Husband faces trial in 1998 slaying of prison guard

A van is at the scene of the fatal shooting of Elizabeth Wheat Begaren on Jan. 17. 1998. Her husband, Nuzzio Begaren was arrested in connection with the killing. His trial begins next week. FILE PHOTO: ROSE PALMISANO, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

“No, Tony, no!”

Those were the last words of California prison guard Elizabeth Wheat Begaren, according to grand jury testimony.

Then she tried to run up a darkened freeway on-ramp along a brick sound wall in Anaheim. Two bullets slammed into her body – one in the head and one in the chest – before she made it five feet.

Corrections Officer Begaren crumpled to the ground on the East Street on-ramp of the 91 freeway as three Los Angeles County gang members scrambled into a Buick Regal and sped off, according to the grand jury transcripts.

That was January 1998.

The investigation of the freeway slaying stalled and became one of Orange County’s most scrutinized cold cases – in part because the victim was law enforcement and in part because detectives felt from the beginning that the case was solvable.

The primary suspect from the beginning was Begaren’s husband, Nuzzio, who said he was crouching behind the Buick with his 10-year-old daughter when the fatal shots were fired.

He told detectives that it was a road robbery that became deadly when the gang members found his wife’s Department of Corrections badge. Nuzzio said they followed his SUV from a Burbank mall when they saw him put a large roll of cash into his wife’s purse.

Next week – more than 15 years after the late-night shooting – Nuzzio Begaren goes on trial in Orange County Superior Court on special-circumstances murder charges that could lead to a life term in prison without the possibility of parole.

Nuzzio Begaren’s middle name is Anthony, but most everyone calls him Tony.

Deputy District Attorney Larry Yellin contends that Nuzzio Begaren orchestrated the murder of his newlywed bride to collect $1 million in life insurance from a policy he took out shortly after they married five months earlier.

Two of the three gang members who were in the Buick Regal have turned on Begaren, Yellin said, and will be prosecution witnesses who will testify that he hired them as hit men, led them to the darkened freeway on-ramp and got out of the way so his wife could be killed.

One of those witnesses, Jose Sandoval, will testify that Begaren was the driver of the Buick Regal who, by pre-arrangement, followed the Begaren family SUV for miles until Nuzzio Begaren pulled over on the East Street on-ramp next to the sound wall, grabbed his 10-year-old daughter by the hand and walked behind the car, Yellin said.

Sandoval testified before the Orange County grand jury that he saw Elizabeth Begaren, looking scared, get out of the SUV and attempt to run up the freeway before fellow gang member Guillermo Espinoza, 36, shot her twice.

Espinoza, who is also charged with Elizabeth Begaren’s murder in the 2011 indictment returned by the Orange County grand jury, is at large and authorities have asked for the public’s help in finding him. There is a $60,000 reward for information leading to his arrest, authorities said.

Sandoval, 36, is also charged with murder in the case, but he testified before the grand jury that he expects to get a deal from prosecutors in exchange for his testimony against Nuzzio Begaren.

A third gang member, a convict named Rudy Duran, testified before the grand jury that Nuzzio Begaren contacted him about wanting his wife killed, insisting that it look like a gang robbery. Duran testified he then recruited two other gang members to carry out the murder-for-hire plot.

Sal Ciulla, Begaren’s attorney, said the prosecution’s case against Nuzzio Begaren is built on questionable stories provided by Sandoval and Duran, the gang members who participated in the killing but who have been promised plea deals in exchange for testimony against his client.

“They will say anything and do anything to get a free pass,” Ciulla said.

Duran, who is said to have set up the murder, “knew what the police wanted and he knew what he needed to say to get his deal, and he gave it to them,” Ciulla added. “I don’t think my client had anything to do with his wife’s death.”

But Yellin said no one is getting a free pass in exchange for testimony, and that both Sandoval and Duran will be prosecuted after consideration is given to their cooperation.

Yellin added that solid circumstantial evidence will link some of the gang members to Nuzzio Begaren before the murder and show that the shooting was not a chance encounter.

Witnesses also will testify that Elizabeth Begaren helped solve her own murder when she jotted down the license plate of the Buick Regal as it followed her family’s SUV from Los Angeles County to Anaheim, Yellin said. Anaheim police officers found her note, ripped into six pieces, near the SUV.

