Hiroshi Motohashi was angry with the
management of the Studio City sushi restaurant, so police said he decided to
leave something for other customers to remember him by.
Instead of "dropping the
mic" after a memorable rant, officials say the 46-year-old man dropped a
13-foot-long snake in the middle of the restaurant — then slithered out.
Motohashi later was arrested on suspicion
of making criminal threats, said Lt. Jim Gavin of the Los Angeles
Police Department in Van Nuys.
The cold-blooded act unfolded about
7:20 p.m. Sunday when Motohashi entered Iroha Sushi of Tokyo in the 12900 block
of Ventura Boulevard and showed off a small snake to customers sitting down for
dinner.
Restaurant managers confronted
Motohashi and asked him to leave, Gavin said.
Motohashi left, but returned minutes
later to the restaurant with an even bigger snake: a 13-foot-long python.
The snake owner said, “[Expletive],
you guys,” then dropped the larger snake in the middle of the restaurant floor
and walked out, the lieutenant said.
There was no confusing the yellow
python slithering on the restaurant floor with a supersized caterpillar
roll.
Employees told the media that Motohashi had paid for
a $200 meal before showing off the smaller snake to customers. The customers
did not like that. They liked the giant snake even less. Some terrified
customers even ran out of the restaurant, the station reported.
“Get this thing out! You know,
everyone’s like eating, so customers are yelling, ‘Get this thing out! Are you
crazy,’ ” waitress Jessie Davaadorj told the media.
The Los Angeles Fire Department and
Los Angeles Animal Services went to the restaurant and captured the snake,
which apparently had gotten stuck near a cash register. Animal control
officers took the snake away, Gavin said.
Animal Services is caring for both
snakes at its East Valley facility in Van Nuys. Motohashi must show proof of
ownership, including the proper permits, to get his snakes back, Cmdr. Mark
Salazar of the Animal Services Department said.
This isn’t Motohashi’s first run-in
with the law over his love of exotic pets. He was convicted in 2005 in
federal court of selling endangered animals and venomous lizards.
He was sentenced to 15 months for
selling Gila monster lizards without a permit. Along with the venomous lizards,
he sold yellow-spotted sideneck turtles and San Esteban Island chuckwallas to
an undercover officer in 1997, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
Motohashi was one of a dozen people
arrested by the agent, who posed as the owner of a business that was buying and
selling exotic animals in Reno.
Years later, Motohashi’s San
Diego-based pet shop, A Glass Jungle, was featured in a 2011 article in San Diego Uptown News. He
was photographed with a 15-foot-long albino tiger python named Cleopatra.
“I love to educate people about the
animals and let them see things they wouldn’t normally see…and I want people to
see how they could take care of these animals responsibly,” he told the
paper. [LA times]
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