LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa.– A Lancaster County judge sentenced a man to 12 – 27 years in prison after he attacked two police officers on Easter Sunday at a city park.
Brian Sanchez-Padilla, 25, was sentenced to 12 – 27 years in prison on two felony counts of aggravated assault and a misdemeanor resisting arrest.
Sanchez-Padilla was sentenced in court on Wednesday, after two Lancaster City police officers spoke of the 7-minute struggle for their lives they had with the man on Easter Sunday at a city park.
“It wasn’t him versus us; it was him versus the rest of the world,” Officer Codi Herr said of the encounter at Farnum Park. “I know what his intention was.”
Officer Michael Deitz said he had instructed Sanchez-Padilla two days earlier at the exact same spot – a pavilion at Farnum Park – that he can not live there. Sanchez-Padilla used drugs, specifically, synthetic marijuana at that location.
On Easter Sunday, Sanchez-Padilla again ignored the officers’ directives to leave, being verbally abusive and then physically aggressive.
“He punched me in my face,” Deitz recalled. “He continued to attack me and attack me. I remember that like it was two minutes ago. His face showed no remorse. He intended to hurt or kill us.
Sanchez-Padilla apologized in court, but held his fingers in his ears as the officers told their side of the story.
Lancaster County Judge Donald Tortaro, who sentenced Sanchez-Padilla, called him “a danger to society.”
“An attack on law enforcement is an attack on our society and our rule of law,” Judge Totaro said.
He also listed Sanchez-Padilla’s past criminal acts, including multiple trespass convictions, DUI, reckless burning, identity theft, forgery and aggravated harassment by a prisoner.
Sanchez-Padilla had been released from prison 11 days before the Easter assaults and left a drug-treatment facility five days prior to that.