They also found Elizabeth Begaren’s Department of Corrections badge discarded on the ground next to her body.

Nuzzio Begaren’s trial before Judge Richard Toohey is expected to last about two weeks.

Source: www.ocregister.com

By  LARRY WELBORN  / ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Irvine man gets 10 years in gold scheme

SANTA ANA – An Irvine man with a history of fraud convictions pleaded guilty Monday to 13 felony counts of burglary, money laundering and grand theft for stealing more than $288,000 from a woman in a fake gold-investment scheme.

William Scott Spalding, 47, who also admitted penalty enhancements for excessive taking and aggravated white-collar crime, was ordered to repay the victim and pay a fine of $576,000, Deputy District Attorney Marc Labreche said.

Labreche said Spalding claimed be a successful investor when he met the 51-year-old woman through an acquaintance and persuaded her with the promise of high returns to invest with him by purchasing gold, prosecutors said.

But Spalding never bought the gold as promised or gave the woman her money back, prosecutors said.

Spalding, who has three prison priors, instead placed the money in a personal bank account and spent it on items like a high-end Mercedes-Benz and payments on a house, Labreche said.

“He has a long history of financial crime,” Labreche said Monday. “People should be wary of him if he gets out of prison.”

Source: www.ocregister.com

By LARRY WELBORN/ THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Death penalty: Is the ultimate price the ultimate justice?

ANAHEIM HILLS – Don’t tell Steve Herr a death sentence takes too long to carry out, costs too much or does not offer some closure.

His son, Samuel Herr, 26, an Afghanistan war veteran, was shot, his body parts discarded in a theater and a park.

Orange County prosecutors have charged Daniel Patrick Wozniak, 28, with the 2010 murders of Samuel Herr and his friend Juri “Julie” Kibuishi, 23.

Wozniak is one of 10 defendants in Orange County who, if convicted, could wind up on San Quentin’s death row, joining more than 700, 50 or so from Orange County. In those 10 cases, prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

If voters on Nov. 6 approve Prop. 34 and repeal the death penalty, the maximum punishment prosecutors could seek in all murder cases would be life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Death-penalty opponents call the system dysfunctional. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office says abolishing the death penalty would save the state and counties $100 million-plus a year, because of the appeal process and other costs. Proponents dispute the figure.

“It should absolutely be abolished,” said Kate Corrigan, president of the Orange County Criminal Defense Bar Association. “If we even risk having one person executed who shouldn’t be, that’s one too many.”

If the ballot initiative succeeds, it would impact pending cases and current death row residents. The Orange County District Attorney’s Office is proceeding with trials as usual – with prosecutors awaiting the election result.

Many victims’ relatives are waiting for it, too.

“The death penalty was made specifically for a case like this,” said Steve Herr, a retired educator from Anaheim Hills. “It’s on the books for people like Dan Wozniak.”

‘CONDUCT SO WICKED’

Passage of the measure would wipe out a sense of closure and justice for families of victims who thought their cases were settled, said Deputy District Attorney Dan Wagner, the head of the district attorney’s homicide prosecution unit. The death penalty has a cathartic effect, he added.

“Where the facts are so heinous and the conduct so wicked, they cry out for the ultimate penalty,” Wagner said. “When a death verdict is announced in a case that deserves it, there’s a sense of, ‘Oh, good, the system isn’t completely broken.’

“To take away the ability of the justice system to do that, I think, delivers a very serious blow to law enforcement and the community’s ability to keep a sense of justice,” Wagner said.

A death verdict triggers an automatic appeal to the California Supreme Court. Conviction to execution can take nearly three decades.

Some, like Thomas Francis Edwards – who in 1981 shot and killed 12-year-old Vanessa Iberri and wounded her friend Kelly Carter as they walked along a trail in the Cleveland National Forest – die on death row while waiting to be executed.

“He should have been gone a long time ago,” said Vanessa’s father, Joe Iberri, of Oceanside.

Convicted in 1986, Edwards died of natural causes at age 65 in 2009.

“The problem is that there’s too many appeals,” said Iberri, who sat through them in his daughter’s case. “It’s ridiculous, and it’s humiliating.”

