Norco '80

by Peter Houlahan

  Jordan: Evans, you okay?

  Evans: Yeah, I’m okay. They’re shooting automatics for sure.

  Spain: Edward-20 to Evans. Give these guys plenty of room.

  Evans: Fall back, they are really firing now.

  Evans might have been the lead RSO unit, but he was only the number-three car in the pursuit. Coming off Interstate 15, two CHP units had had grabbed the one and two spots with Steve Batchelor and Peter Vander Kamp riding together in the lead vehicle and patrolman Joe Haughey just behind. It was not surprising that CHP would have come off a freeway pursuit in front. There was no way they were going to let some deputy sheriff or beat cop come off that freeway ahead of them.

  After a straight two-mile run up Sierra Avenue, the two-lane road entered the mouth of the canyon near Convict Spring, crossed the wide creek bed, and ran along the base of Penstock Ridge. Somebody tell the Forest Service, Evans requested. We’re going right into their station and they don’t know we’re coming.

  Attempts by the CHP units to keep their distance in the canyon were countered by ambush tactics on the part of Chris Harven. On straightaways, Harven accelerated the truck up to speeds of fifty miles per hour only to lay back on curves so Russ, Manny, and George could open up at close range when pursuing units appeared around the bend. In the lead vehicle, Steven Batchelor had taken to hanging back on sharp curves until he could get a visual on the truck farther up, but all the units near the front of the pursuit, including Evans and San Bernardino deputy Mike Lenihan, were still taking considerable fire. Okay, we got him up here, Evans radioed. We had to slow down, he laid a barrage on us at that last curve.

  It was a deadly game of cat and mouse that continued for five miles up the canyon until the pursuit reached the first of the only two settlements of any size in Lytle Creek Canyon.

  The tiny community of Scotland, California, owes its origins to an 1860 gold strike and its location to the confluence of the north and middle forks of Lytle Creek, which join to form the main Lytle Creek channel. The Scotland Store was a convenience market with a small café that served as the de facto meeting hall for the entire Lytle Creek community. Late in the afternoon of May 9, 1980, San Bernardino sheriff’s lieutenant Robert “Bunny” Lorimer had been sent to the Scotland Store to hear residents’ complaints of rising crime rates and inadequate police protection in the canyon. Lorimer was attempting to pacify the locals when his efforts were interrupted by a cacophony of gunfire. Lorimer and the concerned citizens of Lytle Creek rushed outside just in time to see a yellow truck race past with three heavily armed men in the back spraying gunfire, followed by forty police units in close pursuit.

  After initially scattering for cover at the sound of sirens and gunshots, a pause in the firing sent four young siblings of the Hoeppner family running back toward the road to check out the action. As the truck rolled by within feet of the four children, one of the men in the back turned his head and looked straight at them through the hole in his black ski mask. Brenda Hoeppner gasped at the sight of what looked to her like a monster holding a very scary gun. But instead of trying to kill them, the monster clearly motioned with one hand for them to stay back from the road. It was the second time in the pursuit that Russell Harven had warned children to get out of the line of fire.

  A mile past Scotland was Lytle Creek Village, the last settlement in the canyon. With the cops hanging back to prevent an active gun battle in the community, the pursuit drifted through the village in an eerie silence. George Smith used the break in the action to catch his breath. Since exiting the bank, it had been forty-five minutes of nonstop fight and flight. Only now did he realize how weak he had become, a quarter of his blood supply already drained from his body. As Chris floored the truck out of the village, George stared up at the sky, shivering, breathing heavily, and watching the mountains blur by on both sides. Above him, Russell Harven stood leaning back against one of the tall acetylene tanks with the “Shorty” AR pointing up. At his feet, Manny Delgado was crouched, resting the barrel of Chris’s Heckler .223 on the tailgate, waiting.

  Beyond Lytle Creek Village lay only campgrounds, firing lines, and raw wilderness virtually unchanged since the days of the Wild West. Since entering the canyon, they had climbed to an elevation of 3,000 feet. What had been a clear, warm spring day in Norco now had a bite of cold and a cloud cover moving in. Above them another 3,500 feet, patches of snow still held out on the hillsides of Baldy. Soon the paved road would give way to a rain-rutted dirt track suitable only for four-wheel-drive vehicles.

