Escondido Police Shooting Suit Pushed to Next Fall

Whether the City of Escondido should be held liable for the death of bank robbery hostage Leslie Landersman will not go to trial until next fall--more than four years after she was mistakenly killed by an Escondido police officer in a tumultuous shoot-out on a residential cul-de-sac.

Superior Court Judge Zalman Scherer on Tuesday set a Sept. 1 trial date for the wrongful death lawsuit, filed on behalf of Landersman’s husband, Mark Landersman, and her mother, Marlene Cook. The two have retained San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli for the trial.

The trial had been scheduled to begin Tuesday, but Scherer said there were no available courtrooms for the anticipated 21-day trial since North County superior courts are booked virtually solid with criminal cases, which take priority over civil lawsuits such as this one.

“What can I do? What’s my choice?” said Mark Landersman when asked by Belli associate Richard E. Brown if he was willing to wait until next September for the trial to begin.

“If somebody told me when this thing started that it would take four years (to go to trial), I’d still have to go through with it,” Landersman said. “What’s hard is getting built up today to have my day in court, and now to have to wait another 10 months. I want to get past this, the bad memories, so I can hang on to the good memories. My life has been on hold.”

Leslie Landersman was a 22-year-old secretary and newlywed who was abducted from her office on West Valley Parkway in Escondido by Timothy Harding minutes after Harding and two accomplices robbed a nearby bank on Aug. 26, 1983.

After escaping from police who forced his van to a stop and who captured the accomplices, almost in front of the Escondido Police Department, Harding ran to a nearby building and kidnaped Landersman, forcing her at gunpoint to drive her truck in a getaway attempt.

The two found themselves trapped on a cul-de-sac and Landersman’s pickup was disabled by police gunfire. As Landersman tried to escape from Harding, she was shot and killed by Officer David DeLange, a police investigation showed.

DeLange was indicted by a grand jury on charges of manslaughter, but was acquitted by a jury after testifying in his own defense that he did not see Landersman in his line of sight as he aimed at Harding. DeLange received a medical disability retirement from the city shortly afterward.

The lawsuit claims DeLange was negligent in firing his shotgun when Landersman was standing so close to Harding. It further claims that Escondido police officers were not properly informed of the department’s hostage policy and were not sufficiently trained to deal with such situations.

The city has maintained that DeLange acted within his discretion as a police officer and that, while the results of his actions were tragic, the city and he cannot be held liable.

Landersman’s family originally sought $14 million from the city when it filed its initial claim. Brown said the city twice has offered to settle the matter out of court but he characterized the city’s monetary offer as “pitifully low in relation to wrongful death awards we see in California.”

City Atty. Robert Gallagher termed the city’s settlement offer “eminently fair and equitable.”

Both sides have been prohibited by the court from disclosing the city’s offer.

Landersman’s husband, who still lives in Escondido, said Tuesday: “Its not a matter of money. We want to see someone held accountable for what happened. We need a sense of justice.