Woman Angry Over Mistaken Drug Bust ID : Crime: A plainclothes agent failed to identify himself or apologize for error.

With her 17-month-old daughter cradled in her trembling arms, Beth Prater huddled in a bathroom stall of a Sorrento Valley McDonald’s restaurant with a friend last Friday, seeking to escape from a “crazed-looking” man with a gun who had run into the restaurant moments before.

Just as she shut the door of the stall, the gunman kicked it back and pointed his handgun at the trio, warning them to “shut up and get down.”

Her baby daughter, Lauren, screaming, her 35-year-old girlfriend in tears, Prater--three months pregnant--pleaded with the long-haired, bearded, bespectacled man not to shoot. But her mind had reached another conclusion: “We figured we were going to die right there.”

A minute or two later, a San Diego police sergeant opened the door. “Is that her?” the gunman asked. The sergeant said no. Both men rushed out of the bathroom, leaving the women distraught and puzzled.

Prater, a Tierrasanta housewife, soon learned that the gunman was Narcotics Task Force Agent Gary A. Malone, a sheriff’s detective, and that Prater had been misidentified as a drug suspect from a nearby narcotics bust because she wore the same color clothing.

Authorities acknowledged Tuesday that Malone should have been wearing a jacket or vest identifying himself as a member of the San Diego County Integrated Narcotics Task Force, as other agents were.

“I was told by (the Sheriff’s Department) flat out: ‘We screwed up,’ and that’s what they did,” Assistant San Diego Police Chief Cal Krosch said Tuesday. The Police Department is part of the Narcotics Task Force.

Reached at her home Tuesday night, Prater said she has several things to be angry about. Malone never identified himself as a law enforcement officer. He said nothing to Prater and her friend Debbie Barber other than to be quiet and keep on the floor.

After the ordeal, nobody from the task force offered Prater any assistance, even a ride home. When she wanted to file a complaint, the Sheriff’s Department refused to take it, saying that the task force would have to do so. A member of the task force said he didn’t have the proper forms.

“They acted like we were a nuisance,” she said. “I’m extremely angry.”

Sheriff Jim Roache, who was “really very nice,” called to apologize, she said.

Sheriff’s Lt. Pat Kerins, explaining that Malone chased Prater because she was wearing red clothing and because she appeared to be running away from him, “sort of apologized,” Prater said.

Members of the task force, composed of Drug Enforcement Administration agents, police detectives, sheriff’s deputies and officers from other local agencies, were in the midst of an undercover drug buy and arrest at noon Friday and had rounded up four of five suspects.

The drug buy recovered two kilos of cocaine valued at more than $100,000. One of the suspects had more than $1,000 in cash on him, all in $100 bills.

Task force members realized that a female suspect was missing from the group and they told Malone that she may have fled to a nearby McDonald’s restaurant on Mira Mesa Boulevard near Interstate 805.

Meanwhile, Prater, sitting with her daughter and girlfriend in the restaurant’s playground area, heard other customers mention that officers in yellow vests were holding people at gunpoint in the parking lot.

She ran into the restaurant when Malone burst through the restaurant doors, ordering everyone to get down. Prater said she thought that a gunman had escaped from police and was looking to fire at people, “just like McDonald’s in San Ysidro,” where James Huberty shot and killed 21 people in 1984.

“Everyone’s food went flying and people dove under tables,” Prater said. “Somehow I thought if I could just get into the bathroom, I’d be safe. I don’t know why. I guess it was kind of stupid.”

Later, Kerins told Prater that Malone surmised that, in running to the bathroom, she may have been a drug suspect attempting to flush drugs down the toilet.

While she was hiding in a bathroom stall with her friend and her daughter, Malone kicked the door in, pointed his gun and began screaming. He had long salt-and-pepper hair, a beard, glasses, blue jeans and a button-down patterned shirt that resembled an out-of-date, possibly 1970s, fashion, Prater said.

“A lunatic” is how Prater described him to police.

“He made us crawl from the stall to the sink,” she said. “We were pleading. We kept saying, ‘Don’t you see we have a baby?’ but all he could say is to shut up and stay down. My daughter was screaming. Debbie was hysterical, saying ‘Please, please.’ He could have said ‘I’m a sheriff’ or ‘I’m not going to shoot you.’ ”

With Malone still aiming his gun, Police Sgt. Bill Pfahler opened the door. Prater became more frightened, believing there would be gunshots between the officer and the gunman they thought was a criminal.

Prater heard Malone ask if Prater was the suspect. Pfahler said no. But Barber heard Pfahler say, “Deputy, you look like a suspect.”

Either way, both officers left the scene. Still shaking, Prater and her group walked back into a nearly empty restaurant. A large noontime lunch crowd had cleared out.

Pfahler explained the situation but offered no help, Prater said. Sometime during the incident, the drug suspect, wearing red clothing, had been arrested close by, Kerins said.

Malone’s failure to wear a jacket or vest “is a very serious problem,” said San Diego Police Lt. Anthony DiCerchio of the Narcotics Task Force. “He should have known better. There was a chance of an off-duty officer being in that McDonald’s and if that was the case, something ugly could have happened. That’s the reason we make ourselves so damn visible.”

The entire incident is under investigation, Kerins said.

“I feel compassion for Mrs. Prater (and her group) in that they had to go through such an experience,” he said. “Needless to say, if this was my family, I would be pretty upset. We’re going to evaluate to see whether this was in accordance with policies or procedures.”

Undercover drug buys, however, involve officers handling large amounts of money “and when our people move in, we mean business,” Kerins said. “Normally we move in at gunpoint and are prepared for battle. The Narcotics Task Force has been in business for 17 years and our record is impeccable.”

On Tuesday, a sergeant investigating the matter spoke to Prater and said her information would be passed along as part of a formal complaint.