NO SWIFT JUSTICE

Ed Welbourn, a Newport Beach attorney practicing criminal defense for the past nine years, has defended two death-penalty cases, both in Riverside County. One defendant is on death row; for the other, Welbourn starts a penalty-phase retrial this month.

“The average person walks into the courtroom with an eye-for-an-eye mentality,” he said. “Once you start discussing with them the death penalty … once they get educated a bit about what it means, many people feel like it is something they don’t want to be involved in.”

Jurors understand the gravity of their decisions and realize they have to live with it for the rest of their lives. Innocent people do get convicted, Welbourn said.

And, for families of victims, a death sentence hardly ends the pain, the lawyer said.

“I feel for the loss they have,” Welbourn said. “I think as time goes on, there’s never really closure, because you don’t know when that issue is going to come up, and then you have to live it again and again. It just prolongs the suffering of both sides. I don’t know if it ever really ends. It’s not swift justice.”

Source: www.ocregister.com

By VIK JOLLY / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Gang member sought in robbery at transgender brothel

SANTA ANA – A $1 million warrant was issued Monday for the arrest of a gang member who failed to appear for his jury trial on charges that he participated in a home-invasion robbery of a transgender brothel after first trying to tax the prostitutes.

Cesar Valle, 22, faced a life term in prison if convicted of robbery, burglary and other charges. But with potential jurors waiting outside Superior Court Judge W. Michael Hayes’ courtroom Monday morning, Valle – free on $100,000 bail – was a no show.

Hayes issued the arrest warrant when Valle could not be located by 3 p.m.

Valle and co-defendant Christian F. Cabrera, 22, were arrested in April 2010 after Santa Ana police were dispatched to an apartment on North Ross Street on a call of a home-invasion robbery in progress. By the time police arrived, the robbers were gone.

But police did find seven men dressed as women in the small apartment with several mattresses on the floor, according to Deputy District Attorney Erik Petersen. One victim had a deep laceration on his head, and all appeared to be frightened and some were crying, according to court records.

One of the men admitted that the apartment was a front for a transgender brothel and said three gang members came by earlier in the evening and demanded a “tax” of $60 per prostitute, Petersen said. One of the gang members threatened, “If you don’t pay … we will come back and kill you,” according to a transcript of a prior hearing.

A victim reported that Valle and others returned around midnight on April 17, assaulted one of the prostitutes, demanded money, stole a laptop and a cell phone from a table and fled in a white sedan before police arrived, according to the transcript.

Valle and Cabrera were arrested three days later when they cruised by the apartment in a white sedan while police detectives were conducting a follow-up interview, Petersen said. A witness blurted “that’s the vehicle” and the two men were arrested, according to the transcript.

Cabrera pleaded guilty in 2010 to street-gang activity and second-degree robbery and is serving a five-year prison term.

Source: www.ocregister.com

By LARRY WELBORN / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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D.A.: Gang member killed man helping friend

COURTESY OF THE ORANGE COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE

SANTA ANA – A gang member shot and killed a man who had retrieved a baseball bat from his car to help a friend being robbed, a prosecutor told a jury here Tuesday.

Jose Felix Nieto-Bautista, 22, of Santa Ana, who had no gang ties, was shot once in the shoulder and once in the neck in the early morning hours of May 23, 2010 when he got out of his pickup, Deputy District Attorney Erik Petersen said.

Jimmy Tlamasico, 20, of Santa Ana, faces murder, robbery and gang charges, plus enhancements in connection with the killing.

Nieto-Bautista and two friends had left a bar and driven into Tlamasico’s gang territory in Santa Ana, Petersen told jurors in his opening statement in Superior Court Judge Richard Toohey’s courtroom.

When one of the victim’s friends got out of the vehicle, he was thrown to the ground by co-defendant Ranferi Ivan Cruz, who then demanded money, the prosecutor said.

Nieto-Bautista got the baseball bat and stepped out of his truck and was shot twice by Tlamasico, who Cruz had summoned for backup, Petersen said.

The victim got back in his pickup and drove about 1,000 feet before striking some parked vehicles and coming to a stop. He was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Santa Ana gang detectives, working with the U.S. Marshals Pacific Southwest Regional Fugitive Task Force, served several search warrants that led to the arrest of two then 19-year-old gang members, including Tlamasico.

