Sheriff: ‘Heroic’ end to rampage
Ben Lomond resident detained armed Air Force sergeant accused of killing deputy
BEN LOMOND » Calling it “remarkable” and “heroic,” Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart on Monday lauded a humble unarmed resident for outsmarting and taking down the Air Force sergeant accused of ambushing two deputy sheriffs in the Santa Cruz Mountains this weekend with bombs and an assault rifle, killing one officer and hospitalizing the other.
The dramatic scene was captured on a neighbor’s cellphone video Saturday, as a resident in a red T-shirt and khaki shorts calmly pinned the suspect — 32-year-old Steven Carrillo — on his gravel driveway while another man and his dog loomed over them. “Hey, we are holding him on the ground right here,” neighbors shouted as they frantically waved down officers up the road. “There’s a gun … please!”
Investigators say Carrillo ambushed the deputies with gunfire and pipe bombs after they responded to a call about a white van with guns and explosives inside. He struck one of the officers with his car as he fled, then carjacked at least one motorist and attempted to commandeer others, before ending up at the home where his alleged rampage would come to an end.
The man first asked Carrillo what he was doing. Armed with what Hart said was an AR-15 type rifle, Carrillo demanded the resident’s car keys. He went inside to grab a key, but when he handed it to Carrillo, he tackled him and knocked away his rifle.
The suspect wasn’t done, though. In a tense scuffle, Carrillo pulled a pipe bomb from his pocket and tried to ignite it be
fore the resident knocked it away, Hart said. He then pulled a pistol from his waistband, which the resident also swatted away as others rushed in to help him keep the suspect pinned until deputy sheriffs arrived.
As four officers surrounded Carrillo with their weapons drawn, he appeared to say something in the video: “Hey listen everybody. This is what I’m sick of. This is what I’m sick of.”
“It was a remarkable, remarkable, heroic thing that that resident did,” Hart said. “He does not want to be named. He doesn’t want any recognition. But at a later date, if I have to personally drive up there and see him, we will provide him with a commendation and a citizen’s medal because this guy could have done a lot more damage in our community had that resident not taken the action that he did.”
Carrillo is expected to be arraigned Friday afternoon on charges of murdering sheriff’s Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller and other charges of injuring Deputy Alexander Spencer. What set him off remained unclear. Law enforcement officials said they are still investigating whether there may be other suspects involved.
“He was dangerous. He was an angry man,” Hart said. “Just his actions alone up there said a lot about him. He used some very heavy weaponry to shoot at our deputies and then threw incendiary devices at them.”
Carrillo was an active duty U.S. Air Force sergeant who served in a security detail at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield. He joined the Air Force in 2009 and was transferred to Travis in 2018. He was a member of the 60th Security Force Squadron and team leader of the Phoenix Ravens, a specially trained security force that protects aircraft from terrorist and
“criminal threats.”
Federal investigators are trying to determine whether the Saturday attack is connected to the killing of a federal security officer in Oakland late last month. Both incidents involved a white van.
But John Bennett, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Francisco bureau, said Monday any connection remains under investigation and would not comment further.
Carrillo, who was injured during the rampage, remained hospitalized Monday and in custody.
During a news conference Monday, Hart, the sheriff, was pained to even say his name. He said the community was showing an outpouring of support for his officers and grieving for the family of Gutzwiller, a 14-year veteran with a pregnant wife and a young child.
“He was a good man, a good police officer and a friend,” Hart said. “Damon was a hero, somebody we’ll never forget.”
Hart said the second deputy — who was identified as Alexander Spencer in a GoFundMe page Monday — was shot in the chest and saved by his bulletproof vest, but the powerful round still caused “significant internal trauma.” He also suffered wounds from bomb fragments and being struck by the fleeing suspect’s car.
A relative of Carrillo’s late wife, who also served in the Air Force and had two children with him before taking her own life two years ago, described him as a domineering, narcissistic man who had mentally abused her.
“He was a wannabe, and I don’t think he measured up the way he wanted himself to be, so he was the type of person who took it out on other people,” Charlotte Tolliver-Lopes told the Bay Area News Group in a phone interview from her home in Arizona. “He did a lot of damage to our family just by destroying my niece. It devastated my family.”
The couple had two young children. The boy and girl have been living with relatives since sometime after their mother’s death.
Tolliver-Lopes said that when she heard that Carrillo was accused of ambushing the deputies, she said that “fits his personality. Sneak up behind you — that’s the way he would behave,” she said.
Her great-niece committed suicide while in an Air Force training program in late May 2018 in South Carolina, she said. Carrillo was in California at the time, but Tolliver-Lopes says her family has long blamed him for her death.
The stunning attack in Santa Cruz County on Saturday came just over a week after Federal Protective Services officer Dave Patrick Underwood was gunned down in Oakland while patrolling the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building with another officer as a protest was occurring blocks away. The FBI described the suspect as having “ambushed” and fired on both officers and linked a large white van that didn’t appear to have license plates to the crime.
The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office asks that anyone with information about the case or who may have been a victim of a carjacking by the suspect to call the district attorney’s tip line at 831-454-2588.