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Santa Rosa’s use of its $4 million Fountaingrove fire station has been delayed by questions about whether the new building is sufficiently accessible to people with disabilities. The 5,300-square-foot Newgate Court station was supposed to be ready for occupancy in April, but last minute inspections by city staff trained in the requirements of the Americans with Disability Act highlighted numerous potential violations. The discovery has perplexed many at City Hall, especially given that the city has spent about $6 million over the past 5 years improving the accessibility of existing buildings, parks and sidewalks under the watchful eye of the...

But the documents also reveal additional details, some of which may help explain why city officials were so concerned with Combs' plans to go on live radio Oct. 25 to discuss the case. Lopez, 13, was shot and killed Oct. 22 by a sheriff's deputy who mistook his plastic BB gun for an AK-47 assault rifle, which it was designed to closely resemble. In the emails, Combs questions whether the Santa Rosa Police Department ought to even be investigating the shooting. "Is anyone there thinking about the appearance of our dept investigating the sheriff's dept at the same time as...

On Oct. 22, Deputy Sheriff Erick Gelhaus, a marksman with 24 years in the (police) department, exited the car, took aim, shouted "drop the gun", (an AK-47 like, toy). As the boy turned (forensics document), seven penetrations in the center and right upper center & central lower quad. Three shots enter standing and falling, exiting the chest and face, Four enter prostrate with two exiting the top of the skull, one remaining in the lower abdomen and one exiting thru the left knee cap. Erick still feeling threatened hand cuffed riddled the 13-year-old, advised him of his 5th, then (cpr)...

Sonoma County law enforcement officials promised a crowded community forum on Thursday that they will eventually answer the many questions surrounding the shooting death of Andy Lopez, but declined to discuss details of the case. “I can assure you that once the decision is made, it will be a very public decision and my hope is that everybody understands the reason for my decision,” said District Attorney Jill Ravitch ... “But until that time, there may be information you're not made aware of, and that's the nature of an investigation, so that the integrity can be protected,” she said. Assistant...

If you are stopped by a police officer in Cotati, the event will likely be captured on a video camera worn on the officer's shirt. The city's 10 police officers now carry the pager-sized cameras, joining law enforcement agencies around the world that are rapidly adopting the devices to reduce complaints and record valuable information. Santa Rosa police officers are testing models, with about 15 cameras now on the street. The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office expects to start a pilot program next year with cameras on 11 patrol deputies and two jail officers. [. . .] Currently, deputies do not...

The family of 13-year-old Andy Lopez has filed a lawsuit in federal court over the fatal shooting of their son, claiming that Sonoma County Sheriff's deputy Erick Gelhaus has a history of reckless acts and "shot without provocation or cause.".... At a Monday press conference... attorney Arnoldo Casillas declared the Santa Rosa Police Department's investigation into the shooting would be "a whitewash" ..... According to Casillas, only three seconds elapsed between the moment one of the deputies called for the boy to drop the gun and the moment Gelhaus began firing. Casillas spoke to reporters about the autopsy, which bears...

The parents of the 13-year-old Santa Rosa boy shot dead by a Sonoma County sheriff's deputy filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Monday and laid out the findings of their own private investigation into the shooting, which they claim was unjustified. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by the parents of Andy Lopez, accuses Deputy Erick Gelhaus of acting recklessly when he shot Lopez seven times as the boy walked through a southwest Santa Rosa neighborhood with an airsoft BB gun that resembled an AK-47 assault rifle. The lawsuit also faults the Sheriff's Office, accusing it...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The parents of a 13-year-old California boy killed last month while carrying a plastic replica of an assault rifle filed a civil rights lawsuit on Monday against the sheriff's deputy who shot him ... Deputy Erick Gelhaus, 48, shot Andy Lopez Cruz as the eighth grader was walking near his home in the wine-country town of Santa Rosa carrying an imitation gun he planned to return to a friend, relatives and officials have said..... On Monday, attorney Arnoldo Casillas filed the federal lawsuit against Gelhaus and Sonoma County in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on...

The parents of a 13-year-old Santa Rosa boy killed by a sheriff's deputy who thought the airsoft rifle he was carrying was real, plan to file a federal lawsuit in San Francisco on Monday, claiming the deputy who shot their son violated the boy's Fourth Amendment rights as they pertain to limits on police authority..... The Fourth Amendment states that citizens have the right to be secure against unreasonalbe searches and seizures. In an interview with NBC Bay Area on Monday morning, he said he will also allege that Gelhaus has been involved in prior instances of "excessive force" and...

Deputy who shot and killed toy gun-carrying teen, 13, allegedly pulled gun Deputy who shot and killed toy gun-carrying teen, 13, allegedly pulled gun on a driver during traffic stop two months earlier A driver has come forward saying the deputy who shot dead a 13-year-old California boy after mistaking his fake AK-47 as real pulled a gun on him also, after he failed to signal a lane change during a carpool. Jeff Westbrook, 57, of Santa Rosa said he was mistreated by Deputy Erick Gelhaus after being pulled over Aug. 21 in Cotati, so much so that at one...