Co-defendant Cruz faces the same charges and will be tried later.

If convicted, Tlamasico faces life without possibility of parole, plus 25 years to life in state prison.

Defense attorney Fred McBride declined to give an opening statement.

Source: www.ocregister.com

By LARRY WELBORN and VIK JOLLY / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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CORONA: Doctor pleads guilty to Rx fraud

KURT MILLER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHE

A Corona doctor given “the chance of a lifetime” in 2011 when she was sentenced to only a year in jail and five years probation for 274 felonies related to prescription fraud could be headed back to jail for a much longer time.

Lisa Michele Barden pleaded guilty Tuesday, July 10, to using the name of another person to obtain goods or services without permission — she impersonated another doctor to phone in a prescription in May. That action violated her probation, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Helios J. Hernandez ruled.

Hernandez did not sentence Barden, 42. Instead, he asked that a probation report be written and that attorneys return to court Aug. 24.

District attorney spokesman John Hall said his office would ask Hernandez to impose the suspended sentence of seven years, eight months that Barden received in the first case.

“The defendant was given a chance — the chance of a lifetime,” Deputy District Attorney Sara Stockwell wrote in a memo for Tuesday’s hearing, noting the suspended sentence.

Barden’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Jason Kralovic, declined to comment outside court Tuesday. Inside court, he asked Hernandez to have Barden evaluated for participation in a drug-treatment program.

Authorities believe that Barden, a gynecologist, obtained more than 30,000 Vicodin painkillers for her personal use over the course of 22 months, using the identities of nine patients and the stolen prescription pads of five doctors before being arrested in 2007.

Hall said his office does not believe Barden sold any of the pills.

Barden pleaded guilty to 274 felony charges of identity theft, burglary, forging a prescription and possession of a controlled substance. She was convicted of felony worker’s compensation fraud and a misdemeanor charge of filing a false police report.

Barden was serving the balance of her 360-day sentence on weekends when she committed the same crime: She called in a prescription for Coreg (for heart failure), Ultram (a painkiller) and Soma (a muscle relaxant) for her husband, Darrell Degner, using the name of Dr. Robyn Jacoby, Stockwell wrote.

Barden paid for the prescription in person at Main Street Pharmacy in Corona with a check in her name. Pharmacist Amie Padilla became suspicious and called Jacoby. Barden was arrested during a probation check.

Degner told police he destroyed the pills when he learned what his wife had done.

Barden’s one-year sentences for most of the crimes ran concurrently instead of consecutively because the crimes were largely part of the same act, Presiding Judge Sherrill A. Ellsworth had explained previously.

The state has revoked Barden’s license to practice medicine. Barden remains in custody. Bail is $100,000.

BY BRIAN ROKOS

Source: www.pe.com

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Mistrial declared for mom accused in tot’s death

SANTA ANA – Saying he has “substantial concerns” about new medical literature, an Orange County judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in the case of a mother accused of killing her 23-month-old child.

“It’s problematic,” said Superior Court Judge Richard Toohey, granting a motion for mistrial by Linda Wilborn’s visibly angry defense attorney.

“It’s incumbent upon the people to fully investigate the issues before trial,” the judge said, adding he did not want any appropriate information withheld from the jury but expressed reservations about the timing of the discovery of a new medical article more than two years after the Dec. 17, 2009, death.

Wilborn, 34, of Seal Beach, is charged with murder, assault on a child causing death and two child abuse counts. If convicted, she faces 25 years to life in state prison.

An angry Deputy Public Defender Michael Becker asked for a mistrial and slammed his hand on the defense table, saying he would not participate during the direct examination of the prosecution’s witness Dr. Anthony Juguilon, chief forensic pathologist for the Orange County Coroner, or cross examine him because he had not seen the article Juguilon found overnight.

The defense’s case, Becker told the judge, is based on the disputed cause of death of 23-month-old Millicent. Becker told jurors in his opening statement Tuesday an Orange County coroner’s doctor “botched” an autopsy and experts really don’t know what caused the child’s death.

