A couple in Sunnyvale faced an unsettling situation last week after police say a postal carrier started acting strangely, threatening people and even injuring a police dog. Robert Handa reports.
A couple in Sunnyvale faced an unsettling situation last week after police say a postal carrier started acting strangely, threatening people and even injuring a police dog.
The postal worker was apparently making his rounds on Cordilleras Avenue last Wednesday, according to Sunnyvale Public Safety, when he suddenly walked into the middle of the street and began talking out loud to himself.
A couple was driving down the street and stopped when they couldn’t get around him, then started taking video on their phones when the worker turned his attention to them.
The husband and wife asked not to be identified because they said they were scared of the worker.
“He kept pointing at me and saying he’s going to shoot me, shoot my wife, and shoot everybody in the car, basically,” the man said. “So I started getting scared. He kept reaching into his pocket, at the same time — with his other hand — he kept making gestures that he’s going to shoot me.”
The postal workers kept getting more and more agitated, the man said, and started using racial slurs.
“He was saying, basically, that I don’t belong here, saying that he’s going to shoot me, ‘go back to my country,’ ‘go collect welfare,’ you know, whatnot. Just crazy remarks. I never seen this man before in my life,” the man said.
Officers arrived and removed the couple from the scene. Public Safety confirmed that the postal worker made similar threats and gestures at police, then tried to flee.
After talks failed, officials sent a K9 officer. The postal worker injured the dog with pepper spray.
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Officers later arrested him on charges of making criminal threats, obstructing a police officer and harming a police canine.
The worker did not have any weapons other than the pepper spray.
The woman said she’s still rattled by the incident.
“I did take his threats very seriously and I was afraid because I had never been treated like that before by anyone,” she said. “Especially not a postal worker in my neighborhood.”
Since the worker was classified as a mental health case, Sunnyvale Public Safety said he would have been detained for up to 72 hours for psychiatric hospitalization.
As is typical in these cases, very few details have been released on his current status.
NBC Bay Area reached out to the US Postal Service, but has not yet received a response.
