Officer DeLeon, Officer Jere Graham, and Officer Paul Krasenes were shot and slashed to death during a prison uprising when a civil rights lawyer smuggled a 9 mm pistol and two magazines of ammunition to a prisoner at San Quentin Prison. The prisoner hid the pistol and magazines in his afro wig. When one of the guards became suspicious of the wig the prisoner ripped it off, loaded the handgun, and then held the guards at bay.
The prisoner forced the guards to free 26 inmates, who then proceeded to attack the guards. They slashed the throats of six guards and also shot three of them to death. All of the guards bodies were then stacked in the cell of the inmate who started the disturbance. Two jail trustees were also murdered by the prisoners.
The prisoner who started the uprising was shot and killed by responding officers. He was awaiting trial for the murder of Correctional Officer John V. Mills at Soledad Prison on January 16, 1970.
Six prisoners were charged with the officer’s murders. After a 16 month trial only one was convicted of murder. He was paroled in 1988. Three were acquitted and the other two were found guilty of assault. Only one remained in prison. He murdered Correctional Officer Robert J. McCarthy on March 4, 1971. He was stabbed to death during a prison riot at Folsom Penitentiary on August 12, 2015.
Officer DeLeon was a U.S. military veteran.
On June 14, 1971, Agent Morello purchased hashish during an undercover investigation in the city of Riverside. Immediately following the transaction, Rick was shot and killed by the principal suspect in the investigation.
Deputy Gary Saunders was assigned to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Firestone Park Station in the south central Los Angeles area at the time of his murder. Deputy Saunders, who was on patrol training status, had been a member of the Department less than two years when he was shot by a suspect after a foot pursuit near the intersection of Florence Avenue and Holmes Avenue. Deputy Saunders chased the a fleeing suspect for a short distance. When Saunders caught the suspect, a struggle ensued. Deputy Saunders was knocked to the ground and the suspect took Deputy Saunders revolver and shot him three times in the chest (ballistic vests were not in use at that time). Showing great restraint, deputies surrounded a garage and ordered the suspect to surrender. He tossed out Deputy Saunders revolver first and then walked out to surrender. The suspect was convicted of second degree murder.
Police Sergeant Donald Herbert Lansing had attended the Department Spring Shoot and was returning to the Monterey Police Department on Tuesday, May 4. All sworn members of the Department were required to attend the event. Lansing was authorized to use his private vehicle to attend. He was on duty and in uniform at the time of the accident.
Lansing was driving a half-ton pickup truck, westbound, when the truck collided with an eastbound 2 ½-ton Army truck, on Gigling Road on the Army base in Fort Ord, on a curve near the intersection of Watkins Gate Road.
Lansing, 38, was killed immediately. The driver of the Army truck was taken to the hospital at Fort Ord where he recovered from minor head injuries.
Funeral services for Lansing were held on Friday, May 7, at the Mission Mortuary. Private cremation followed with inurnment in the Little Chapel-By-The-Sea in Pacific Grove.
Officials determined that the driver of the truck was exceeding the speed limit and was on the wrong side of the road.
Lansing, who was born in Westerville, Ohio, had served in the U.S. Marine Corps for five years and the U.S. Army for three years.
Officer Loren D. Scruggs, 35, had stopped a car for a registration violation, when another driver parked across the road and approached him to ask directions. While Scruggs was answering his questions, the young man suddenly pulled a gun and shot the patrol officer. The killer fled but was found later – a suicide. Scruggs was a nine-year veteran of the CHP and had served his entire career in Santa Maria, where he had also attended high school and college.
