The man accused of breaking into Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’s mansion in April told a local radio station he was on a five-day drug binge at the time and didn’t know it was her house.
“He didn’t target her,” Mr. Baird said in a report Monday.
Police arrested Mr. Hunter on April 21 after a 6:40 a.m. break-in, when he allegedly broke a glass door and entered the Getty House, the official mayor’s residence in Windsor Square, about five miles west of Los Angeles City Hall.
Ms. Bass was home at the time and visiting with family. She reportedly hid in a safe room. Los Angeles Police Department security was scheduled to start duty a few minutes later at 7 a.m. but was not at the scene when the break-in occurred.
The burglary triggered an alarm that alerted police, according to authorities.
Mr. Hunter has been detained at Pitchess Detention Center North in Castaic since his arrest because he can’t afford the $10,000 he would need to post the $100,000 bond, he apparently told the reporter.
He reportedly told the local news station that some of the details reported by authorities “didn’t make sense,” such as the report saying he was calling out the mayor’s name. Some reports said Mr. Hunter called out “Karen, Karen” as he climbed the steps.
“He may have been calling out his brother’s name—which is Aaron, not Karen—in his paranoid state of mind,” Mr. Baird said.
The defendant also allegedly told the news station he had been taking methamphetamine and thought someone was chasing him. He was riding a bus on Wilshire Boulevard that morning and made the driver stop to let him off because he thought someone was after him.
That’s how he ended up in the mayor’s neighborhood, he allegedly told Mr. Baird.
He also reportedly said officers found a meth pipe and meth on him in the hospital. Mr. Hunter apparently hopes he can be placed in a drug diversion program instead of prison.
