WILTON MANORS, Fla. – A Wilton Manors man faces a number of criminal charges, including misusing Broward County’s 911 system, after police said he phoned in two bogus emergency calls and then — literally — laid waste to a police cruiser after officers caught him.
Officers arrested Anthony Joseph Matranga, 58, on Sunday.
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According to a Wilton Manors police arrest report, just before 5 p.m. that day, someone called 911 to report a fire at a bowling alley on Northeast 26th Street, claiming there was smoke coming from the kitchen and fire in the bowling alley, but responding police officers and firefighters found nothing wrong.
Then, a half-hour later, authorities said they got another 911 call from the same number, this time reporting a shooting at Wilton Drive and Northeast Ninth Avenue. The caller told dispatchers that a man was shot in the leg and bleeding near a Publix store.
Police said first responders once again found nothing wrong.
But, according to the report, they did find Matranga, sitting on a bus bench nearby.
Officer Joshua Saunders wrote that police called back the number from the 911 calls. Matranga’s phone, stored inside his pocket, began ringing.
According to the report, police cuffed Matranga, who began threatening officers, telling them he knew where they lived and would shoot them.
Saunders wrote that after police placed Matranga inside of his patrol car, “he began defecating on himself and smearing it throughout the rear prisoner compartment.”
But police said that wasn’t the end of it.
“Matranga began kicking and pulling at the interior of the vehicle, causing damage to the interior including emergency lighting systems and radar speed measurement systems,” Saunders wrote.
Recordings of the 911 calls matched Matranga’s voice, police said. According to the report, he’s familiar to Wilton Manors police, having made multiple threats against officers’ lives before, leading to a court injunction.
As Saunders completed his paperwork, he wrote that Matranga began kicking his cruiser’s doors and windows, causing its door frames to bend, incurring roughly $5,000 worth of damage.
Matranga then told an officer he “knew where he lived and would shoot him,” Saunders wrote.
According to the report, that same officer nearly got kicked in the genitals by Matranga as officers tried to unload him at the Broward County Main Jail.
Matranga required a medical evaluation for high blood pressure, according to police, and continued to do damage as police took him to Broward Health Medical Center, where he then kicked a sharps container hanging on the wall.
In addition to two charges of misusing 911, Matranga also faces charges of battery on a law enforcement officer, criminal mischief, resisting arrest and threatening a public servant.
Matranga was being held on a $7,000 bond, according to jail records.