SLO County man drew a bayonet during public comment, police said. Now he’s in jail
Update Feb. 4: The felony charge was dropped against Cottle and he was released from the San Luis Obispo County Jail. Follow our update here: https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/crime/article299715129.html
A Morro Bay man was arrested Wednesday after he unsheathed a 20-inch-long World War II bayonet during public comment at the Morro Bay City Council meeting the night before.
Kiernan Cottle, 28, is a regular at Morro Bay City Council meetings. He often performs theatrical speeches at public comment about international politics or the city’s response to homelessness.
At Tuesday’s meeting, however, he gave the room an even more dramatic show.
After stepping up to the podium and giving a short introduction, he unrolled a towel to reveal a sheathed bayonet.
The nearly 2-foot-long blade, which attaches to the end of a rifle for hand-to-hand fighting, belonged to his grandfather, a decorated World War II veteran, he said.
“I do not know how many of our brothers lost their lives to this blade on the banks of the Rhine, but it would not have been many — as Grandpa was a sharpshooter,” he said. “Grandpa committed unforgivable sins to defend the world against a madness that nearly destroyed the very land that gave rise to it.”
Cottle then unsheathed the blade.
“As a child, when this blade was placed in my hands and I was told what had been done with it, I was told that it was a weapon no longer. The war was won, we no longer had need of tools to kill,” he said, holding the blade above his head. “This was forevermore to be an agricultural implement. Not a bayonet, but a machete. In my hands, many an unwarranted shrub gave way to new life with this blade.”
He then made comments about people wearing “pink triangles,” which could be a reference to gay and transgender people sent to Nazi concentration camps. They were forced to wear an inverted pink triangle on their uniforms, according to the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
“I have been lied to every day of my life — forgetting about the sins of stuffing our neighbors in camps,” Cottle said. “I know that those who were liberated and found to be wearing pink triangles were usually thrown straight back to the dogs.”
Cottle said his personal hero was the British mathematician Alan Turing, who decoded the German cipher machine Enigma for the Allied Forces during World War II.
Turing’s contributions to the war effort did not protect him from homophobia, however. In 1952, he was convicted of “gross indecency” for engaging in a relationship with a man from Manchester — causing him to be stripped of his security clearance and forced to undergo hormone therapy, according to the CIA.
“Countless lives saved and an end to the war, and his government repaid him with torture,” Cottle said. “As I diligently sanded and oiled this blade, I did not consider that it may once again shed the blood of fascists. Rather, I turned my mind to the potential for happiness that I was being forced to risk my life for.”
“I’ve spent my life being taught that it was wrong for me to want to be loved,” he added.
On Monday, Cottle wrote a stanza from the song ”Dead Cops/America’s So Straight” by MDC in chalk on his driveway, he said.
His neighbors then hosed the chalk away.
“When I refused to engage in dialogue with them after the fact, my neighbors started hurling insults at me. The last thing she said was, ‘you f---ing h--o,’” Cottle said.
He then sheathed the blade, the chink of metal echoing in the microphone.
Cottle then rolled the bayonet in his towel and sat down in the audience.
When Mayor Carla Wixom paused the meeting to talk to city staff, Cottle walked out of the building.
Morro Bay Police Department Cmdr. Tony Mosqueda watched the incident unfold at the meeting.
“I heard the gasps, and I could tell people were shocked,” he said.
In the moment, Mosqueda did not consider Cottle’s behavior to be a threat to public safety, he said.
“It appeared that he was using it as a prop for his speech, and there weren’t any immediate threats to anybody in the building,” he said.
Mosqueda followed Cottle out of the building after his speech and told him to take the weapon home.
“There was nothing negative from him after,” Mosqueda said.
On Wednesday, the Morro Bay Police Department interviewed the City Council members and further investigated Cottle.
Police then arrested Cottle on Wednesday for violating California Penal Code 171B(a3), which prohibits people from bringing a knife longer than 4 inches to a public building or meeting, Mosqueda said.
As of Thursday afternoon, Cottle was held at the San Luis Obispo County Jail in lieu of $25,000 bail, according to the jail booking log.
Neighbor sets the record straight
Riley Pollard, 28, lives next-door to Cottle — and she had a different take on the driveway incident.
On Monday, she said she walked outside and saw Cottle had written multiple slurs in chalk on their shared driveway. The message said, “Mafia in blue hunting for queers, n-----s, and you.”
She was disturbed by the statement and hosed it off the driveway, she said.
“I am queer and I have Black family members. I don’t care if it’s a quote — I don’t want that near my house,” Pollard said.
Then, Cottle confronted her.
“He came out of his house full throttle,” she said. “He came and started saying, ‘f--k you guys, you guys ruined my artwork.’”
Pollard said she didn’t call Cottle a “h--o,” like he had reported.
The next day, Cottle wrote the message on the driveway again — but this time with a permanent solution that her landlord was not able to remove, Pollard said.
“He’s very creepy. He stares at me through his windows. He’ll flip me off,” Pollard said. “Now I have this fear of him harassing me.”
This story was originally published January 30, 2025 at 5:50 PM.
