Incident: Thursday, May 8, 2008, 0104 hours — Soboba Indian Reservation, Riverside County, California. Audio: Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.
Five shootings in five months. This was one of them.
This is the real Riverside County Sheriff’s dispatch audio from my shooting on the Soboba Reservation, cut with my own homicide interview, recorded at 0855 that same morning.
Everything here comes out of case file D-08-129-001: the Channel 1 dispatch audio, the CAD register, my homicide interview, the autopsy, and the Riverside County District Attorney’s report dated September 17, 2009.
Free — the opening chapterUnits Are SurroundedFive shootings in five months between members of the Soboba Indian Reservation and law enforcement in the Hemet area of Riverside County. My story about being in the middle of it. The full book is coming.Read how it starts
0104
I shot a man armed with a rifle at 12 to 15 feet.
Then I got on the radio: “1-David-12. We’ve got one down. Deputies are code four at this time. And we have two that ran, unknown where.”
The man died. The autopsy put it at rapid blood loss within a couple of minutes.
“All units stay down”
At 0131 I asked for more units.
My watch commander told dispatch: “Roll them four units. Just get them up there.”
Twelve seconds later, Idah 100 came on, relaying for David One, the station commander: all units stay down, wait for SEB.
Dispatch put it out: “Per David One, all units stay down.”
My watch commander came back on: “He’s asking for them. We need them.”
0144
A truck came at us at the dumpsters. A deputy fired into its front quarter panel and headlight.
I put out: “We have a car at gunpoint.” Then: “We need three units right now.”
Then: “We have people coming out everywhere. We need units right now.”
A responding unit: “Friendlies coming from the west.”
Idah 100: “Stand by if you can, the cavalry is coming.”
I told them we were surrounded.
My watch commander, D129: “Disregard that. If you need help, get them there.”
01:46:41
The CAD register logged it at 01:46:41 — “1D12 :UNITS ARE SURROUNDED”
Thirteen minutes after the stay-down order.
That line is the title of my book, Units Are Surrounded.
Who came
Seven units came up the paved road from the east — four or five Hemet PD units and a couple of deputies.
In my interview that morning, I said Hemet PD “finally just decided to go anyways, even though they were told not to… and, kind of, saved our day.”
Same interview: “I’m not criticizing. I’m really not, because I know it’s — you don’t want to send a bunch of people into something that’s a bad situation.”
Case status
The Riverside County District Attorney reviewed the shooting. In a report dated September 17, 2009, the DA found the deputies who fired acted in lawful defense of themselves and others, with no criminal culpability.
By its own stated scope, the DA’s review did not rule on tactics or command decisions.
Units Are Surrounded
The new book from Ray Dietrich. Five shootings in five months in Riverside County. The full book is coming - read how it starts, free.