  As he sped up the canyon, Jim Evans knew there had to be a police helicopter somewhere in the skies above him but figured it would not do him any good. Anything up there was bound to be a San Bernardino sheriff’s chopper with which he had no ability to communicate. There was only one outside chance that Evans would ever be able to get reports from any SBSO helicopter.

  The California Law Enforcement Mutual Aid Radio System, or CLEMARS, was a rather simple solution to the vexing problem of interagency radio communications: a dozen radio channels set aside for communication among multiple agencies during emergencies and special operations. While the solution might have been simple, implementation was decidedly more complicated and costly, requiring additional radios be added to vehicles. The RSO had been slow to deploy the system throughout the department, their current capability limited to several handheld CLEMARS radios. But at that moment, one of those radios just happened to be in the hands of an RSO sergeant on narcotics detail named Don Bender.

  Bender: Edward-320. We got communications with the chopper.

  Evans: Okay. Is the chopper on Sierra? Can you see him?

  Bender: Affirmative, he’s almost to the end of the paved road.

  It was far from a perfect solution. Bender would need to receive information on the CLEMARS from spotter John Plasencia on board 40-King-1 and then relay the info to Evans over the Riverside frequency. The result was a ten- to fifteen-second communication lag each way between 40-King-1 and Evans. But at least Evans now had a pair of eyes to tell him the one thing he wanted to know most: Was he about to get ambushed?

  Evans: 320, can you tell us how far behind we are?

  Bender: Just a minute, we’ll check with the chopper.

  Evans: We got blind curves. We want to know how far back we are.

  In the Hughes 500C helicopter above, 40-King-1 pilot Ed Mabry was battling bursts of severe turbulence as warm air from the basin funneled into the canyon and collided with the cooler air at higher elevations. As Mabry steadied and positioned King-1, he and Plasencia watched the extremely dangerous situation continuing to unfold in the canyon below. Plasencia did his best to communicate developments, especially changes in the truck’s speed, to Bender as quickly as possible.

  Bender: Starting to slow down. Okay, now he’s moving out again, continuing northbound on the paved road.

  Evans: We’re still behind him.

  Bender: Okay, just going around the first large curve at the end of the pavement.

  Neither of the two CHP units ahead of Evans had CLEMARS in their units, but patrolman Ron Kauffman, holding the number-five position in the pursuit, did have a scanner with which he could monitor 40-King-1 and relay the information to the CHP units ahead of him. It amounted to a giant rolling game of telephone with multiple agencies monitoring, relaying, and communicating by means of scanners, CLEMARS, PA speakers on the roofs of their vehicles, or via their dispatch centers when all other means failed them.

  Reaching the dirt portion of Lytle Creek Road, the pursuit abruptly slowed to speeds ranging from thirty miles per hour to below ten miles per hour in the bad spots. The farther up they went, the worse it got. Even with its annual grooming, the road was a washboard track punctuated with basketball-size rocks and deep ruts, barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass, usually not even that. Pursuing units also had to contend with clouds of thick dust kicked up by the vehicles in front of them. It was not long before law enforcement sedans began droppi
ng out.

  Adding to the rapidly growing number of disabled or destroyed police units, a San Bernardino sheriff’s deputy twenty miles away in the Cajon Pass was positioning his patrol unit to block one of the feeder roads to Lytle Creek when the vehicle became stuck on the tracks at a railroad crossing. As the deputy furiously attempted to free his unit using a tire jack, a Union Pacific freight train pulling almost one hundred cars slammed into the vehicle, dragging it hundreds of yards while the deputy looked on sheepishly.

  It had been Chris Harven’s expectation that the rough road conditions in Lytle Creek would favor the F-250’s higher clearance over the low-slung police sedans. Disabling a lead unit could stop the entire pursuit line in its tracks until the offending vehicle was dragged out of the way. If the roadbed was not going to do it, Harven was determined to have his shooters in the back do the job. Approaching a tight horseshoe bend carved into the hillside, Chris spotted an opportunity. Jim Evans could sense something was up.

  Evans: They’re pulling up on us up here. Looks like they’re gonna lay back on the curve, next one coming up on us. Have that chopper keep watching.

  Bender: Okay, he’s still moving northbound according to the chopper.

  Evans: Tell him if they stop, that’s what we want to know.

