A 22-year-old wedding crasher was arrested Saturday evening after a violent struggle with Santa Barbara police, during which he bit a responding officer and a police dog.
At 8:17 p.m. on Saturday, two officers — one of them a K-9 unit — responded to a call of a man causing a disturbance at a wedding being held at the Carriage Museum on Castillo Street. The man, identified as Goleta resident Jorge Rodriguez, had wandered into the reception uninvited and refused to leave. Several guests wound up picking him up and removing him from the property. Rodriguez kicked and threatened them in the process, said police spokesperson Sgt. Riley Harwood, and he continued to act erratically outside the museum's gates, claiming people were trying to kill him.
When the officers arrived, they confronted Rodriguez in the parking lot and tried to detain him. He quickly punched one of them in the face, knocked him to the ground, and jumped on top of him. The other officer intervened and "a melee ensued," said Harwood. The officers were unable to subdue Rodriguez for approximately six minutes.