Pubdate: Sun, 21 Aug 2005
Source: Fresno Bee, The (CA)
Copyright: 2005 The Fresno Bee
Contact:  http://www.fresnobee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/161
Author: Diana Baldrica
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

OFFICER DOWN

Four Bullets At Close Range Shatter The Life Of One Tough Fresno Cop

The first bullet shatters the femur in his left leg. Another tears the 
flesh of his left hand.

Fresno police officer Julian Vinton feels the gun pressed against the back 
of his head as he staggers on the ground-floor landing of a motel stairwell.

"Oh, God," he thinks, struggling to turn away. "This is going to hurt."

It is just before 5 p.m. July 16, 2001, a pleasantly mild Monday in the 
thick of summer. On West Shaw Avenue, nine officers assemble at Crossland 
Economy Studios to take down a suspected meth dealer.

Vinton, a 39-year-old ex-Marine with roughly six months in the narcotics 
unit, is one of them. Vinton - "Vinnie" to colleagues and friends - stands 
about 5-foot-7, a solid 190 pounds. He played football in high school but 
turned to cross country when hitting players began hurting him as much as 
the other guy.

He's been a cop for nine years, first in Farmersville and then in Fresno, 
where he worked patrol, counseled kids against drugs and walked the 
Sunnyside High School campus. He's known as an energetic, tough cop.

His evaluations are exceptional; he's earned dozens of commendation letters 
on the job.

In December 2000, Vinton transferred to the major narcotics unit. It was 
his choice; he saw drugs as one of three major damaging influences on the 
community. The others were gangs and guns.

In narcotics, Vinton cultivates informants and sets up undercover drug 
buys. But it isn't his deal this Monday. He's part of the five-man bust 
team - led by Sgt. Terry O'Neil - that will make the arrest.

Though he's done this dozens of times, Vinton knows anything can happen. He 
feels focused.

The buy evolves quickly. A police informant meets two men near the town of 
Friant who are eager to sell 2 pounds of methamphetamine.

She works out a deal and calls her handler, arranging the $8,000 buy that 
same day in her third-floor motel room.

A surveillance team sets up on the south and east side of the three-story 
building. Sgt. Alex Flores monitors the wire the informant wears. Others 
watch the exterior corridor that fronts the rooms.

Flores supervises the team on the perimeter. O'Neil and the bust team wait 
in a van out back. The plan is simple - have the informant confirm the meth 
is in the room and then signal officers to come in behind her.

There are four people in Room 330 - the informant, the two men and their 
female friend. The surveillance team listens to a typical back-and-forth 
conversation:

"Show me the money."

"Show me the dope."

"No, show me the money."

"Show me the dope."

Inside the room, Roderick "Crash" Bertolette tells the informant it's time 
to see the money she claims is in her car. He grabs her arm and pulls her 
into the corridor outside the room.

Bertolette, 33, is a handyman and ex-con once sentenced to six years in 
prison for an assault in Los Angeles County. He has a series of tattoos - 
including devils, skulls and swastikas - on his body and $3.65 in his pocket.

Secretly, he also carries something else: a .38-caliber handgun tucked into 
his waistband and covered by a black plastic bag. He is high on meth.

The informant is bluffing about a car; she rode to the motel with police. 
Officers have no way to communicate with her. The original bust plan is gone.

On the back side of the motel, O'Neil hears the surveillance team relay the 
movements of Bertolette and the informant. They are heading toward the 
stairwell; the informant signals for officers to move in.

O'Neil and his team - Vinton, Eppie Cardenas, Curtis Davis and Carlos Leal 
- - hop out of a parked van. O'Neil, Cardenas and Leal are the team's 
veterans; it is Davis' first day in a two-week narcotics training program.

The officers wear tactical vests with insignias identifying them as police. 
Leal carries a metal ram in case the team needs to break down a door.

O'Neil is regrouping. He worries that a rectangular window in the 
first-floor stairwell door could give Bertolette an early view of officers 
if they wait just outside.

In his head, O'Neil is estimating how long the two will take to walk down 
three flights of stairs. He wants to fling open the door and surprise them.

"Just grab them, just overwhelm them," he says today. "I mean, I worked out 
in narcotics in the early '90s, I've jumped on people with guns, we always 
caught people ... unawares."

O'Neil figures his team has the tactical advantage with the element of 
surprise. But when he yanks open the door, Bertolette and the informant are 
about four steps from the 6-foot by 6-foot concrete landing.

She screams - like something out of a horror movie - and the closet-sized 
space amplifies the volume. She knows Bertolette has a gun.

The bust team piles into the stairwell. The next few seconds are seared in 
Vinton's mind.

In front, O'Neil focuses on the informant as she retreats up the stairs. 
Has she switched sides? Is she trying to warn others upstairs?

He reacts in a split-second and moves up the stairs to grab her. He brushes 
by Bertolette, who continues to walk down the steps.

"Get this guy," O'Neil tells officers behind him.

Bertolette passes Cardenas on the first or second step. Leal, Davis and 
Vinton are behind him.

Near the door, Bertolette turns and faces the wall near a corner while his 
right hand drifts toward his waistband. Vinton lunges at him.

"Show your hands!" Vinton shouts.

"He's got a gun! He's got a gun!" Leal yells. He reaches for Bertolette.

