‘Excusable Homicide’ in Fullerton : Charges Won’t Be Filed in Marine Beating Death

The Orange County district attorney’s office Wednesday decided not to press charges against two Cal State Fullerton football players in the beating death of an El Toro Marine, calling it an “excusable homicide” that was brought on by the victim’s own drunken, belligerent state.

The ruling drew immediate fire from the dead Marine’s parents, who said they would ask the U.S. Justice Department to look into the way Orange County authorities had handled the investigation of their son’s death.

“There should have at least been a trial,” said Ralph Bottjer, the Marine’s father and a resident of Long Island, N.Y. “Some kind of charges should have (been) brought, either manslaughter or second-degree murder or something. This is not the end of it.”

Neither of the football players, quarterback Carlos Siragusa, 21, and wide receiver John Gibbs, 22, would comment Wednesday on the decision.

‘Good News’

But Gibbs’ mother, Rebecca, of Oceanside, said: “That’s good news. We all have been through a lot. Prayers are the only things that carry you through times like this.”

Bryan Brown, a deputy district attorney, said senior prosecutors deliberated for two days before deciding not to charge the athletes in the April 7 beating death of Staff Sgt. Richard William Bottjer.

Bottjer, 30, died in a fistfight with Siragusa and Gibbs in a darkened parking lot across from a popular Fullerton nightspot. Bottjer and another Marine, Cpl. Thomas Duran, had scuffled with the athletes inside the bar minutes before and had taken the fight across the street after being kicked out by bouncers, according to police.

Bottjer, a flight information specialist at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, was pronounced brain dead 20 hours after the fight. His heart was later used in Orange County’s first heart transplant, implanted into a 26-year-old Huntington Beach man.

Stephan A. DeSales, an attorney representing Siragusa and Gibbs, said his clients were “relieved that the DA chose not to prosecute based on the facts of the case. It was almost as if you could hear a deep breath over the phone.

“I’m delighted that they reached the decision they did, although I am sure it isn’t going to satisfy the (Bottjer) family,” he added. “Nothing is going to satisfy them in terms of their loss.”

Suspensions Lifted

At Cal State Fullerton, football Coach Gene Murphy issued a statement approving of the prosecutor’s decision and saying he would immediately lift the suspension of Siragusa and Gibbs, both of whom were expected to start for the Titan football team before the incident. Murphy added that both players would forgo spring drills to concentrate on their classes but said he expected them to return to the team for fall practice.

The victim’s family said they were shocked by the decision and would continue to pursue the case until “justice is done.” Ralph Bottjer, the father, said he would work through the offices of his congressman, Rep. George Hochbrueckner (D-N.Y.) to seek federal intervention.

“I really didn’t expect this,” said Bottjer, who works as a quality control officer at Grumman Corp. “I think Orange County deserves better than it’s getting.”

A spokesman for Hochbrueckner, chief of staff Andy Kennedy, said the Long Island congressman was “very disappointed with the decision.”

“He wants to get the full basis for the decision, in addition to checking with federal authorities here and possibly state authorities in California,” Kennedy said. “To what extent we will conduct further investigation at this point is unclear. But this matter is not being dropped.”

Incorrect Reports

Since the fight at the bar and the subsequent heart transplant at UCI Medical Center, the Bottjer case has grown increasingly controversial. At one point, early reports of the fight, which were later proved incorrect, had Bottjer being pummeled and kicked to the ground by as many as eight football players.

That led to a rash of ugly incidents on the Cal State Fullerton campus, including threatening telephone calls to coaches and other school officials and the appearance of flyers denouncing the football team as “murderers.”

The case gained even more notoriety when the Bottjer family, upset that no one had been charged in their son’s death, brought their congressman into the fray. That prompted a demand by the mayor of Fullerton for an apology by Hochbrueckner.

Because of the sensitivity of the case, the Orange County district attorney’s office moved slowly in reaching its decision.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Brown said it was clear from interviews with as many as 25 witnesses that Bottjer had died in “mutual combat,” what basically amounted to a fair fight.

