Deputy shoots motorist

(Updated 4:56 p.m., Tuesday, November 20, 2007.)

A Riverside man was shot by San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department deputies Monday night.

At approximately 11 p.m. on Monday, November 19, deputies from the Hesperia station were called to the site of a single-vehicle traffic accident near the intersection of Highway 395 and Bolinas Street in Hesperia.

There, deputies found an unoccupied 2000 white Ford F-150 approximately 75 feet west of the highway. The witness who called in the report allegedly told deputies he had tried to assist the pick-up truck's driver, but the motorist reportedly told him to back off and that he had a gun.

Deputies located the motorist, Juventino Rodriguez, 50, approximately 75 to 100 feet away from his vehicle. When deputies attempted to contact him, Rodriguez ran a short distance away, then allegedly turned toward the deputies with both hands in front of him, similar to how one would point a handgun.

Rodriguez was shot once and fell to the ground. He continued to resist deputies and began yelling he had a gun and would not cooperate with them. He was Tasered and announced he did not actually have a handgun.

"There's no evidence that they found a weapon at all," Hesperia station Captain Lance Clark said Tuesday afternoon. Clark did a walk-through of the incident scene Tuesday night. "It's really hard to tell the motivation or the frame of reference [of the suspect] last night. All we do know is that he was acting pretty erratically."

Rodriguez was flown to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center and is listed in stable condition. He has been booked in absentia into the West Valley Detention Center and charged with P.C. 69: Resisting an Executive Officer by Use of Force or Violence. His bail has been set at $15,000.

"It looked like the guys approached the situation by the book and actually gave the guy a couple of chances to say 'hey, I give up' or 'olly olly oxen-free,' and he didn't do it," Clark said. "And not only that, but words to the effect of 'I'm going to shoot you.'

"I've been in law enforcement for 23 years, and people have done this and they haven't had a weapon and I've been in situations where they have had a weapon. ... This is one of the hard tests that our deputies are faced with, not on a daily basis, but if they've got any time in the field at all, they've probably run across this situation."

The name of the deputy involved in the shooting has not been released at this time.

"We train extensively for situations like this and typically what happens is the deputies, because they're trained so thoroughly, they tend to click into the standard tactics and practices they've been trained in over the years. And that's basically what happened here," Clark said.

"Everything that could have been done, protocol-wise and training-wise, was done."

Anyone with information regarding this incident is asked to call Detectives Frank Bell or Dave Burgess at (909) 387-3589. Callers wishing to remain anonymous may leave information with the We-Tip hotline at 1-800-78CRIME (27463) or the We-Tip Web site at WeTip.com.

Beau Yarbrough can be reached at 956-7108 or at beau@hesperiastar.com.