Area Blocked Off After Man Threatened Neighbor With BB Gun

Police blocked off an area on Sunset Boulevard in Newport and surrounded a house around 1:30 p.m. Thursday after a 25-year-old man allegedly threatened a 44-year-old Newport man with a BB gun.    

Jessy Martinez, of 27 Sunset Blvd, was charged a misdemeanor disorderly and was cited under a weapons ordinance. 

“The problem with BB guns now is they are made to look like more powerful weapons,” said Newport Police Lieutenant William Fitzgerald.

A witness, who wished to remain anonymous, described the scene:

We had an officer right outside our front window with a gun that looked like an AK-47. It started about when the high school kids were getting dropped off the bus. There were police everywhere, with guns drawn at most corners of the house that the person was in with the gun…I heard a plain clothes officer telling the bus monitor to get the kids out of the area. I had a child getting off that bus also. It’s a scary thing when kids are coming home from school and especially for the kids who live on the street who may not have been allowed down the street.

Police said the argument started when Martinez's neighbor yelled at his sons outside his house. Martinez thought the man was yelling at him and the two men started fighting, said police.  Martinez allegedly asked his neighbor “what he was going to do about it.”  The man went inside his house but when he came back outside, Martinez was holding a gun and said, “let’s do this.”  The man reportedly ran inside and called police. 

Martinez alleged his neighbor threatened him with a knife, but the man denied he had a knife, said police.