Three Arrested in Slaying of Sheriff’s Deputy Trainee : Robbers Took Off-Duty Woman’s Car, Police Say

After an all-night search in the Bonita area east of San Diego, authorities arrested three men Tuesday morning in the shooting death of a 28-year-old San Diego County woman who was seven days into her training as a sheriff’s deputy.

Kelly A. Bazer of Spring Valley--the mother of a son, 7, and a daughter, 4--was shot in the back Monday evening as she ran from two men who had robbed a Spring Valley supermarket and were attempting to commandeer her car for their getaway.

Booked into the County Jail in downtown San Diego on suspicion of homicide, robbery and auto theft Tuesday were Ronnie Davis Williams, 20; Prentice Byrd, 19, and Jessie Lee Stuart, 19, all of San Diego. The men were being held without bail. Authorities initially believed only two assailants were involved in the robbery and shooting, but learned of the third suspect after questioning the first two.

Sheriff John Duffy said it was unlikely that Bazer’s assailants recognized her as a law enforcement officer. Her trainee uniform--forest green pants, a white shirt and a black tie--bore no identifying badges, and she was wearing a civilian jacket over it, he said.

“We’re not maintaining she was taking any official law enforcement action,” Duffy said. “She was simply in the wrong place at the right time.”

It also was unlikely that Bazer was armed, sheriff’s officials said. Trainees at the sheriff’s academy had been issued their service revolvers Monday and received their first lecture on firearms use. But they had been ordered not to carry their weapons.

Two guns were recovered from a truck allegedly stolen by the suspects and neither was a service revolver, Duffy said.

Bazer will be accorded full law enforcement honors at a memorial service at 2 p.m. Friday at College Avenue Baptist Church, 4747 College Ave. At her request, her body will be cremated, the sheriff said.

The only San Diego County sheriff’s deputy to die in the line of duty was killed in 1865, according to the department.

Williams, Byrd and Stuart all have prior criminal records, according to court records and law enforcement sources.

Two men robbed a Safeway market at 8702 St. George St. in Spring Valley a little after 7 p.m. Monday, forcing an assistant manager at gunpoint to open the store’s safe.

According to Duffy, the robbers expected their getaway car--a red pickup truck stolen earlier Monday in Southeast San Diego--to be waiting for them outside. But it was not.

Instead, they tried to steal a truck in the store’s parking lot, but were unable to release the emergency brake, Duffy said.

The robbers fled the lot, jumped over a wall and ran toward a house at Safford Avenue and St. George Street, where Bazer was getting out of her car, keys in hand, to visit her sister-in-law.

An eyewitness standing in a nearby yard heard one of the thieves say, “Here’s our ride,” according to Duffy.

Witnesses said Bazer ran from the assailants, crossing St. George Street. She was shot once in the back from a distance of five or six feet and collapsed on a lawn opposite her relative’s home, Duffy said.

Deputy Pat Hardigan, whom Bazer had been dating, was the first officer to reach the shooting scene after responding to the supermarket robbery call, the sheriff said. Bazer was taken by ambulance to Grossmont Hospital and was pronounced dead at 8:23 p.m.

The two assailants drove Bazer’s blue-gray Mustang a short distance, but when a third man drove up in the stolen truck, they abandoned the car and jumped into the truck bed, Duffy said.

Border Patrol officers cruising for illegal aliens spotted the truck and, suspecting that it contained illegal aliens, chased it into Bonita. One of the men apparently was bounced from the truck bed and slipped away undetected by the Border Patrol, Duffy said. The others stopped the truck and fled.

Officers found two guns, ski masks, and a bag containing money and receipts from the Safeway store in the truck.

About 80 officers and reserves from the Sheriff’s Department, San Diego and National City police departments, and the Border Patrol quickly undertook an intensive search in the vicinity, aided by helicopters and trained dogs.

“The strategy was simply to contain them and keep them pinned down in the area until we could get some daylight or apprehend them,” Duffy said.

Searchers found Williams hiding in brush in an open field near Bonita Road and Central Avenue about 3:40 a.m., officials said. An area resident, awakened by the roar of helicopters over her home, discovered Byrd in her backyard and called police, who arrested him about 6:40 a.m.

Stuart was arrested about an hour later after a Central Avenue resident flagged down patrolling officers and told them there was someone in her garage. Stuart ran from the building and was caught about a block away.

Both Williams and Stuart were arrested by San Diego Police Reserve Officer Joe Bravo, 24, a grocery store clerk with one year of reserve experience, according to Sgt. John Welter, police reserve administrator.

Homicide detectives were continuing their investigation. Duffy said the accused men probably would be arraigned today in San Diego Municipal Court.

Bazer, a 1975 graduate of Granite Hills High School in El Cajon, had wanted to be a county sheriff’s deputy since she was a teen-ager, Duffy said.

“Her father told me that, though he had lost a daughter, I had lost a potentially very good deputy sheriff,” Duffy said. “And I’m sure he was right.”

Times staff writers Daniel M. Weintraub and Rachel Reynolds contributed to this report.