“I don’t call this due diligence on his part, I call it ambush,” Becker said referring to Juguilon finding the 1995 article.

Deputy District Attorney Scott Simmons disagreed, saying Juguilon did nothing wrong in continuing his due diligence in researching the medical literature.

The article addresses cases of laceration to the heart in children and posits that such tears in a household environment are non-accidental. Simmons told jurors a micro tear to the heart caused by the defendant squeezing the torso of the child and slamming her went undetected by the doctor who performed the autopsy.

The prosecutor told the judge the new article does not alter the case because the cause of death from day one has been blunt force injuries to Millicent’s head and torso. Simmons said in his opening statement expert testimony will show Wilborn held from behind, squeezed and then slammed on a hard surface her girl, causing death. The defendant is also accused of fracturing the skull of Millicent’s twin brother.

The defense contends the injuries suffered by Millicent were from bad CPR the mother performed when “she desperately tried to save the life of her child.”

Source: www.ocregister.com

By VIK JOLLY / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

If you are charged with a crime, contact an experienced Orange County Bail Bondsman to assist you in any bail situtation.

 

Husband guilty of murdering estranged wife

SANTA ANA – A Santa Ana man was convicted of second-degree murder Monday for gunning down his estranged wife in her bedroom after violating a restraining order.

Jose Antonio Garcia, 37, showed no emotion when a jury of seven women and five men found him guilty in the shooting death of Adriana Garcia, 34, the mother of his five children, on the morning of Oct. 16, 2010.

Garcia had taken out a restraining order against her husband because of acts of violence against her, according to testimony.

Deputy District Attorney Michael Murray contended Jose Garcia was jealous and couldn’t stand the idea of his wife leaving him.

Garcia went to his wife’s home at a time when he knew their children were not at home, shot her once in the head, then called 911, according to testimony.

Police found him sitting in his pickup near Edinger Avenue and South Mohawk Drive. A four-hour standoff ensued, during which he kept officers at bay by holding a gun to his head before he eventually surrendered.

Garcia faces 40 years to life in prison at his sentencing Sept. 21 by Superior Court Judge David Hoffer.

Source: www.ocregister.com

If you are charged with a crime, contact an experienced Orange County Bail Bondsman to assist you in any bail situtation.

 

RIVERSIDE: Final arguments complete; jury now deliberating

A prosecutor argued Monday June 4 for jurors to deliver the death penalty to Earl Ellis Green for the murder of Riverside Police Officer Ryan Bonaminio, telling them, “Let the punishment fit the crime. Let the punishment fit the man.”

During an emotional 90-minute presentation, Deputy District Attorney Michael Hestrin reviewed the case for jurors, telling them “It is not enough to understand the crime. Now you have to understand the man.”

Hestrin said Green was a man who made choices and acted with cool rationality on the night of Bonaminio’s murder — taking the officer’s gun, fleeing in the truck he had stolen and driving it back to the truck rental lot from which it was taken so it sat among dozens of other trucks that looked just the same.

“Earl Green at this moment is a man in control of himself. He’s making rational decisions, one after the other, “Hestrin told jurors, calling the efforts by defense witnesses to say Green had mental problems that led him to commit murder “psychobabble.”

Hestrin ended his presentation with a slide show of Bonaminio’s life and his funeral.

Sobs could be heard in the courtroom, which was otherwise so quiet that the clock’s second hand could be heard ticking.

Hestrin told jurors the death penalty was right for Green because “he doesn’t care” that he killed the officer.

Deputy Capital Public Defender O.G. Magno will make the closing argument for the defense.

Superior Court Judge Jean Leonard told the eight-man, four-woman jury that she believes they will begin deliberations around noon.

The jurors must decide whether aggravating factors about Green’s current crime and those from his past presented during the penalty phase

Green was convicted of killing Bonaminio, 27, after a foot pursuit along the edge of Riverside’s Fairmount Park late on the night of Nov. 7, 2010, after a traffic stop. Green jumped from the big-rig cab he was driving and Bonaminio chased him. The officer did not know the rig was stolen.

Bonaminio slipped and fell while chasing Green, who then attacked Bonaminio with a solid metal dumbbell bar and beat him on the head. Green then gained control of the officer’s gun and shot him in the head.

