Police Shooting Suspect Called Public Pest

Mark Phelps, charged with shooting it out with two sheriff’s deputies last weekend before abruptly giving himself up to a confused furniture salesman Sunday afternoon, is no stranger to North County law enforcement officers.

His home had been declared a public nuisance by Vista city officials; sheriff’s deputies had been to his house more than half a dozen times in 1986, confiscating drugs and guns on two occasions, and he was known to authorities as being no friend of the police.

“While en route to the Vista Detention Facility, Phelps said he lost respect for the system and now it’s time to kill some cops,” Oceanside Police Officer John White wrote in an arrest report after picking up Phelps for an outstanding traffic warrant in March, 1986.

White described Phelps as being in a “violent rage,” noting in his report that “he was yelling and moving around (in the back seat of the patrol car), saying cops are going to die.”

Later, at the jail, Phelps “slammed his head into the steel wall by the intake gate and afterwards he said, ‘I feel better now,’ ” White wrote in a report contained in Vista Superior Court files.

Butted Deputy’s Head

Phelps then butted his head against a deputy sheriff’s head, knocking the jail deputy off balance and sparking yet another struggle, those records show. Officers subdued Phelps by kicking him in the groin and placing a sleeper hold on him, rendering him momentarily unconscious, a Sheriff’s Department report shows. Phelps later pleaded guilty to assaulting the officer but failed to appear for sentencing.

Last October, Phelps--known to his neighbors on San Luis Rey Avenue in Vista for his quick, violent temper and obnoxious public behavior--was arrested after firing a rifle at a car being driven by his wife, Pam.

“ ‘I just get so damn mad at her,’ ” Phelps told a neighbor after the incident, the neighbor recalled Monday. “ ‘Pam makes me so jealous.’ ”

He forfeited a $10,000 bond when he failed to show for a court appearance on that assault charge, and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest--an arrest which Deputy James Bennetts tried to make last Friday night.

Bennetts spotted Phelps driving his red Chevrolet Corvette and tried to pull him over, but Phelps instead sped off, with Bennett giving chase with red lights flashing and siren blaring.

On a rural street in eastern Vista, Phelps abruptly stopped his car and opened fire on Bennetts with a fully automatic .45-caliber weapon, Sheriff’s Department spokesman Lt. John Tenwolde said.

Bennetts was hit in the right shoulder and by the time backup help arrived, Phelps had taken off on foot, sparking a two-day manhunt that ended quite by chance. On Sunday afternoon, another deputy, Al Mackrille, spotted Phelps driving westbound on California 78 through Escondido, east of Interstate 15.

Knew He’d Been Spotted

Phelps realized he had been spotted, turned northbound on I-15, then crossed the freeway’s median and headed back south on I-15, then west again on 78, according to Tenwolde, who at a press conference Monday released a detailed recounting of the event.

At the Nordahl Road overpass on California 78, Phelps pulled to the shoulder, and Mackrille pulled his patrol car to the center median. Phelps “immediately opened fire on the deputy, across two traffic lanes, with an automatic rifle,” Tenwolde said. Mackrille returned fire with his shotgun. Phelps repositioned his car and fired again, and this time Mackrille fired back with his service revolver.

Next, Tenwolde said, Phelps drove the wrong way up the Nordahl on-ramp onto westbound 78, and Mackrille followed. At the top of the on-ramp, Phelps “waited to ambush” Mackrille with another burst of gunfire before fleeing to the parking lot of the Levitz furniture store, the spokesman said. Phelps, now on foot and running for the store, fired one final time at the deputy while Mackrille, using his patrol car’s public address system, warned people in the parking lot to take cover.

Inside the furniture store, “Phelps came into contact with a store employee who managed to take one of Phelps’ weapons away from him,” Tenwolde said. “Phelps laid down his second weapon and was ushered out the back of the store by the employee.” There, he was taken into custody by another deputy, Tenwolde said.

