Los Angeles: A retired American mixed martial arts (MMA) star "live-tweeted" an hours-long standoff with police in a Los Angeles suburb Thursday, before being arrested.
Jason "Mayhem" Miller, 33, wrote several dozen tweets as police held him at bay in his home before officers blew the locks off his front door.
"I WISH YOU NO HARM. I respect the Police, but this is overkill, for something that would be settled with one piece of paperwork," he wrote to his more than 220,000 followers.
Miller said he had planned to go to court Thursday, but "I woke up late, and couldn`t leave because there is a highly equipment (sic) regiment of wanna be soldiers outside my house reminding me that, `WE WON`T GO AWAY!`"
Orange County police said Miller is accused of domestic violence and stalking, notably breaching a restraining order barring him from contact with his wife.
He failed to attend a September 8 court appearance and was declared a fugitive.
Officers with an arrest warrant arrived at his home mid-morning, but Miller refused to come out. A SWAT team moved in and blew the locks off his door shortly after 2:00 pm, said Orange County sheriff`s spokesman Jeff Hallock.
Miller`s attorney said the raid was not necessary.
"Jason had been under the care of a doctor for an illness," said lawyer Joseph Low. "He has been waiting for me to come back to town so that we could go back to court to continue to prove his innocence.
"I wish the police had informed me of their raid. We could have saved the taxpayers a lot of money. There was no reason at all for them to get all dressed up in their SWAT costumes," he added.
Miller claimed that his wife had mental health problems, tweeting: "ALL THIS because I wanted to help raise a young boy into a man, and his mama wenr (sic) off her meds, and an ambitious DA thinks mayhem is BAD."
His last tweet before being arrested read: "Now the (sic) broke my window with some box with a phone in it, and AR-15s. THEY ARE TERRIFIED, and they have all the guns. Scaring my hotdog."
MMA is a combat sport in which competitors use anything from kickboxing to wrestling to take down their opponent.
