Prolific tagger arrested

Chico Police Department officers think they may have arrested a man who has spray painted the moniker “Gomes” not only locally, but also up and down the state.

Officers from CPD’s TARGET team had been working recently to figure out who was responsible for a rash of tags in the region, and in March had come across two suspects in the act of tagging a fence on Manzanita Avenue. They captured 19-year-old Samuel Arechiga, whose arrest led to the search warrant of a Pomona Avenue apartment.

There, on April 18, officers from CPD, Amtrak and Union Pacific Railroad found evidence, including gas masks and stencils, allegedly linking Arechiga’s cousin, 21-year-old Emanuel Arechiga, to the graffiti vandalism under investigation.

The suspect was spotted nearby in a car and arrested a short time later. His alleged tagging has reportedly been spotted on train cars, businesses and other places throughout California.