[...] [P]aramedic Aram Bronston, 43, of Santa Rosa said that his “heart sank” when a friend told him the deputy involved in the shooting was [Deputy Erick] Gelhaus.... [...] About eight years ago, Bronston was struggling on the shoulder of Highway 101 in south Santa Rosa with a woman who was distraught over her brother's death and became “verbally and physically abusive.” [...] Gelhaus drove up to the scene as the woman began running into traffic, pulling Bronston with her, he said. Gelhaus “grabbed me by my shirt — with cars literally two inches from hitting me — and pulled...

The FBI is not conducting a full, independent investigation into the death of a teenage boy who was shot by a sheriff's deputy last week, but instead offering local police “support,” several local law enforcement leaders said this week. The stance is an apparent reversal from the bureau's notice last week, when its agents told command staff at the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office and Santa Rosa Police Department that the agency would conduct its own investigation of the Oct. 22 shooting death of Andy Lopez, looking for potential violations of federal civil rights laws. [...] The FBI's role in the...

As a large wooden shrine sprung up Friday in the southwest Santa Rosa lot where a sheriff's deputy killed Andy Lopez last week, an attorney for the teen's family outlined the framework of a federal civil rights lawsuit the family intends to file next week. Arnoldo Casillas, the attorney representing the Lopez family, said the Oct. 22 shooting was unconstitutional because it violated the Fourth Amendment's limits on police authority. The family will file a lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco contending that Deputy Erick Gelhaus shot Lopez “without reasonable cause,” Casillas said in a statement. The...

Lawyers for the family of a 13-year-old Santa Rosa boy carrying a replica rifle and killed by a deputy when he said the teen wouldn’t put it down, have filed three claims against Sonoma County and plan to file a federal lawsuit in the wake of the boy’s death. In the claims, according to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the firm of Moreno, Becerra and Casillas, based in Montebello, Calif., allege that the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office failed to develop proper policies and training for pedestrian stops, and that it negligently hired and continued to employ the deputies involved in...

<p>SANTA ROSA - Santa Rosa police released more details today in response to persistent questions about the fatal shooting of 13-year-old Andy Lopez by a Sonoma County sheriff's deputy in southwest Santa Rosa last week....</p> <p>Henry said Gelhaus said he knows he yelled at least once to Lopez to drop the rifle, but Gelhaus said he is unsure whether he identified himself as a sheriff's deputy.</p>

The FBI is launching its own investigation into the shooting this week of Andy Lopez, the 13-year-old Santa Rosa boy killed by a Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy who mistook the BB gun Lopez was holding for an assault rifle. FBI officials notified command staff for Sheriff Steve Freitas and Santa Rosa Police Chief Tom Schwedhelm of the move Friday. The federal inquiry is separate from the investigation led by Santa Rosa police into the deputy-involved shooting. A spokesman in the FBI’s San Francisco office called the agency’s inquiry a “shooting review,” looking into the “incident itself (and) the deputies’ response.”...

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (KGO) -- We're learning more in the ongoing investigation of a Sonoma County sheriff's deputy who shot and killed a 13-year old who was carrying a replica assault rifle. The collection of candles and balloons honoring Andy Lopez continues to grow and people continue to show up to pay their respects. Maria Marquez and Juana Rojas have attended the memorial every day since the shooting because they want to tell the boy's parents what they saw when he was killed. ... She says they were right behind the patrol car at a stop sign. Rojas saw the...

Cops took no more than 10 seconds to fire six or seven shots into the body of dying teenager Andy Lopez after seeing him with a toy pellet gun. Mr Lopez was spotted by deputies on Tuesday afternoon in Santa Rosa, California, carrying the toy rifle, which they mistakenly thought was a real assault weapon. The time that elapsed between when officers reported the sighting to dispatch and then reported shots fired was only 10 seconds. Hundreds of local residents marched on Wednesday night to remember the popular teen and protest at the senseless shooting. They chanted 'We need justice'...

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP) — Sheriff's officials say the Northern California deputy who fatally shot a 13-year-old boy is a firearms instructor who has trained his law enforcement colleagues in the proper use of force for nearly two decades. Sonoma County spokesman Assistant Sheriff Lorenzo Duenas said 48-year-old Erick Gelhaus has been an instructor and rangemaster for the county for 19 years. He also teaches pistol, carbine, shotgun and rifle lessons for Gunsite, a private company in Arizona, according to the company's Web site. Gelhaus, a 24-year sheriff's office veteran, is a frequent contributor to S.W.A.T. magazine, a monthly firearms...

Madeleine Melo of Fort Bragg, widow of the North Coast's most prominent recent victim of gun violence, spoke out Thursday night in defense of gun ownership at a public forum convened by Rep. Mike Thompson. "I strongly support our right to own and use guns," Melo told Thompson and six other public officials before an overflow crowd in the Sonoma County supervisors chambers in Santa Rosa. In her next sentence, Melo, whose husband Jere Melo was murdered in the Mendocino County woods in 2011, said the "unchecked acts of violent criminals take away the rights of others to live a...