{"id":397271,"date":"2026-07-14T00:26:59","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T00:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/397271\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T00:26:59","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T00:26:59","slug":"san-francisco-man-caused-30k-in-damage-during-fullerton-standoff-pd-nbc-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/397271\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco man caused $30K in damage during Fullerton standoff: PD \u2013 NBC Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"

A San Francisco man who shut down a Fullerton strip mall when he vandalized a smoke shop and barricaded himself inside<\/a> for hours caused about $30,000 worth of damage, according to investigators.<\/p>\n

Michael Black, 41, of San Francisco, was arrested Sunday following a tense, hours-long standoff that involved him breaking shelves in the business, spray painting the windows and damaging the shop\u2019s goods, according to the Fullerton Police Department.<\/p>\n

Officers were called to the\u00a0Rodeo Smokeshop on Orangethorpe Avenue at about 10:30 a.m. Sunday for a report of an armed man. Upon arrival, officers located Black inside the business and armed with a large knife. The Fullerton Police Department initially said on Sunday that he was armed with an ax<\/a>, but clarified on Monday that Black was actually armed with a knife.<\/p>\n

Harmesh Lal, who manages the liquor store next door to the smoke shop, said a frightened employee of the smoke shop ran inside his business seeking help after Black entered Rodeo with the knife.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe came here, told me about a crazy guy in the store. Very scary,\u201d Lal said. \u201cI say, \u2018Don\u2019t worry, call the police.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The employee was able to flee from the smoke shop unharmed and a SWAT team arrived to try to diffuse the situation. SWAT team members tried to peacefully negotiate with Black but after hours of his refusal, a chemical agent was used to bring the standoff to an end.<\/p>\n

Black now faces charges that include vandalism, possession of nitrous oxide and assault on an officer, the Fullerton Police Department said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how he ended up down here we don\u2019t have any prior contacts with him, but he does have a criminal background,\u201d Billy Phu of the Fullerton Police Department said.<\/p>\n

A Possible motive for the vandalism was not clear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A San Francisco man who shut down a Fullerton strip mall when he vandalized a smoke shop and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[2628,611,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-397271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-fullerton","tag-orange-county","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}