UPDATE: March 28 11:48 a.m. According to the Cerritos College Twitter account and an official El Camino College campus advisory, the suspect has been arrested and turned over to the El Camino College Police Department who is currently investigating the situation.
UPDATE: April 1 6:32 p.m. This story has been updated to reflect the new information found after the initial breaking news.
The March 26 baseball game at Cerritos College between Cerritos and El Camino Colleges was threatened by a man who said that he would bring his “AK” to the game, the man was later arrested, authorities said.
The man was identified as 44-year-old Daniel Pelaez, who was found to not be a student of El Camino or Cerritos, but had been attending games for “something like 15 (or) 16 years,” and was charged with a misdemeanor for allegedly making terrorist threats, El Camino Chief of Police Michael Trevis said.
“There was no weapon in the vehicle, we checked him and there (were) no weapons we could find, the suspect openly admitted that he said it, said he didn’t mean it but he said it, and that’s pretty much it, we got him pretty quick,” Trevis said.
The coach Pelaez had threatened was Ken Gaylord, a Cerritos coach who had apparently waited two days to report the threat to police, Trevis said.
While Pelaez was found to not have any weapons, the campus bulletin that warned both students and teachers of this threat was sent out to students over an hour later than it was to teachers, when asked about this delay, Trevis said that he was not aware of the delay at all.
“This is the first I’ve heard of it, I will follow up on it because it needs to go out at the same time,” Trevis said.
Trevis added that police were seeking a restraining order against Pelaez to keep him from returning to the campus. Trevis also had a statement to students and faculty.
“I appreciate everybody’s understanding because I know these are tough times, bad things are happening all over the world, and it is my job as your chief of police to keep everybody safe,” Trevis said.
