Fight at Bluffton gated community led to arrest of Hilton Head security chief, report says
The arrest of the security chief of a Hilton Head Island gated community last month was spurred by a confrontation in which he threatened and fought another neighborhood’s security guard in Bluffton, according to a police report.
The Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office charged David De La Rosa, 61, of Bluffton with assault and battery in the third degree, a misdemeanor, after a fight broke out with a security guard at Rose Hill Plantation in Bluffton on July 11. The arrest was previously reported, but the details about what happened have not previously been made public.
De La Rosa is head of security of the Spanish Wells Plantation community on Hilton Head. The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette newspapers typically do not publish mugshots or name individuals charged with misdemeanors unless they are in a position of public trust.
An attorney for De La Rosa, Terry Finger, said on Wednesday that he expects the charge against his client to be dismissed soon.
Finger said they reached a resolution with the judge and the victim that involved an apology in open court and taking an anger management course.
What happened?
According to a report from the Sheriff’s Office, an altercation between De La Rosa and a Rose Hill security guard began around 3:20 p.m. July 11, when De La Rosa tried to enter the gated community without stopping at the guard gate to show his pass.
De La Rosa told police he had a guest pass displayed in his window. He said he usually drives through without stopping because Rose Hill guards are “typically lazy” and not paying attention.
According to a video of the encounter viewed by the deputy, a guard tried to stop De La Rosa as he drove through in a white Ford Explorer. The guard asked to see his pass. De La Rosa stated that the guard would have seen it if he wasn’t inside the guard booth, and the two began to argue.
The guard tried to view the pass, and De La Rosa then drove away while he said, “Go f--- yourself,” according to the report.
The guard smacked the side of the car as it drove away to get De La Rosa to stop, the guard told a sheriff’s deputy.
De La Rosa stopped the car and got out “in a charging manner.”
He grabbed the guard’s face with his hands and shoved him into a waist-high brick wall while yelling, “Don’t hit my f-----g car,” according to the video described in the report.
The guard wrote down De La Rosa’s tag number and threatened to call the police. De La Rosa said he would get the guard fired and threatened to “smash [his] face in” before driving away, according to the police report.
A reporter sent two unanswered Facebook messages to De La Rosa and his wife on Tuesday and Wednesday.
De La Rosa told police the encounter only consisted of pushing the guard back when he got too close and exchanging some words.
He turned himself into the Beaufort County Detention Center on July 20 after the Sheriff’s Office obtained a warrant.
