Hollister
– The deputy who shot an unarmed Hollister man during a
confrontation that escalated Sunday on Highway 156 might have
violated San Benito County Sheriff’s Office policy by having his
11-year-old daughter in the patrol car.
Hollister – The deputy who shot an unarmed Hollister man during a confrontation that escalated Sunday on Highway 156 might have violated San Benito County Sheriff’s Office policy by having his 11-year-old daughter in the patrol car.
The policy states that a person must be at least age 13 to go on a ride-along. Sheriff Curtis Hill said it’s too early in the office’s administrative investigation to tell if the deputy did indeed violate the policy.
“I don’t know what the circumstances were of that girl being there,” Hill said. “We’re looking at what that means in relation to this investigation.”
The age requirement allows teens in the department’s junior explorers program to go on a ride-along, Hill said. But even when an explorer is on a ride-along, Hill said, the deputy often is under instructions not to respond to dangerous situations or to drop off the teen before responding.
What was believed to be a routine check on a minor crash quickly escalated, deputies said.
With his daughter in the patrol car, the deputy tried to subdue a combative 29-year-old Israel Guerrero with a Taser gun and baton before shooting him in the stomach Sunday afternoon, the sheriff’s office reported. The deputy had stopped to help Guerrero, but the man became aggressive, Lt. Roy Iler previously told the Free Lance.
Authorities suspect Guerrero was under the influence of methamphetamine.
The man eventually was stunned once more with another deputy’s Taser gun and sprayed with pepper spray before being tackled and taken into custody by three deputies, Iler said. Guerrero was pronounced dead Sunday at Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital.
Hill declined to name the deputy involved in the shooting Tuesday, citing California Government Code.
“I’ve got to be able to make sure that I follow the peace officers’ bill of rights,” Hill said.
The law to which he referred states that an employer cannot cause the deputy under investigation to be subjected to “visits by the press or news media without his or her express consent nor shall his or her home address or photograph be given to the press or news media without his or her express consent.”
The preliminary investigation into the shooting shows that the deputy properly followed policy and procedure, Hill said.
The deputy shot an advancing Guerrero from about three feet away after another deputy had arrived and failed to shock the man with his Taser gun, Iler has said.
Iler told the Free Lance investigators found what appeared to be methamphetamine and a methamphetamine pipe in the green Saturn Guerrero was driving.
Although an autopsy was scheduled for Monday, Hill said the office is awaiting the work of a forensic pathologist.
“We don’t have a cause of death yet,” Hill said.
District Attorney Candice Hooper said her office Tuesday continued its probe into whether the shooting was justified.
It was the second officer-involved shooting for the sheriff’s office in little more than two weeks.
On May 25, a county sheriff’s deputy shot at an Aromas man who threatened and pointed a shotgun and machine gun at officers from a room above his garage, the sheriff’s office has reported. The man then set the room ablaze, and deputies were unable to rescue him.
Several outside agencies conducted investigations into the shooting. The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office performed a coroner’s investigation, which included an autopsy showing 52-year-old Tommy Ralph Gabriel died of asphyxiation and had not been hit by a bullet. The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office conducted an administrative investigation to determine whether policies and procedures were followed.
Hill asked Santa Cruz County to conduct the investigation because it had been years since the office had an officer-involved shooting. An outside investigation gave his office the chance to review how its own policies were followed, Hill said.
But Hill did not know Tuesday the status of reports on the Aromas shooting.
The San Benito County Board of Supervisors approved $3,500 from its risk management fund Tuesday to hire an Aptos-based attorney to determine any civil liability, said Susan Thompson, county administrative officer. That is standard procedure in an officer-involved shooting, she added.
