Allowing your 13-year-old son to drive you to the gas station while you’re drunk is a bad idea, shooting a gun around police officers while he is driving is even worse.
Since Sergio Barrientos-Hinojos had already been drinking, he had his teenage son drive him to the gas station around 10:40 p.m. Saturday night. When Barrientos-Hinojos came out of the gas station, he was arguing with another customer.
According to KOAT, Barrientos-Hinojos went to his truck, grabbed a gun and shot at the man he was arguing with. Several officers across the street at a DWI checkpoint heard the shot and responded.
“They immediately took cover,” said Officer Simon Drobik. “They actually thought they were being fired at.”
Officers say the teen quickly fled the station to a nearby neighborhood with his father, who shot about seven more shots into the air from the passenger window. The incident left residents of the neighborhood understandably confused.
“I wasn’t completely sure they were gunshots,” said Cerridwen Stucky.
The chase did not last long, and the father-son duo were pulled over in seconds.
“There were cops everywhere, up and down the street,” Michael Wilson said.
Comments from Drobik clarified that Barrientos-Hinojos was indeed drunk.
“He was yelling racial slurs at the officers, ‘F the police,’ and he told us that we’ll never find that gun,” Drobik said. “Well we did, two minutes later, down the street, which he threw it into a yard of a family’s house that had numerous children in the house at that time.”
Barrientos-Hinojos’s son is not in any trouble and is safe at home with his mother.
“The 13-year-old was shell-shocked,” Drobik said. “When we pulled him out of the car, he didn’t know exactly what was going on. It was a scary situation for him.”
Barrientos-Hinojos, on the other hand, will face a number of charges including child abuse. Fortunately, no one was injured by any of the bullets.
