Petaluma man was driving car he reported stolen at time of fatal police stop, cops say
A Petaluma man who died in a Sonoma County deputy’s sleeper hold at the end of a high-speed chase was behind the wheel of his own car during the fatal stop – the car he had reported stolen days earlier, law enforcement officials in the North Bay announced Monday.
The revelation Monday by Santa Rosa police came a week after the death of 52-year-old David Glen Ward. The Petaluma man led deputies and Sebastopol police officers on a brief chase early Nov. 27 before he was stopped, Tased, subdued with what investigators called a “carotid restraint,” and dragged out of his car when he lost consciousness.
Ward was later pronounced dead at a hospital, police said. Ward was the car’s registered owner and recovered the car before the fatal incident, Santa Rosa police said. He was not a suspect in the theft. It’s unknown why he drove away from the officers who tried to stop him.
Santa Rosa Police Department is investigating the incident. In a lengthy statement Monday, Santa Rosa officials laid out a timeline of events that led to Ward’s death.
Meantime, an investigation continues into the incident and Ward’s death along with a Sheriff’s administrative review into whether deputies followed department policy.
Ward died 7:17 a.m., Nov. 27, roughly 90 minutes after Sonoma County Sheriff’s dispatchers received a 5:41 a.m. call from an off-duty Santa Rosa police officer of a vehicle reported stolen out of west Sonoma County – Ward’s 2003 Honda Civic.
Days earlier, on Nov. 24, Ward called in the theft.
Sonoma County Sheriff’s deputy Jason Little, a veteran of 12 years on patrol, another five years at the county’s jail, was the first to spot the car. It was 5:54 a.m., 13 minutes after the off-duty officer’s call to dispatchers.
Little could not see inside the car, said Santa Rosa police officials in the statement. A pair of Sebastopol officers joined the call and tailed the Honda.
The auto theft suspect was believed to be armed. The car was still listed as stolen, said Santa Rosa police. The driver stopped the car, but then drove off and the chase was on. Little tried a PIT maneuver, driving into the car, but was unable to stop the driver.
The brief pursuit lasted but 7 minutes before the three lawmen surrounded Ward’s car. Santa Rosa police said another deputy, 19-year veteran Charlie Blount, arrived on scene.
They ordered him to get out of the car. Investigators say he refused. They tried to pull him out of the car, but couldn’t. Little and Blount were bit, police said, during the struggle.
The struggle continued, the deputies struck Ward with what Santa Rosa police officials called “personal body weapons” before Little used his Taser, deploying it through Ward’s open car window.
The jolt wasn’t successful and Blount reached into the car to attempt the carotid restraint – the strangulation hold that compresses the carotid artery on the side of the neck causing a person to black out.
Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department allows the use of carotid control holds in select cases, but deputies must have been properly trained in how to use the hold and can only the use the restraint if he violent or physically resisting and has the “potential to harm deputies, himself or others.”
Sebastopol Police Officer Ethan Stockton had been on the city’s force little more than two years. Stockton broke the front passenger side window with his baton and opened the door. Ward was pulled out of the car and handcuffed. Ward had no weapon.
By 6:10 a.m., Ward wasn’t breathing and deputies performed CPR, said Santa Rosa police. An ambulance crew arrived 11 minutes later, at 6:21 a.m.
Nearly an hour later, at 7:17 a.m., Ward was pronounced dead at Petaluma Valley Hospital in Petaluma.
Ward’s family and others who knew him said he was in poor health and had trouble breathing and walking, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported Tuesday.
Ward had escaped death 20 years ago when he was struck and seriously injured by a drunken driver, half-sister Catherine Aguilera told the Santa Rosa newspaper. Ward carried the effects of the near-death collision to his final days.
“He had to learn how to walk all over again. He was really disabled from that accident,” Ward’s mother, Ernie Ward of Sebastopol, told the Press Democrat.
That medical history will be part of the Santa Rosa police probe into Ward’s death, according to the Press-Democrat.
Ward was days away from his 53rd birthday when he died, family members told the newspaper.
.JPG)