In addition, he said evidence showed that Bottjer had started the original scuffle in the bar and then challenged the football players to continue the fight once they were outside.

‘Was the Aggressor’

This was affirmed in the final police report by Sgt. Tony Hernandez, one of the lead investigators for the Fullerton police department. In talks with witnesses, Hernandez said it was clear that “Bottjer was the aggressor from the beginning.”

After being involved in the initial scuffle inside the bar with one of the football player’s friends, identified as auto parts salesman Reginald Lee, Fullerton police said Bottjer “continued to issue verbal threats and challenges to Reginald Lee, Siragusa and Gibbs. It was apparent that Bottjer was insistent on carrying the fight across the street and invited them to go across the street.”

Accompanied by Duran, Bottjer walked across the street and was followed by Gibbs, Siragusa and Lee. According to police reports, once in the parking lot of a pizza parlor, Bottjer squared off against Gibbs and Siragusa and threw the first punch, catching Gibbs in the jaw.

At that point, both Gibbs and Siragusa struck back almost simultaneously, police said. The first punch turned out to be the fatal blow, landing behind Bottjer’s left ear and causing severe trauma to his brain stem, authorities said. The second punch hit the Marine in the cheekbone, but by that time he was already unconscious.

At that point, police said, Siragusa and Gibbs turned their attention to Duran, who was fighting Lee. Duran was knocked down, only slightly injured.

“The fight was then over and the other guys left, leaving the Marines on the ground,” Hernandez said.

Brown said the pathologist found that the Marine “had been punched by closed fists and the evidence did not support his being kicked or hit by a karate blow.”

‘No Kicking’

“There was no kicking,” Brown said, refuting earlier reports that a crowd may have kicked the Marine to death. “The autopsy completely excludes kicking. The autopsy surgeon observed three linear lines near the left ear that are about one inch apart that are consistent with a fist and are inconsistent with a shoe or kicking.”

Brown said the fatal blow “struck on Sgt. Bottjer’s left rear part of the ear (and) caused the brain to sever from a mechanism that allows the head to move side by side while the brain remains stationary. Once that was severed there was hemorrhaging and the breathing stopped. This area behind those areas is an area that is very vulnerable to this kind of thing.”

Brown said prosecutors were also convinced that men from both sides had been heavily drinking, and he confirmed that Bottjer’s blood-alcohol level was 2 1/2 times the legal limit for being drunk at the time he was admitted to a hospital emergency room.

“It seems to be that if either side had been sober, the nondrinking side could have walked away from this thing,” Brown said.

Bottjer did have a history of alcohol problems. His drinking was cited as grounds for the separation from his wife last July, and court records show he was arrested for drunk driving in Huntington Beach in November.

As Brown explained it, just how drunk Bottjer was was of great concern to prosecutors. If he had been “falling-down” drunk, then the “mutual combat” and “excusable homicide” scenario may not have applied because there would have been evidence that others had possibly taken advantage of him in a drunken state, he said.

“Like someone rolling a drunk, that’s obviously not mutual combat,” Brown said. “We had to look at that carefully but it was clear to us from talking to everybody that Sgt. Bottjer wasn’t having any trouble walking or communicating and wasn’t showing the effects of a falling-down drunk.”

‘Developed Tolerance’

“He has had some problems with alcohol, so evidently he had developed some kind of tolerance to it,” Brown said.

Brown said “excusable homicide” was something that “you don’t see that often. It’s a situation where it takes an unusually placed blow to cause death. You see them once in a while but you don’t see someone dying from a blow from the fist. That is the rarity in this case.”

Brown telephoned Bottjer’s parents early Wednesday to inform them of the decision not to press charges. He said he understood their anguish but hoped they would “see that (the) Fullerton Police Department has done a thorough investigation. Hopefully the people involved will see that we have taken a very close look at this and that will resolve it.”

Times staff writers Robyn Norwood and Bob Schwartz contributed to this report.