Despondent Ex-Officer Rapes Girl, Then Kills Himself

A former Santa Ana police sergeant, who had been distraught since he lost his job, handcuffed a 14-year-old girl and raped her at his Riverside County home before putting a revolver in his mouth and killing himself on a mountain road, authorities said.

James Earl McDonald, 39, was declared dead of a single gunshot wound to the head at the intersection of California 18 and California 330 near the mountain community of Running Springs, where he had parked his pickup truck Saturday evening.

The Newport Beach girl, who had been handcuffed inside the pickup, was freed by a California Highway Patrol officer who had been alerted by a passing motorist, according to San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Detective Warren Nobles.

The girl, whose name was withheld, was treated at Mountain Community Hospital near Lake Arrowhead and released to her parents early Sunday morning, Nobles said.

McDonald apparently befriended the girl when she was a student in his scuba-diving class at the Explorer Sea Scout’s Newport Beach dock at 1931 W. Coast Highway.

McDonald started the diving program for the young scouts, girls and boys older than 14, about six months ago, said Andy Fitzpatrick, sea base director with the Explorer Scouts. About 20 youths, including the girl, had completed the course.

On Saturday morning, the girl and two girlfriends were sailing in Newport Bay, Boy Scout executive Buford Hill said. McDonald was repairing a boat motor on the dock and had talked with the girls when they tied up.

At some point, Hill did not know when, the 14-year-old walked off by herself to a MacDonald’s restaurant for lunch.

Police said McDonald met her at the fast-food restaurant about 2 p.m. and that she willingly got into his pickup truck.

Once inside, however, McDonald handcuffed her and drove to his home at Lake Elsinore in Riverside County, where he sexually assaulted her, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s spokesman Jim Bryant said.

McDonald locked the handcuffed girl in the camper shell of his truck and then drove north toward Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear Lake, Bryant said, adding that the girl was “dozing on and off throughout the ordeal.”

About 8 p.m., Bryant said, McDonald parked the pickup in an area off the road where highways 18 and 330 intersect. He then placed a .38-caliber revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

A motorist passing by 30 minutes later thought he saw someone hurt inside the pickup and flagged down a CHP patrol car, Nobles said.

CHP Officer Casey Boss broke the rear window of the camper shell and freed the girl, Nobles said.

“I think the further he went he thought there is no way out, ‘I can’t face this, I’ll just handle it myself.’ ” Hill said, bewildered Monday by the horrible sequence of events. “We’ll never know what he thought.”

McDonald began working as a volunteer scuba instructor in the Sea Scout program at the suggestion of a psychiatrist who was treating him for depression after he was fired from the Police Department in 1986, according to records from a workmen’s compensation case he filed.

The hearing in that case concluded last week, and a decision is pending.

McDonald’s attorney, Seth Kelsey, said McDonald was “very emotional” following the hearing last week. “He expressed concern over what he felt was inaccurate testimony from the city’s witness,” Kelsey said. “But he appeared to be somewhat relieved that the story had come out in a manner that made sense.”

Kelsey charged that McDonald had lost his job on a technicality.

“They would just cut him no slack,” said Kelsey, who represents the police officers’ union. “It was through no fault of his own.”

However, Santa Ana police spokeswoman Maureen Thomas said that McDonald was “deemed terminated” because of unexcused absences from work after his demotion from sergeant to patrol officer.

McDonald was a 17-year veteran of the Santa Ana Police Department when his career unraveled in a few quick months in 1986. He was demoted to patrol officer in April for allegedly lying to his superiors about a shooting-incident report. It dealt with a nonfatal shooting involving an officer under McDonald’s supervision, which McDonald allegedly had failed to report.

McDonald claimed that he had turned in the report and that it must have been lost. He had submitted the report twice before, only to have it returned to him for corrections, according to court records.

“He said he didn’t make a copy,” Kelsey said Monday. “He didn’t keep copies of every administrative report he wrote.”

The city’s Personnel Board upheld his demotion in July, 1986, on the grounds that he had lied and failed to turn in the report.

Besides the 1986 incident, McDonald was reprimanded about four years earlier for filing a vague police report. But his evaluations were not subpar; in 1982, as a patrolman, he received a top rating of 5, and in December, 1984, when he was already a sergeant, he was given a 4 rating, still above average, according to official records.

In November, 1982, however, he was rated 3, or average, on completing work on schedule. McDonald’s own assessment of himself was that he was a “hard-working sergeant with a minor problem with time schedules,” records show.

McDonald became extremely depressed following his demotion and requested and received a 30-day disability leave. He was fired in July--he was notified while at his therapist’s office--for failing to report for work after his leave expired. McDonald claimed that he did not realize his leave had expired and asked to be reinstated. His request was denied.

McDonald was “obsessed with proving his innocence” and had thought about killing himself and other members of the Police Department for at least a year, according to psychiatric evaluations included in the court files.

Dr. Jeffrey Moran, a psychiatrist who treated McDonald, wrote last May that the former sergeant said he “has no intention of acting on those ideas, but that they certainly trouble him,” according to the hearing records.

However, Moran also wrote in that report that he felt that McDonald “could become potentially violent and act out his aggression, not only against others, but also against himself.”

McDonald had been separated from Judy McDonald, his third wife, since last September, according to hearing records. For the last four years, he had lived in a mobile home that he purchased from his parents in a rural area of South Riverside, about five miles east of Lake Elsinore.

Neighbors said he only stopped by occasionally in recent months to feed two his two German shepherds.

One neighbor, who did not want to be identified, said that Judy McDonald once complained to her that her husband “was a cop and the job pressures made it hard for them to get along.” The same neighbor said that McDonald’s mother was having a “very hard time caring for her husband (McDonald’s father), who was ailing and in a nursing care home.”

The neighbor also said that McDonald’s wife came out to the mobile home on Monday. “Judy wanted to know if I saw anyone with him at the house on Saturday,” the neighbor said. “I said no.”

Becky Konye, another neighbor, said that she saw McDonald pull into his driveway in his late-model Chevrolet truck about 3:30 p.m. Saturday. She said the truck was gone when she checked again about 5 p.m.

McDonald had two children from his first marriage but lost contact with them several years ago. A Kansas native, McDonald came to Orange County when he was 9 years old and graduated from La Quinta High School in Garden Grove in 1966, according to a psychiatric report included in a court file. His grades were average, but he captained the school’s wrestling team and was involved in student government.

He joined the Navy after graduation and served “a couple” of tours of duty in Vietnam as an intelligence specialist. He saw no combat, according to the evaluation.

Boy Scout executive Hill said that McDonald had been a “fantastic” volunteer instructor with the Explorer Scouts’ coeducational diving program for the past year.

“We can’t see inside a guy’s head,” Hill said. “We do the best we can to screen. He had everything we wanted in his background. It’s a terrible thing to happen.”

Times staff writers Louis Sahagun and Jess Bravin contributed to this story.