Slain farmworker was stopped by anti-gang unit, Woodland police say

By Sam Stanton and Jennifer Garza

As community concerns mount over the fatal shooting of a Woodland farmworker by deputies, law-enforcement officials said Thursday that the man had been stopped as a routine check by gang-suppression officers.

The April 30 encounter turned deadly only after 26-year-old Luis Gutierrez ran from the three plainclothes deputies, then suddenly turned and lunged toward one with a knife, said Yolo County Sheriff Ed Prieto.

"It's a horrible chain of events," Prieto said in an interview in his Woodland office Thursday. "I feel horrible for the family, I really do."

Gutierrez's death has jolted this growing community 20 miles northwest of Sacramento. Local government leaders met this week with the Woodland chief of police – whose agency is investigating the shooting – to discuss residents' concerns.

One parish priest said church members are asking him whether it is safe for their sons to walk the streets, and a coalition of migrant workers' groups has distributed e-mails written in Spanish that declare: "Sheriffs kill another Mexican Farmworker."

Other community activists said they want to know why the farmworker was stopped in the first place by the deputies, who are part of a multiagency gang task force headed by the sheriff.

"What was he doing that attracted their attention?" asked Sylvina Frausto, coordinator of Community Alliance for Education, a Woodland community group. "Everyone knows we have a gang problem … but why was he stopped?"

Vice Mayor Art Pimentel said he has received many phone calls, and residents are stopping him on the street to talk about the case.

"People are overwhelmingly concerned about the incident and want answers to many questions," Pimentel said. "I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and wait until the investigation is complete."

The Rev. Uriel Ojeda, the priest at Holy Rosary Parish in Woodland, has been ministering to the Gutierrez family, who have been praying the rosary nightly for their son in their mobile home.

Ojeda has been helping the family fend off lawyers who he said have been calling, visiting and dropping off contracts in hopes of landing them as clients.

And he is urging his parishioners to remain calm.

"We cannot afford as a community to mistrust law enforcement," the priest said. "At the same time, we need law enforcement to assure us of their commitment to justice."

The sheriff, who is also the county coroner, said an autopsy report next week will show Gutierrez had a high level of methamphetamine in his system. The presence of the drug could have induced "paranoid" or "overly aggressive" behavior, Prieto said, that led him to run from the officers.

Until now, there has been no official word on why the three deputies confronted Gutierrez on a busy Woodland street around 2 p.m. as he was walking home from taking his written driver's license test.

Woodland Police Lt. Charlie Wilts said Thursday that the evidence so far shows "the contact between (Gutierrez) and deputies would fall under what's called a 'consensual encounter.'

"That means basically that they were not contacting him in a capacity where he had committed any criminal violations, anything along those lines," Wilts said. "It was more as if I would walk up to you and engage in a conversation. That was the initial purpose of the contact."

The sheriff said the gang unit routinely stops individuals believed to be involved with gangs.

"They'll stop and talk to somebody that they feel has gang affiliation," he said. "Their main job is to identify gang members … and ask what their role is."

Deputies had stopped Gutierrez before for possible gang affiliations, the sheriff said, although his only previous arrest had been for driving on a suspended license.

The gang unit includes sheriff's deputies, Woodland police and other area officers, and is aimed at combating what officials say is a growing gang problem in the county.

"Where are they when these gangs are meeting in the parks in the middle of the night?" Frausto asked.

Gutierrez's family maintains he had no gang involvement and say they do not believe he used any drugs. Officials acknowledge no drugs were found on Gutierrez or in a search of his home.

The family also has questioned why Woodland police executed the search warrant of the mobile home they shared with their son five days after he was shot to death.

A Sacramento attorney who has challenged an anti-gang injunction in West Sacramento and won other cases involving police agencies questioned the need for such a search.

"What's typical is the assumption that the officers are telling the truth, and what they're apparently looking for is a way to corroborate the story in the first place," attorney Mark Merin said. "It's to identify the subject as a gangbanger or to get something negative on him."

In their search, Woodland police confiscated a black and a blue bandanna and nine compact discs they described as "CDs with gang affiliation." Ojeda, the family's priest – who was present during the search – said some of the CDs taken were mainstream music. Family members said they all share the bandannas to wear to work in the field.

"They're dark because you can't see the dirt as much," said Gutierrez's younger brother, Juan, 18.

Woodland police said Thursday that the search was part of their efforts to conduct a thorough investigation.

"In any … investigation, there are always questions asked: 'Why? What was going on? Who was this person?' " Wilts said. "That's part of what the investigation was intended to do, was to leave pretty much no questions unanswered."

Prieto, who emphasized that he has not interviewed his deputies about the events of that day, said his department is certain that Gutierrez had some gang affiliations.

Court documents indicate police searched his home for ties to the Sureños, a Latino street gang loosely affiliated with the Mexican Mafia prison gang. Prieto, in his role as coroner, viewed Gutierrez's body and said he noticed tattoos on his chest and his fingers, which could indicate gang ties.

The sheriff said he did not know why no drug-related evidence was recovered after the shooting, but speculated that Gutierrez could have used up his supply.

Gutierrez had just passed his driver's license test at the local Department of Motor Vehicles office and was walking down East Gum Avenue about 2:20 p.m. when the three deputies stopped him.

All three are law-enforcement veterans. Sgt. Dale Johnson, 42, joined the 100-officer department in April 1992; Deputy Herman Oviedo, 33, joined in June 1998; and Deputy Hector Bautista, 35, joined in November 2003 after serving as a correctional officer.

The three were in plainclothes that day and were driving an unmarked black Dodge Magnum with chrome wheels, Prieto said. Typically, the gang unit operates with two deputies per vehicle but Prieto speculated the three might have gone to lunch together.

When they stopped Gutierrez, Prieto said he believed they showed him the badges on their belts, next to their gun holsters.

"It's my understanding that he was stopped, and they identified themselves," he said. "He hesitated, then turned around and bolted. … This is not normal behavior for Joe Citizen."

Prieto said the officers gave chase, and that Bautista first caught up to Gutierrez where East Gum Avenue passes over Highway 113, within sight of the family mobile home.

Gutierrez had a folding Buck knife with a 4-inch blade and spun around with it to slash at the deputy, Prieto said. Bautista, who was not wearing a protective vest, ducked out of the way, and the other two deputies fired a total of four shots.

One slug hit Gutierrez in the neck and lower head and killed him, police said.

The deputies were not carrying Tasers, Prieto said, adding that officers are trained to use their weapons to stop a threat. Community members who have asked why officers didn't simply wound Gutierrez do not understand the split-second decisions such incidents require, Prieto said.

"Policemen don't shoot to kill," he said. "We're taught to shoot at the chest to stop them.

"We're not sharpshooters. We're not John Wayne, we can't just shoot the knife out of his hand."