  Coming out of the bend in the horseshoe, Harven abruptly brought the truck to a halt. In the back, Manny and Russ stood up and fired across the ravine at Evans and the two lead CHP units on the other side. A line of bullets kicked up dirt on the hillside just above the hood of Batchelor and Vander Kamp’s patrol car. But Harven accelerated out of the horseshoe before his shooters could adjust their aim and take out the lead CHP unit.

  Riding with Fred Chisholm in detective Mike Jordan’s unmarked unit two dozen vehicles back in the pursuit line, Rolf Parkes spotted a civilian walking along the shoulder carrying a rifle. Parkes told Jordan to pull over. “That might be a .30-.30,” he said, leaping from the vehicle. Getting their hands on a large-caliber weapon with the long-range capability of a rifle would represent a significant upgrade to their current firepower. It was no Heckler, but many a hunter had dropped a deer in Lytle Creek from two hundred yards with a .30-30 Winchester. Parkes rushed up to the bewildered gun owner. “We need to borrow your gun,” he told the man. Having already been passed by the yellow truck and dozens of police vehicles with sirens screaming, the man did not need much convincing. Parkes took the gun and handed the man his department business card. “Do you have ammunition?” The man fished in his pocket and dumped a dozen loose rounds in Parkes’s hand. When Rolf saw the dinky little shells rolling around in his palm, his heart sank. He jumped into the back seat and told Jordan what he had. Jordan raised his eyebrows doubtfully and reached for the mic nonetheless. We commandeered a lever-action .22, he radioed unenthusiastically.

  STILL BACK IN THE PACK BUT GAINING IN POSITION, DEPUTY JAMES McPheron’s task of getting D. J. McCarty and the M16 to the front of the pursuit had become much harder now that the paved road had given way to a narrow dirt track. At least word of their approach was getting out to most of the agencies. CHP and the city cops had begun pulling over to let them pass without McCarty having to do too much screaming through the PA. It was not until a Riverside lieutenant named Wayne Daniels caught wind of the situation over a scanner that the RSO deputies heard anything about it. If Jim Evans heard Daniels’s instruction to yield to the San Bernardino unit with the automatic weapon, he did not immediately acknowledge it.

  After almost five miles of dirt track, Lytle Creek Road passed the mouth of Coldwater Canyon and abruptly turned west to cross the wide creek bed. At the center of the wash, the yellow truck splashed through the shallow waters of the North Fork and began a straight run up an eight-hundred-foot grade to a campground known as Stockton Flats. The CHP units in the lead vehicles heard rounds striking rocks in the streambed around them as the gunmen in the truck fired down the grade.

  As the pursuit continued into Stockton Flats, the elevation rose to six thousand feet. The road began to cut through thick stands of Douglas fir and ponderosa pine. Above in 40-King-1, pilot Ed Mabry and spotter John Plasencia began to lose sight of the yellow truck for as long as twenty seconds at a stretch. With makeshift dirt roads forking off the main roadway into the campground and nearby smaller canyons, the radio communication among Plasencia, Bender, and Evans became even more urgent.

  Slowing the truck on another blind curve, Chris Harven paused just long enough for Russ and Manny to toss two highly explosive acetylene gas cylinders out of the back of the truck along with a five-gallon can of diesel fuel. As Steve Batchelor and Joe Haughey weaved their CHP units past the obstacles, George Smith attempted to detonate the tanks with rounds from his .308. The tanks failed to explode. Soon after, Haughey’s unit died on him due to road damage. He had to abandon the vehicle. He watched as Jim Evans and San Bernardino deputy Mike Lenihan raced past him into the second and third spots in the pursuit before fellow CHP officer Ron Kauffman pulled over and picked him up.

  JIM MCPHERON AND D. J. McCARTY STILL HAD NO IDEA WHERE THEY WERE IN the pursuit line because of all the dust being kicked up in front of them. They knew they must be getting close. McPheron estimated they had already passed thirty to forty vehicles at that point. As the road leveled out in a grove of pines and entered Stockton Flats campground, they came up fast on a CHP unit. Equipped with a scanner, patrolman Ron Kauffman had a good idea who was on his tail and pulled over to let it pass.

