Two Incidents Involving Sacramento County Sheriff Deputies

In the last couple of days there have been two incidents involving Sacramento County Sheriff Deputies.

The first incident occurred on Wednesday or Thursday of this past week. A deputy was on her way to work at the Sacramento airport when another driver made a sudden move into the lane the deputy was driving in, causing the deputy to lose control of her personal vehicle which was a small sports car. Her car spun around hitting a big rig that was entering the freeway. The deputy was killed at the scene. The CHP had received reports from some drivers about a red car weaving in and out of traffic. The car that was involved was red. The driver was arrested and will be arraigned on Monday afternoon. She is 23 years old with a clean driving record.

The deputy had worked for the Sheriff's department for 15 years. Her husband is also a deputy and her father worked in law enforcement also. She had 4 young children, the 3 youngest are triplets going into the first grade this year. This hit close to home for our family. One of the triplets was in our grandson Andy's class and is one of Andy's friends. We picked Andy up from school on Thursdays last school year and Gerry would talk to the father as he waited to pick up his triplets.

Then today Gerry was going out to the airport for a PGR mission. He had been at our church all morning helping to do some work on the grounds. He came home to get cleaned up before he went. I wasn't going to go with him because I wanted to go out to Rocklin to Green Tangerines and look for some cardstock to use on my cards I'm working on for my card swap the end of the month. I left about 15 minutes after he did.

When I turned onto Madison and got up to Hillsdale which is 3 traffic lights from Jackson, traffic was backing up. I heard sirens behind me and a couple of sheriff cars were trying to get through traffic to make a left hand turn at Hillsdale. People were gathered on the sidewalk looking down Hillsdale and there was a helicopter in the sky circling. (That is a common thing around here, helicopters circling). As I crossed Hillsdale, I glanced down and noticed that there were several law enforcement vehicles pulled over in front of a shopping strip on Hillsdale. As I approached the overpass traffic came to an absolute standstill. Then there were sirens coming from everywhere. I could see that there were patrol cars on the overpass too. I called Gerry to see where he was and told him what was going on. People were getting out of their cars walking towards the other side of the overpass.

I was going to take the freeway onramp to go east on I-80. As we inched along, I noticed crime tape blocking the onramp. So there was no getting on the freeway.

Well, supposedly 4 guys robbed a bank in Rocklin and took off down the freeway westbound. They got off on Madison and turned right into the shopping strip. For those that know this area, it is where Brookfield's is and the Super 8 motel. Someone told a Sheriff's deputy that there were 3 men hiding behind a building and they had masks on. He took off on foot to investigate not realizing that these men had robbed a bank and were armed. One of the suspects shot the deputy in the back. He is in stable condition at a local hospital. There are personnel from every law enforcement agency in the area including park rangers. The parking lot of Trinity church is packed with patrol cars. Am not sure what was going on on the overpass because both sides of the overpass had patrol cars and officers. One CHP officer stopped me as I approached. Don't know exactly why. There was camera crews out there too. A couple miles of Hillsdale is closed and the Swat Team is out looking for one more suspect. Three are in custody. They are also searching for weapons that might have been tossed.

Gerry told me when he was driving out to the airport, he saw patrol cars on the freeway coming this way.

I had to do alot of circling in order to get on the freeway. Then the freeway was jammed packed.

It is so crazy out on the streets and in our communities. People are saying it is only going to get worse because of the layoffs and cutbacks that the Sheriff's department has taken.