People v. Valladares CA4/1

I. Factual and Procedural Background A. Valladares’s Conduct One afternoon in October of 2022, a man (R.H.) in the second-floor unit of an apartment building on El Cajon Boulevard noticed an unusual sight: a stranger staggering around in the middle of the road, yelling, stepping into the path of oncoming cars, and “trying to kick [the cars] as they would pass.” As R.H. watched, the stranger (Valladares) “sudden[ly] . . . turned our way[,] . . . beelined it towards [our] building,” “ran straight for the door” to a unit on the ground floor, and slammed himself against it. On hearing the “bang” of Valladares colliding with the door, R.H. “went downstairs to see what was going on.” What he found after descending the stairs was Valladares—flat on his back, on a concrete walkway —yelling and screaming, kicking at the door he had just rammed (and broken), and seemingly battling an orange electrical cord that somehow had become snarled around him. In the words of R.H., Valladares seemed “very upset that he had the cord around him. It [was] like he thought it was a serpent.” “It looked like, in his face, like it was a snake or something. He had a real frightened look in his face.” In…