Held Without Bail

Phelps, 27, was being held without bail Monday in the County Jail in Vista. He is expected to be arraigned Wednesday on two counts of attempted murder of a police officer.

His wife, Pam Phelps, 29, declined comment Monday and referred calls to the couple’s attorney, David McKenzie. McKenzie said he was reluctant to discuss the case, since he had not yet been retained, except to say that arrangements were being made Sunday for Phelps to surrender to police.

McKenzie said his partner, Tom Connolly, was discussing with a sheriff’s detective on Sunday afternoon arrangements for Phelps to turn himself in, and that at some point during those discussions, Phelps was having his final run-in with Mackrille.

“The timing was bad,” McKenzie said.

“He is scared,” McKenzie said after meeting with Phelps at the jail on Monday. “He was afraid for his life (on Sunday).”

For its part, the Sheriff’s Department indicated it didn’t take much stock in Phelps’ supposed plans for surrender. “A person running around with a fully automatic rifle” doesn’t appear to be preparing to give himself up, Tenwolde remarked Monday. He said the department had hoped Phelps would surrender peacefully, but that there were no indications it would happen.

Meanwhile, neighbors on San Luis Rey Avenue were expressing some relief Monday that Phelps was behind bars.

Complained to Police

One neighbor, who like the others spoke on condition he not be identified, said he had complained continuously to the Sheriff’s Department about Phelps’ behavior.

He said he had seen Phelps time and time again put guns inside his car and was frustrated that police had not reacted to his complaints. Sheriff’s Deputy Milt Cherne said there was not sufficient probable cause to act on all of the complaints the department had received about Phelps.

Another neighbor said she and her husband had complained directly to Phelps about the activity at his home, including round-the-clock noise, boisterous and profane language, and a steady flow of short-term visitors who often parked on neighbors’ yards.

“My husband would talk to him like a son and say, ‘Mark, you’ve got to get out of what you’re doing.’ And Mark would say, ‘Yes sir, yes sir.’ But he didn’t, and it was obvious to everyone what was going on there,” the neighbor said.

Finally, more than 30 neighbors along the street signed a petition in December asking the Vista City Council to declare the home a public nuisance. The petitioners described the Phelps household as a “dangerous menace” to the neighborhood, having created “a climate of fear and degradation.”

In January, the City Council, citing an array of building and zoning violations because of an illegal garage conversion, junk and trash in the yard, inoperative vehicles and the constant law enforcement problem at the home, declared the house a public nuisance and ordered monthly reports from its city staff and the Sheriff’s Department.

Seven Reports in 1986

The Sheriff’s Department report to the city noted seven formal reports taken at the Phelps home during 1986, in addition to other calls for service at the house in which no reports were taken.

The incidents ranged from preserving the peace, when Pam Phelps left her husband and asked for police protection, to disturbing the peace, to domestic violence.

Deputies at one point discovered a cache of weapons and uncovered a methamphetamine manufacturing lab in a one-time children’s stone playhouse in the backyard, but the seizure was ruled illegal because of an invalid warrant. Another time, when Phelps was arrested for shooting at his wife as she drove off in her car, deputies discovered “a quantity of meth,” but that discovery was also ruled inadmissible in court because it lacked the requisite warrant.

Neighbors complained again and again about Phelps’ behavior, saying he once smashed in a car with a sledgehammer and charging another time that he used a pickax to destroy tires on another car. Neighbors talked of screaming, obscenities, profanities and all-night construction sounds.

Phelps himself admitted many of the complaints were valid; in an interview with the Escondido Times-Advocate newspaper in December, he said he allowed others to manufacture drugs at his house because he needed the income to make necessary home repairs.

On Monday, friends at his house said they were frustrated by the neighbors’ complaints. “He’s an all-right guy,” a man who identified himself as Wesley said as he worked on remodeling Phelps’ kitchen.

Another man, identifying himself only as Doug, said: “So what if he likes automatics? He likes weapons. And yeah, there’s a lot of activity around here. That’s because Mark’s got a lot of friends.”