Green’s attorneys conceded during opening statements of the guilt phase that their client had murdered Bonaminio, but they asked jurors to consider a second-degree murder conviction. The panel returned a first-degree conviction after a little more than two hours’ deliberation.

Bonaminio was a graduate of Riverside’s Ramona High School and an Army veteran of two deployments to Iraq.

 

RIVERSIDE: Defense lawyer says defendant killed officer

A defense attorney for Earl Ellis Green told jurors today her client was the killer of a Riverside police officer.

“Earl Ellis Green murdered officer Ryan Bonaminio,” Deputy Capital Defender Gail O’Rane told the jury of eight men and four women during her brief opening statement.

Green faces the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder. The defense attorney said she will ask jurors to consider second-degree murder, which does not carry the death penalty.

But Deputy District Attorney Michael Hestrin called Green’s Nov. 7, 2010 slaying of Bonaminio “a case of cruelty and brutality.”

Green, 46, a parolee with a history of violent crimes, is charged with slaying Bonaminio after the officer slipped and fell on wet pavement while chasing the suspect on foot late that Sunday night.

Hestrin described how the officer, after chasing Green along the edge of Riverside’s Fairmount Park and then into the parking lot of an adjacent church, slipped and fell on a muddy patch and was set upon by Green. Bonaminio was first beaten with a metal bar, then shot in the head as he lay on the ground of a parking lot.

Stephen McQueen, a witness to the murder, testified after opening statements about the chilling scene in which Bonaminio said twice: “Don’t do it. Don’t do it,” as Green closed in on the already-beaten officer, firing twice and missing before firing a fatal third shot.

“He didn’t beg,” Hestrin said earlier. “He just said, ‘Don’t do it.’”

The officer died near the outside stairwell of a church on private property adjacent to the park. McQueen, a volunteer caretaker at the church happened to be standing next to his car in the parking lot when the two men ran by.

“Officer Bonaminio’s blood, and his life, poured out of him,” Hestrin said in his opening statement. “He died there, on the cold and dirty asphalt, in the parking lot of the Center for Spiritual Living.”

“I wish I could tell you what Mr. Hestrin said was not true. But I can’t,” O’Rane told the jury of eight men and four women before they began hearing testimony.

The defense attorney said she will ask jurors to consider whether Bonaminio’s slaying was first or second-degree murder, saying they should consider his state of mind.

The day before Green killed Bonaminio, she said, an argument between Green and his uncle ended in Green being ordered to move his trailer off the family property in Rubidoux and also being told he could no longer work at the family-owned auto repair shop.

Bonaminio had received the call of a hit-and-run between a tractor-trailer rig and a car near Highway 60 just north of Fairmount Park, with the truck entering and then exiting the freeway for surface streets. The woman whose car was struck by the tractor-trailer rig followed and called 911.

Bonaminio was patrolling on Market Street along the eastern edge of the park when he spotted the truck heading the opposite direction. The dashboard camera on Bonaminio’s patrol car shows the officer made a u-turn and pulled up behind the truck.

The driver fled, and the dashboard camera video shows him reaching under his jacket and pulling out a metal pipe.

Hestrin presented it today in court. It was recovered near the death scene. It was clearly a dumbbell, with circular hand guards on either side of cross-hatched grip area in the center.

As Bonaminio exited his patrol car to chase Green, he can be heard shouting on the camera’s recording device, “Stay in the car! Stop!” Police had said earlier the foot chase quickly took the officer out of range of the camera’s audio recorder.

Hestrin also outlined the DNA and fingerprint evidence against Green, how McQueen would testify about the beating and shooting as it took place in front of him, as well as how police recovered Bonaminio’s missing handgun from the linen closet of Green’s girlfriend’s home.

Today’s opening statement was the first time the prosecutor said that Bonaminio was slain with his own police-issued handgun, a Glock .40-caliber semi-automatic.

Hestrin opened his statement by showing jurors a portion of a video from the dashboard camera of Bonaminio’s patrol car.

Tuesday, officers who arrived first at the scene will be followed by expert witnesses who will discuss the evidence taken from the dashboard camera, according to court documents.

Bonaminio, a Riverside native who had served two tours with the Army in Iraq and was a four-year member of the department, was 27.