Full Notification

A Santa Barbara County Jail inmate is back in custody at the Main Jail after a brief escape this morning, November 20, at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse.

41-year-old Cristian Otey of Santa Barbara was scheduled to appear in court this morning at the Santa Barbara County Superior Courthouse.  At approximately 8:25 a.m., he was being unloaded from a Sheriff’s Transportation Unit bus where he was handcuffed and secured to a chain with other inmates.  Otey managed to escape out of his handcuffs by using a jail made instrument.  He then slipped between a security door and the bus, jumped a fence and broke away from the grip of a Custody Deputy.   Sheriff’s Deputies along with a University of California Police Department Officer gave chase.  While running way, he stripped off some of his jail issued clothing.  Within minutes and less than a block away in the 300 block of E. Carrillo Street, Otey was apprehended and taken back into custody.

Otey was originally arrested on November 17, 2014 by the Santa Barbara Police Department and was in custody on a charge of battery against a non-cohabitating spouse/fiancée as well as an out-of-county warrant for probable/willful harm to a child.  Otey was also remanded to court on charges of assault with a deadly weapon other than firearm or force likely to produce great bodily injury, inflicting corporal injury on a spouse, an ex-spouse, a cohabitant, ex-cohabitant, or a child’s parent and disorderly conduct in public while under the influence of alcohol. 

Otey is now also charged with escape from jail and resisting/obstructing a public officer.