Sacramento police Officer Tara O’Sullivan’s alleged killer faces preliminary hearing

The footage from Sacramento police Officer Daniel Chipp’s body camera shows the last moments before the partner he was training, Officer Tara O’Sullivan, was gunned down on June 19, 2019.

Chipp and O’Sullivan were in a backyard on Redwood Avenue helping a woman move her belongings out of a home she shared with Adel Sambrano Ramos, a troubled man with a history of violence against women.

“Hey, Adel, police department,” Chipp called out as he approached the door of a garage behind the home with his pistol in his right hand. “You’re not under arrest. You’re not in trouble.”

Within moments, shots from a high-powered rifle began to blast from inside the garage, 26-year-old O’Sullivan was mortally wounded and an eight-hour standoff began until Ramos surrendered to police around 2 a.m.

On Wednesday, nearly two years after O’Sullivan was killed, Ramos will appear in Sacramento Superior Court before Judge Stacy Boulware Eurie for a preliminary hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence for him to face trial.

The hearing, which is expected to last through the day, is the precursor to a trial where Sacramento County Deputy District Attorney Jeff Hightower plans to seek the death penalty against Ramos, a carpenter and father of two who is originally from the Philippines.

Ramos faces 13 felony counts charging him with the murder of O’Sullivan and attempted murders of Chipp, fellow Sacramento police Officers David Jarrell, Anthony Boler, Tyler Curtis and Jeff Morris and Sacramento County Sheriff’s Deputies Paul Flick and Steven Murphy.

He also is charged with special circumstances of killing an officer who was engaged in her duties and lying in wait.

With COVID-19 still a concern in crowded spaces, the Ramos hearing is scheduled to take place in Department 1, the largest courtroom available in the downtown courthouse, where police officials and the O’Sullivan family are expected to attend.

The same courtroom was used to convict NorCal Rapist Roy Charles Waller last November, during the height of the pandemic, and earlier was the scene of the death penalty conviction of Luis Bracamontes, who gunned down two Sacramento-area deputies — Sacramento Deputy Danny Oliver and Placer Deputy Michael Davis Jr. — in an October 2014 rampage.

It also was used last August for victims of Golden State Killer/East Area Rapist Joseph James DeAngelo to confront him and speak publicly about the pain he caused his victims.

The Ramos hearing Wednesday is the latest step in what is expected to be a lengthy process before a jury decides his fate, and police have said there is ample evidence that Ramos ambushed the officers who responded to the Noralto neighborhood nearly two years ago.

Officers initially were called to the home to help a woman move her belongings out, and had been at the scene for about 30 minutes when Chipp and O’Sullivan approached the detached garage at the rear of the house.

Police have said Ramos already had barricaded the front door of the home, and that after he opened fire he continued shooting at officers and watched their movements through a video surveillance system he had set up.

He surrendered at about 2 a.m. after hours of negotiation with police on his cellphone.

Police say he fired at least 30 rounds from four high-powered rifles later taken from the home.

Court records describe the weapons as AR-15 style weapons — none of them with serial numbers — and say three had been converted into machine guns.