Autistic Youth ‘Lost Balance,’ Officer Told D.A.

An Irvine police officer, charged in a civil suit with injuring an autistic youth during an arrest, told investigators for the district attorney’s office that Guido Rodriguez Jr., 18, “lost his balance” while being taken into custody.

The officer, Sgt. James Lowder, also told investigators that he feared for his safety during the encounter with the youth.

Attorneys for the Rodriguez family, who released records of the district attorney’s investigation this week, charged in their suit that on April 21, 1985, Lowder threw Guido onto a rocky area of the family’s front lawn, causing damage to the young man’s kidney, in the mistaken belief that he was a bicycle thief under the influence of drugs.

Three days after the incident, after complaining of blood in his urine for the first time in his life, Guido’s left kidney was removed. The Rodriguez suit names Lowder, two other officers who responded to the scene and the City of Irvine as defendants.

‘Lifelong Condition’

However, the district attorney’s report found no grounds for criminal prosecution of the officers, noting that Guido suffered from an enlarged kidney, “a lifelong condition resulting from a birth defect” and that “the removal of the kidney was inevitable.”

A cover letter accompanying the two-volume report said the medical personnel consulted in the investigation “could find no evidence of bruising in the part of the body associated with the left kidney” and “there is no evidence to indicate that the struggle with Sgt. Lowder aggravated the . . . condition of the kidney.”

In a summary of his interview with Ron Johnson of the Orange County district attorney’s office, Lowder said that after pursuing Guido into the family’s garage, he grabbed the fleeing youth by the shirt.

“Lowder then pulled the subject towards him, still holding the shirt, and pushed him backwards,” the summary says. “At that point the subject lost his balance and went down onto his buttocks,” landing on “a grassy area with some dirt on it.”

Later in the interview, according to the summary, Lowder said that “during the take down he did not trip the subject. He just made the subject lose his balance and go back. . . . In regards to moving the subject from the cement driveway, Sgt. Lowder stated that he just wanted a softer place to take the subject down to the ground.”

Lowder’s Version Disputed

Several eyewitnesses, however, have disputed Lowder’s version.

Fara Rodriguez, Guido’s mother, said the officer “dragged him (Guido) out on the ground really hard.” Alfred Tresser, a neighbor, said “the officer forcefully threw him to the ground.”

Lowder also told the investigators that he never heard a radio transmission from another officer warning that Rodriguez might be mentally disabled.

According to a police radio log, also released this week, Officer Shari Lohman, who first stopped Rodriguez and then chased him, radioed that “some neighbors say he might be an autistic child.” The transcript does not indicate whether Lowder heard the advisory before he took Rodriguez into custody. In an earlier transmission, which Lowder acknowledged receiving, Lohman warned that the slightly built youth, who has a mental age of about 4, “was possibly on drugs.”

The transcript also describes a “woman screaming in background” during several of Lowder’s transmissions, evidently a reference to Fara Rodriguez, who said that while in the garage she told Lowder three times that her son was mentally retarded and could not understand the officer’s instructions.

Didn’t Know Woman

Asked by investigators why he did not stop when told this, Lowder “explained that he did not know at that time whose garage they were in,” according to the summary. “Also at that time, he did not know who the lady was that was screaming at him. He felt that the subject was under (the) influence of alcohol and/or drugs.”

Knowing that Rodriguez had fled from another officer and suspecting that he may have “been involved in receiving stolen property,” Lowder said “he was thinking of his (Lowder’s) own safety” because “after the pursuit and struggling with the subject he was tired and he wanted to be able to get out of the garage alive.”