Vinton sees Bertolette's hand at his waist and hopes for the best-case 
scenario. Maybe he has dope to dump. Or maybe he wants to drop a gun.

But Bertolette fires a shot just over his left hip, catching Vinton in the 
left leg. The bone snaps and Vinton grabs onto Bertolette as he crumples 
awkwardly into the wall. Vinton's head and shoulder bang into the wall.

Bertolette keeps firing. The second shot misses.

Vinton pins the barrel of the gun against the wall with his left hand. He 
holds his .40-caliber Beretta in his right.

The third shot pierces Vinton's left hand. His fingers curl into a useless 
paw. He leans into Bertolette, pushing him into the wall. His left leg 
gives out.

Bertolette turns around.

Vinton tries to get up, bracing himself on one arm and one leg. He feels 
the gun against the back of his head. He manages to turn his head sideways 
as Bertolette fires two more rounds.

Bullets bore into Vinton's left jaw and pound through the right side of his 
face. He smells gunpowder. He feels something warm on his cheek.

"Oh, my God," Vinton wonders. "Where did that round go? Where did those 
rounds go?"

Dying is not difficult, he knows. It can be a soothing, comforting kind of 
feeling. But letting go of life is tougher. Vinton thinks of his teenage 
son and daughter; he sees them in his mind when they were small.

Vinton snaps back. His vision is blurry, but he is coherent.

Leal is struggling with Bertolette for control of the gun. Bertolette keeps 
firing.

"Shoot him, shoot him!" Leal yells.

The other officers are looking for a clear shot.

Vinton is thinking: "Any time now these guys are going to shoot him. Any 
time ..."

But Vinton manages the first shot, firing around Leal into Bertolette. 
Davis and Cardenas shoot too, and Bertolette slides down the wall. His gun 
is empty.

The two bleeding bodies touch on the floor.

One of Bertolette's eyes seems fixed on Vinton. But the suspected dealer is 
dead.

It's only been a few seconds - maybe five, maybe seven - since the first shot.

Blood, bone and broken teeth clog Vinton's airway. He tries to talk, 
finally managing: "Eppie ..."

The two have known each other for 20 years. Cardenas drops to his knees 
next to his friend. He and Leal drag him into the breezeway outside.

O'Neil steps over Bertolette's body without looking down. He's angry with 
the informant and worried about Vinton.

He looks at Vinton's chest even though he remembers seeing him get shot in 
the face. Vinton's leg, hand and mouth are bloody.

O'Neil shouts for Flores, the surveillance team supervisor, who is rushing 
toward the stairwell after hearing the commotion on the radio.

"Alex, get over here," O'Neil yells, spotting him toward the front of the 
building. "Come on, get over here. Run!"

Vinton is lying on the ground. He jams a finger into his mouth to clear his 
breathing passage. It comes out a hole in his cheek.

Vinton reaches farther back, scooping away blood and bits of teeth. It 
feels so good to breathe. Then the pain really hits.

His left leg is twisted and contorted; the broken femur is shoved up toward 
his torso. Vinton's mind cycles from one injury to the next: My leg. My 
hand. My jaw. He's never felt such intense pain.

"Fight, fight," Leal tells him. "Think of your family."

Vinton remembers his Marine Corps training: Stay calm. You can lose 
consciousness or bleed to death within minutes. He wants to stay awake so 
he can talk to the surgeons.

"I have to calm down," Vinton tells himself. "Relax and stay conscious."

He does not doubt he will live.

By now, firetrucks and police cars are converging with lights and sirens. 
Flores and Leal stay with Vinton as O'Neil takes several officers and heads 
upstairs to grab the two others in the informant's room.

Flores knows Vinton from his days as a supervisor in the southeast patrol 
district. Their shifts never really matched, but they saw each other in the 
field; Flores views Vinton as hardworking and energetic - a good fit for 
narcotics.

Now, Vinton is covered in blood. It looks so bad that Flores can't help 
thinking: "We're losing one of our officers."

Flores isn't going to leave Vinton. When the ambulance rolls up, Flores 
jumps in for the ride to the hospital. Vinton is alert. Flores encourages 
him to stay awake, to think about his family.

The ambulance attendant talks, too. Vinton follows each speaker with his eyes.

"Keep your eyes open," Flores tells him. "Focus ... we're almost there."

A team is waiting at University Medical Center when the ambulance arrives. 
Vinton disappears into a trauma room. Flores tells a receptionist what he 
knows.

Across Fresno County, telephones begin ringing with the news. Less than two 
miles east of the motel, Linda Gallardo is leaving her bank job on West 
Shaw Avenue for a class at Fresno City College. It is after 5 p.m., past 
closing time, and she ignores the telephone.

Gallardo is Vinton's sister, but she is like a mother to him. She carried 
him home from the clinic where he was born and slept by his crib when he 
was a baby. She raised him and his younger brother, Roy, after their mother 
died in 1973.

Leaving the bank that Monday, Gallardo flips on her cell phone. It rings 
immediately.

"Julian's been shot," she hears. "He's over at Valley Medical Center and we 
don't know how he is."

Gallardo gets into her truck. She can hear herself crying, a desperate kind 
of cry. She starts toward the hospital but pulls over to pray.

Something inside her asks: Linda, do you have faith?

She answers: "Yes, I have faith."

Coming tomorrow: Vinton fights to recover his life.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth