California couple assisted sheriff and faced brutal attack. Were they ‘employees’ for helping?

Nine years ago, a Trinity County sheriff’s corporal called James and Norma Gund and asked them to check on a neighbor who had called 911 and hung up.

Cpl. Ron Whitman told Norma that the call was “probably no big deal” and likely related to a snowstorm that was blowing in. He was driving that way, he said, but because of the snow, it would take him several hours to bisect the vast rural county to get to their small town called Kettenpom.

Being good neighbors, the Gunds did what Whitman asked and went to their neighbor’s house. There, a man who had just killed two people shot them with a stun gun and slashed Norma Gund’s throat with a hunting knife. She barely survived.

On Tuesday, the California Supreme Court heard the Gund’s story in a case that raises troubling questions about the lack of law enforcement in the vast rural reaches of California. The case also weighs whether those who volunteer to help an officer should be entitled to sue for damages if they get hurt.

The couple sued the sheriff’s office in 2012 alleging they were entitled to damages because Whitman had neglected to mention that a dispatcher who took the 911 call told him she heard a woman whispering “Help ... help …” before hanging up. The dispatcher told Whitman she was leery of calling the number back because she didn’t want to alert a possible assailant, the Gunds claim.

The Gunds attorneys say they would have been much more cautious about approaching their neighbor’s house if Whitman had given them all the facts.

But instead of being entitled to the $10 million the Gunds sought after the attack, the sheriff’s office has successfully fended off the Gunds’ legal arguments.

In June 2018, a state appellate court sided with Trinity County, whose attorneys argued the Gunds became de facto employees of the county when they had agreed to do a deputy’s duties. As such, they were only entitled only to workers’ compensation under an arcane section of state employment law.

“(The Gunds) knew they were responding to a 911 call, and therefore they were assisting in active law enforcement,” the appellate court judges wrote. “Although the deputy misrepresented that the 911 call was likely weather-related and omitted facts suggesting potential criminal activity, the deputy’s misrepresentations and omissions are irrelevant. ... All that matters is that plaintiffs knew they were responding to a 911 call, the nature of which was not certain.”

In its written legal arguments, the county cited “posse comitatus,” a term that harkens to the days of the Old West, when sheriffs could conscript any citizen into an officer of the law on the spot. Posse comitatus has become controversial in recent years as tensions have risen after high profile cases of officers using excessive force on minorities.

In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill striking down a law that made it a crime to refuse a police officer’s request for help under posse comitatus.

Slashed, stabbed in Trinity County

The Gunds’ ordeal began March 13, 2011, in the remote former timber town of Kettenpom, in an area known for its marijuana cultivation 250 miles north of San Francisco.

After receiving Whtiman’s call, Norma and Jim drove their Ford pickup truck the quarter-mile to Kristine Constantino’s home.

Norma Gund walked to the home while Jim waited in their Ford truck. A man she had never seen before met her outside. She asked him about Constantino, and he said she was fine. Norma said she wanted to be sure, and the man escorted her into the house.

The bodies of Constantino, 33, and her boyfriend Christopher “Sky” Richardson, 26, were wrapped in plastic on the floor.

Their killer, Tomas Gouverneur, a musician from Corvallis, Ore., shocked Norma Gund with a stun gun as she entered the house. He slashing her throat, head and face with a hunting knife. The blade opened her carotid artery and cut her trachea in half, Jim Gund said.

When Jim Gund entered the house to check on his wife, Gouverneur attacked him, too. “I had never been in a fight in my life,” Jim Gund told The Bee in 2018. “He had a Taser, a knife, a black belt in karate and he outweighed me.”

After being shocked and stabbed, Jim Gund bit the assailant’s arm until he dropped the knife. Gouverneur fled in his teal blue Subaru. After leading sheriff’s deputies in neighboring Mendocino County on a 40-mile chase, he fatally crashed into an oak tree on Highway 101.

In his car, authorities found bags of marijuana and $11,000 in cash taken from Constantino’s home.

Norma Gund, blood gushing from her neck, managed to drive to Kettenpom’s only store as her husband fought with Gouverneur. Struggling to speak through her damaged throat, she had to scribble what happened on a notepad.

Medics eventually flew her to UC Davis Medical Center, where she underwent multiple surgeries to reconstruct her face and her neck. Jim Gund, who later made his way to the store as well, suffered less serious injuries.

Initially, the sheriff’s office disputed the Gunds’ version of what Whitman had said during the phone call. In statements to local media, the sheriff’s office said Whitman told Norma Gund to stay put and see if she could see anything from her home.

“At no time was Mrs. Gund instructed to go to Kristine’s residence,” the statement said. “Nor would the Trinity County Sheriff’s Office ever send a citizen to perform a deputy’s job.”

But the county’s story shifted in court. The county’s attorneys said the corporal asked Norma Gund to go to Constantino’s house to see if she was OK, but Whitman advised her not to go without her husband. The department also acknowledged the deputy had suggested the call might be related to the snowstorm and failed to tell them Constantino had repeatedly whispered for help.

Before the California Supreme Court

On Tuesday, the testimony the state Supreme Court justices heard over a remote video session focused on whether it mattered the Gunds didn’t know they were walking into a dangerous, active crime scene.

The couple’s attorney, Ben Mainzer, argued that Whitman misled them into thinking they were merely checking on a neighbor during a bad storm, and that was hardly the same as volunteering to do a deputy’s dangerous job.

“By misleading the Gunds so manifestly about the nature of their neighbor’s call, Whitman’s actions lulled the Gunds into a false sense of security and restrained the Gunds’ ability to defend themselves,” Mainzer said. “The Gunds were so disadvantaged by Whitman’s misrepresentations that they did not prepare for any possibility of violence.”

Trinity County’s attorney, John Whitefleet, argued that the Gunds should have known that going to a 911 call was inherently dangerous, regardless of what Whitman told them.

“The question for workers compensation is: Did the petitioners assume the risks and responsibilities of a peace officer at his request?” Whitefleet said. “The answer is yes.”

The justices gave no indication when they would issue a ruling.

Meanwhile, a separate federal civil rights suit the Gunds filed has been put on hold, pending the resolution of the state case.

This story was originally published June 3, 2020 at 6:24 AM.