Deputy Says He Tried to Help Dowey

Sheriff’s deputies outside a rowdy Meiners Oaks party encountered a badly injured but combative Nick Dowey, who fought with authorities as they struggled to get him help, Deputy Darin Yanover testified in federal court Monday.

Yanover is one of eight deputies named as defendants in a civil lawsuit filed by Dowey’s parents regarding their son’s death. The Doweys claim Yanover and another deputy used excessive force during a struggle with their son, and that at least one officer struck him over the head with a flashlight.

Six other deputies, they claim, did nothing to help the young man get badly needed medical attention.

Dowey died one day after the Sept. 12, 1997, party from extensive head trauma.

Attorneys for the deputies argue the man’s fatal wounds came from a fight earlier in the evening, when he was struck in the head with a baseball bat.

Yanover, called to testify by the Doweys’ attorney, Richard Hamlish, said the 21-year-old Ventura college student appeared “out of control,” thrashing back and forth as a friend tried to restrain him. Blood covered his head and clothing.

“He wasn’t saying anything, he was just grunting,” Yanover recalled. “He didn’t appear to understand anything anyone was telling him. I just told him to calm down, help was on the way.”

Dowey tried to run from deputies, but they followed and grabbed his arms. Yanover said Dowey, a former high school wrestler, was strong enough to drag the deputies clutching his body several feet into a nearby street.

Hamlish repeatedly asked Yanover why they attempted to restrain Dowey, who was obviously hurt and disoriented.

“Mr. Dowey appeared out of control and unable to care for his own safety,” Yanover said. “He needed medical attention.”

As Yanover and Deputy Donald Rodarte tried to restrain Dowey, they began wrestling in the street.

“Was there any reason you couldn’t control Mr. Dowey?” Hamlish continued.

“He just overpowered us,” said Yanover, who, during the struggle, was accidentally sprayed in the face with pepper spray by Rodarte.

Capt. James Barrett, who heads the Ojai sheriff’s station, is also a defendant in the suit. He testified Monday that during the struggle he was trying to control an agitated crowd of partygoers. Many of them shouted out to deputies, “Let him up, get off of him,” Barrett said.

Hamlish questioned why Barrett, who saw Dowey’s wounds, failed to stop the struggle or to help the bleeding man.

“We were in the middle of a very angry mob that I felt at any moment could injure Mr. Dowey or one of the officers,” he said.

At one point that night, Barrett said, he feared for his life.

Barrett testified he found a flashlight on the ground and picked it up. He learned later it was Yanover’s flashlight. In a department report on the incident written several days later, Barrett said the flashlight “was dry and did not have any blood on it.”

Several partygoers testified since Thursday that they saw a deputy strike Dowey in the head at least once with a flashlight.

Dale Stone, a sheriff’s service technician in charge of collecting crime-scene evidence, said Rodarte asked him later that evening whether he had found his pepper spray can.

Stone said Rodarte told him he thought the can may have broken in two after he hit Dowey with it.

“ ‘But I never hit him with a flashlight,’ ” Stone said Rodarte told him.

Rodarte was fired from the Sheriff’s Department in September for lying about striking Dowey with the pepper spray can. Jurors, however, cannot be told of his dismissal, Judge Mariana Pfaelzer ruled before the trial began.

Stone also testified Monday that he asked Capt. Dennis Carpenter of the department’s major crimes unit if the officers’ flashlights should be collected as evidence.

Carpenter said no, “so that they would not feel like suspects and they could do their reports,” Stone said.

Testimony is scheduled to resume today in federal court in Los Angeles.