  McPheron shot past Kauffman’s unit and right up on the rear bumper of another San Bernardino black-and-white. D. J. McCarty did not know it, but the driver was his roommate, Mike Lenihan. Along with Lenihan was a civilian reserve deputy named Margaret Martin in her first-ever ride-along, now wondering what the fuck she had gotten herself into. Like Kauffman, Lenihan recognized the unit behind him and pulled over to let McPheron and McCarty fly past.

  That left only the RSO unit with Evans and the CHP unit with Batchelor and Vander Kamp between McPheron and the yellow truck. After pulling his own CHP unit over, Ron Kauffman radioed up to Batchelor and Vander Kamp that the SO unit with the automatic was coming up behind them. Batchelor began to angle his CHP car toward the side of the road. For a moment, Evans seemed to follow. But just as McPheron accelerated to pass both vehicles, the Riverside unit swung back out into the road in front of him and maintained its position.

  Okay, I got the lead unit now, Jim Evans radioed.

  McCarty and McPheron could not hear Evans’s transmission and did not know there was now only one patrol car between them and the suspects. Within seconds of the Riverside unit cutting in front of them, the road suddenly changed, pitching upward and narrowing to the width of a single vehicle. In all the dust, there was no way Jim Evans, D. J. McCarty, or James McPheron could have seen the sign the Forest Service had posted there: DANGEROUS ROAD. NO UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES BEYOND THIS POINT.

  ETCHED ALONG THE WESTERN FACE OF THE TALLEST MOUNTAIN IN THE SAN Gabriel range, Mt. Baldy Road rises from a 6,012-foot elevation at Stockton Flats to a summit of almost 8,000 feet in 3.9 miles. Labeled Baldy Road on Forest Service topo maps, it is referred to by rangers and serious hikers as Baldy Notch Road after its destination point. Originally constructed in 1894 by the Hocumac Mining Company to reach fourteen gold mines on the mountainside, the road replaced a wagon trail built earlier to access the Banks Mine at Baldy Notch summit. The previous trail was so inadequate it required that the wagons be raised and lowered by winch at points. With the mines tapped out, the road was taken over and improved by the Forest Service to provide access to remote regions for emergency personnel and equipment to fight the raging brush fires that frequented the mountainsides there.

  While the engineering was sound, any trip up Baldy Notch Road was a harrowing journey of steep inclines, declines, and sharp 180-degree switchbacks on a single-track dirt road clinging to the mountainside with drops of up to five hundred feet on one side and an incredibly unstable upslope on the other. “
Dirt” was a kind description for a road surface that was mostly gravel and sizable rocks. Maintenance by bulldozer was an ongoing battle against erosion, landslides, and falling pines.

  Dangerous in the best of conditions, a run up Baldy Notch under heavy gunfire was unthinkable, the stuff of nightmares. Now in the lead position, Jim Evans was being followed closely by McCarty and McPheron. Mac was still trying to push past Evans at every widening of the road with nothing but a two-foot berm of dirt standing between the Ford Fairlane and a tumble down hundreds of feet of rocky hillsides to Stockton Flats below. The San Bernardino unit with Mike Lenihan remained in third position. Just behind Lenihan were the two CHP vehicles, with Batchelor and Vander Kamp in the first and Kauffman and Haughey on their tail.

  With the road beginning its sharp ascent up the mountainside, and the men in the truck firing down on him, the strain of the situation could be heard in Jim Evans’s increasingly frequent requests for information. What are they doing? I’m coming into the curve, Evans asked, his voice a vibrato as he bounced over the washboard surface of the loose roadbed. They’re moving slow. They’re moving slow, Bender relayed. I’m hittin’ a blind curve, what does he say? Evans asked again seconds later.

  For the moment, the truck was obscured from 40-King-1 by a stand of pines, so Bender had no report to relay to Evans. Fifteen seconds later, the truck came into Evans’s view again. Okay, I got him. It’s still movin’.

  A few hundred yards into the climb, the road horseshoed back on itself. The three gunmen in the back of the truck opened up on the units still moving through Stockton Flats. In the narrow canyon, the gunshots echoed sharply back and forth off rock-face cliffs on three sides, making a dozen rounds sound more like thirty-six coming at them from all directions. Left side, they’re shootin’ down the ridge, one of the deputies on the Flats radioed urgently. The pursuit line was strafed with gunfire.