 6 feet, 3 inches tall and 285 pounds in his arrest record — into the back of a patrol vehicle, and his car was then searched, and the weapon was found, according to Carpio’s testimony. He described the weapon as a semiautomatic handgun that had a full magazine and a bullet in the chamber.
Court records indicated that Coleman’s defense attorney learned of the second charge at the preliminary hearing, which was allowed because it was mentioned in an evidence report of the incident, according to a transcript of the preliminary hearing.
The previous conviction indicated in his charges was a 2007 robbery that was prosecuted in the Antelope Valley Courthouse, according to Coleman’s complaint.
He is currently at North County Correctional Facility in Castaic, being held in lieu of $100,000 bail.
He’s due back in court Friday to enter his formal plea to both charges.
