A former Oakland police officer pleaded guilty this week to assault charges stemming from a fight with his girlfriend in downtown Sonoma last fall. Christopher del Rosario, 46, was charged with a felony, which could result in three to five years of probation and up to a year in jail.
According to Sgt. Dave Thompson of the Sonoma Police Department, who testified at the hearing, he and fellow officers responded to a late-night call from two people who had seen a man grab a woman by the throat and shove her against a car just west of the Plaza. When the witnesses approached the car, the man pointed a pistol at them, shoved the victim in the car and drove away. Officers from the police and sheriff’s departments, following the witnesses’ descriptions, shortly located the vehicle in the parking lot of the El Pueblo motel. “We found the room the truck was registered to and found him (del Rosario) and the girl he was with,” Thompson told the Sun. “We took him into custody on domestic violence charges as well as assault with a deadly weapon and brandishing a firearm.”
Rosario agreed to plead guilty to one felony charge in exchange for prosecutors dropping three other felony charges.
