It May Have Been a ‘Joke,’ but It Was Fatal

In the final hours of a three-day bender, Cliffwyn (Buzzy) Sewell picked up the phone Monday evening and told sheriff’s deputies in the Pico Rivera substation that there was a family disturbance at his home and that someone had a gun.

He was lying.

His mother, wheelchair-bound and suffering from heart ailments, quickly made a second call to the deputies saying that it was all a mistake, that the son who lived with her was drunk and didn’t know what he was doing.

But in less than an hour, Sewell, with a knife in his hands, was dead--literally blown apart by a deputy’s shotgun blast at point-blank range that left his mother drenched in blood.

Now his family, neighbors, the Sheriff’s Department and district attorney’s office are retracing the few seconds that led up to his death, the third shooting by a deputy in three days.

Was this the case of a crazed man taunting deputies to “kill me, kill me” as he lunged toward them with an 8 1/2-inch kitchen knife, or was it simply a drunken man making a bad practical joke with a tragic punch line?

“Arrest me? They’ll probably blow me away,” Sewell said with a grin to his mother only minutes before deputies did just that.

The Rivera Villa apartment building on Passons Boulevard where Sewell, 40, lived with his elderly mother is known in the neighborhood as the “Hellhole.”

It is a three-story building of 90 small, inexpensive apartments where deputies routinely roam the hallways and courtyard in response to reports of fights, family disturbances and guns.

They come with shotguns and “an attitude,” according to neighbors.

Deputies had often visited the Sewell apartment since he moved in last August, according to his mother, Gralvine Enriquez.

“He’d get drunk once a month when his check came in,” Enriquez said. “He never hurt anybody, he was just a nuisance, he talked a lot. . . . (Deputies would) tell him to just sleep it off, and he would,” she said.

Neighbors tell a similar story of a short--5-foot-4--chubby man who was harmless. “Even with a knife, he’s the kind of guy you could just slap down,” said one neighborhood youth.

“He drank a lot, but he was no trouble. He was a real sweet man,” said another neighbor.

Still, Sewell had a criminal record--having been arrested over the years for several nonviolent felonies, according to his family. Once he served jail time for car theft. He had drifted from one odd job to another, painting houses and doing handyman work. He left no wife or children, and his family is wondering how they will pay for his funeral.

Four sheriff’s deputies responded to Sewell’s call.

With guns drawn, including the shotgun carried by Deputy Anselmo Gonzalez, 26--a five-year veteran of the force--they came to Sewell’s ground-floor apartment just before 9:45 p.m.

Enriquez sat in her wheelchair, wedged in the narrow doorway. “They’re going to arrest you,” Enriquez said she told her son as they arrived. Whether he panicked at the thought of going to jail again, or simply was taking his buffoonery another step, Sewell said, “I’m going to get a knife,” according to Enriquez. “It was just like him, just like a kid . . . and then I heard silverware rattling.”

Could Only Guess

According to Lt. Darrell Gordon, of the sheriff’s homicide division, Sewell stood behind his mother with his hands behind his back. “The deputy told him to raise his hands and he had an 8 1/2-inch knife,” Gordon said.

“The officer said, ‘He’s got a knife!’ and the next thing I knew I had the barrel of a gun in my face,” said Enriquez, who sat between the deputies outside the apartment and her son in the living room.

The only thing sure about the next several seconds is that Sewell died of a single shotgun blast to the chest.

Gordon said deputies reported that Sewell screamed, “Kill me, kill me” before advancing toward them with the knife over his head.

“Gonzalez was in fear of his own life and those around him. . . . There was only one thing left to do and he did it,” Gordon said. According to sheriff’s policy, the officer in the field has to make the determination as to whether he or others are in danger, and then he makes the call on what is appropriate action, Gordon said.

Neighbors, who could hear the exchange between Sewell and deputies, and Enriquez said they do not recall Sewell asking to be shot, but admitted that things happened quickly.

Enriquez said she cannot imagine how a short, fat man like her son could have proved such a threat to the deputies. To get near them, Enriquez said, Sewell would have had to jump over her and her wheelchair.

The shooting at the “Hellhole” marked the 13th time this year that sheriff’s investigators had been called to conduct an inquiry into an officer-involved shooting--an inquiry that occurs anytime an officer discharges his gun. Less than a day after Sewell’s shooting, another fatal incident would open the 14th such investigation.

That is roughly the same level of shootings by sheriff’s personnel during the same period last year--a year in which they set an all-time record of 43 people shot, including 18 fatalities. All 43 shootings were ruled justifiable.

Serving Search Warrant

In the latest shooting, sheriff’s narcotics officers were serving a search warrant on a home in the 1400 block of East 99th Street on Tuesday afternoon.

Informed that the occupants of the split-level home might be armed, deputies entered and detained four people for questioning, according to a sheriff’s spokesman.

During a search of the home, deputies heard a noise in the attic and spotted a man, later identified as Joseph Turner, 26, as he somehow broke through the attic wall to the first floor roof level in an apparent attempt to flee, investigators said.

A deputy on the outside, whose name was not released, ordered Turner to freeze, officers said. But Turner turned and reached back into the attic. Believing Turner was arming himself, the deputy fired, fatally wounding Turner. No weapon was found in Turner’s possession, investigators said.

Heavy Weapons Fire

About an hour after the shooting, Los Angeles police and California Highway Patrol officers, who were stationed outside, came under heavy automatic weapons fire from inside the 99th Street home, police said.

Between 30 and 40 rounds were fired, one narrowly missing a CHP officer, but no injuries were reported and the gunman or gunmen escaped, Sgt. Steve Grenier of the LAPD’s Southeast Division said. The sheriff’s narcotics officers were serving their warrant within the Police Department’s jurisdiction.

Sheriff’s officials had no immediate comment on Grenier’s statement.

Deputies said they found two AK-47 assault rifles and a “quantity” of cocaine in the home. The four people who were originally detained were held for questioning.

Times staff writer Nieson Himmel contributed to this article.