“Breaking Bad” star Raymond Cruz has been arrested for allegedly spraying water over a girl in a petty parking dispute as he washed his car, according to cops and his outraged agent.
The 60-year-old actor, best known for playing brutal drug lord Tuco Salamanca on the award-winning HBO show, was detained on suspicion of misdemeanor battery for the dispute outside his Los Angeles home around 10:40 a.m. Monday, an LAPD spokesperson first told TMZ.
He “was put in handcuffs and taken to jail” for five hours, his shocked agent, Raphael Berko, claimed to PEOPLE.
It started with the actor asking three women to move their white minivan because it was “half an inch” from his, making it impossible for him to wash it, Berko claimed.
“They said no,” the agent said. “He goes, ‘Come on, move your car. You’re not giving me room, and it’s going to get wet.'”
When they still refused, the actor “started to clean his car and then they started filming him,” the agent claimed.
“When he turned around to tell them to stop filming him, he was still hosing his car. And some of the water from his hose hit the front of his car and spilled on their car,” Berko said.
“And then believe it or not, one of them called the police. And somehow someone who’s never been arrested in his life, someone who played a police detective for 15 years on ‘The Closer’ and ‘Major Crimes,’ someone who lives in that neighborhood, was put in handcuffs and taken to jail,” Berko said.
However, cops told TMZ the actor is believed to have deliberately sprayed the girl, who was the daughter of one of the women there. It was not clear how old she was, or how wet she got.
“There was basically a dispute with the victim, which is when Cruz allegedly sprayed water towards the victim,” LAPD officer David Cuellar told People.
The Mexican-American actor was released from police custody on his own recognizance just after 4 p.m. Monday. He is due back in court Oct. 1, online court records show.
Misdemeanor charges have yet to be filed against Cruz, who lives with his wife, actress Simi Mehta.
Despite the ordeal, the actor is “very grateful to all of the LAPD personnel at the police department because throughout the five hours of him being in their jail, the LAPD were all very, very gracious and nice to him and reassuring,” his agent stressed.