Archive for the “Sheriff in the News” Category

Mark Fitzpatrick, a sergeant with the LA County Sheriff, has pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting a woman and inappropriately searching two others while on duty last year, prosecutors said.

Fitzpatrick, 39, allegedly assaulted the women during traffic stops in Compton and threatened one with arrest or deportation during one incident.

The sergeant will face five felony charges, including sexual battery by restraint, penetration under threat to arrest or deport and three counts of false imprisonment by fraud and deceit, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Natalie Adomian.

Mark Fitzpatrick has posted $245,000 bail.

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Zoltan Tombol, a 42 year old Sheriff’s Deputy had gone to the Cleveland National Forrest over the weekend. His wife had reported him missing on Sunday evening.

No cause of death has been given, and the Sheriff’s Department is not looking for anyone in the case.

Tombol was known to hike and jog quite regularly.

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Sheriff’s deputy injured in crash in San Gabriel
By Brian Day, Staff Writer
Posted: 10/16/2009 10:16:10 PM PDT

SAN GABRIEL – A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy was injured Friday when his patrol car collided with a civilian minivan, authorities said.

The crash occurred about 8 p.m. on San Gabriel Boulevard at Chestnut Avenue, San Gabriel police Lt. Chris Ortell said.

The deputy, who was from the sheriff’s Temple station, was expected to be OK, officials said.

The minivan caught fire after the collision, however the driver escaped uninjured and was being detained by officials as they investigated the crash late Friday, Ortell said.

No further details were available.

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Neighbors thought dead man was Halloween display
The Associated Press
Posted: 10/16/2009 09:01:19 PM PDT
Updated: 10/16/2009 09:01:20 PM PDT

LOS ANGELES—Residents of a Marina del Rey apartment complex say they saw a lifeless body slumped on a neighbor’s patio, but didn’t call police because they thought it was part of a Halloween display.
Mostafa Mahmoud Zayed had apparently been dead since Monday.

Cameraman Austin Raishbrook, owner of RMG News, told the Los Angeles Times he was at the scene Thursday when authorities arrived. The 75-year-old man was slumped over a chair on the third-floor balcony of his apartment with a single gunshot wound to the eye.

A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigator says the case is an “apparent suicide.”

Raishbrook says neighbors told him they noticed the body Monday “but didn’t bother calling authorities because it looked like a Halloween dummy.”

Information from: Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com

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From the LA Daily News

Deputy Sheriff Sentenced for DUI
By Steven Mikulan in crime
Wed., Sep. 30 2009 @ 4:15PM

Our sister publication the O.C. Weekly has a wrap-up today on the tale of L.A. County deputy sheriff Robert Andrew Moran. Make that convicted deputy sheriff Moran, as a judge sentenced him to six months in jail for causing an injury accident while driving under the influence last year. What made this case a cut above the usual DUI-cop story was that the vehicle Moran was driving at the time was a marked, LASD SUV, and that Orange County deputies allegedly tried to cover up the crash, which took place in the O.C. town of Stanton.

“An eyewitness at the scene,” writes the O.C. Weekly’s Matt Coker, “previously told the Weekly’s R. Scott Moxley that some unnamed Orange County sheriff’s deputies arrived at the scene and tried to help their LA County colleague by quickly giving him water before any field sobriety tests could be given by other officers working the accident. The local deputies also tried to prevent for as long as they could the blood test that would ulimately seal Moran’s fate, Moxley was told.”

The O.C. Weekly piece concludes by noting that a lawyer for Moran, who is currently on unpaid leave, says the deputy will seek reinstatement. According to the O.C. Register and other sources, Moran has served nearly all of the six-month sentence under home confinement since pleading no contest last February. Earlier this year the L.A. Times carried a piece about the L.A. County Office of Independent Review’s claim that alcoholism is a growing problem within the department, and that alcohol-related arrests of LASD employees have nearly tripled since 2004.

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