This morning at about 12:30 AM deputies from the Sonoma Police Department were dispatched to a disturbance call at the Chevron gas station in the 500 block of W. Napa. During the course of the investigation, the deputies arrested Dominic Gates, a 21-year-old Sonoma resident for public intoxication.
A deputy transported him to the Sonoma Valley Substation for prebooking and rolled down the windows to the rear seat. The deputy went inside the substation briefly to get paperwork and heard Gates slam the car door shut. The deputy ran outside to see Gates jumping the fence to escape the secured parking lot. The deputy later realized that Gates had managed to slip his handcuffs to the front of his body, slip his skinny arms through the bars on the patrol car windows and unlatched the door to let himself out of the car.
By the time the deputy was able to get out of the lot he saw Gates jumping fences through the neighborhood. Deputies secured a perimeter in the neighborhood and called out the Sheriff’s helicopter. After a thorough search of the neighborhood and contacting relatives in the area, the deputies called off the search.
At about 6:45 AM this morning Gates arrived at the Sonoma Valley substation and turned himself in, still with the handcuffs on. Gates was ultimately booked for public intoxication and escape from custody. He is being held on $2,500 bail.
