Wife, Mother of Victim Sue in Fatal Shooting by Officer

The wife and the mother of John Joseph Kelley have filed wrongful-death lawsuits in federal court over his fatal shooting by a San Diego police officer one year ago Tuesday.

The lawsuits, filed by Kelley’s wife, Ruki, and his mother, Maria, against the San Diego Police Department and Officer Leslie Oberlies, seek unspecified damages for what they describe as civil rights violations.

A year ago, Oberlies, a 24-year veteran in the department’s criminal intelligence unit, responded to a call involving a child-custody case at a Denny’s restaurant in Mission Valley. Ruki Kelley had contacted police because her husband had taken two of their three children in violation of a temporary child-custody order.

Police investigators said John Kelley and his wife of nearly 10 years, both British subjects, agreed to meet at the restaurant to discuss their children. But Ruki Kelley phoned police instead.

Oberlies showed up alone, in plainclothes and an unmarked car. He recognized Kelley from a photo, police said. Kelley brushed by him in the parking lot, and Oberlies, who said he identified himself as a policeman, ordered him to stop, investigators said.

Kelley got into his car and, when he reached for the parking brake, Oberlies shot twice, believing that Kelley had a gun. Kelley slumped over; Oberlies fired three more rounds. After the shooting, police found Kelley unarmed.

“I don’t understand how a common child-custody issue could end with my husband being shot to death,” said Ruki Kelley, 31, who struggled to maintain composure during a news conference Tuesday. “I never dreamed the police would overreact this way and shoot an unarmed man.”

Although Oberlies was cleared of criminal charges by the San Diego County district attorney’s office, a Police Department internal review board--composed of three commanders, a sergeant and a member of the city attorney’s office--determined that Oberlies was wrong to have fired.

Police sources told The Times in June that Oberlies had been told to retire or risk being fired. At the time, Oberlies, 51, said he had been planning since 1983 to retire at the end of this year, once he had been on the force 25 years.

“Of course, it’s going to look like I’m running,” he said. “But I’m not.”

In an interview Monday night, Oberlies said he still plans to leave. He said the lawsuits were expected.

“I’m going to just sit back and let nature take its course,” he said. “This is like going to a 415 (a domestic disturbance) where the wife has called. You put the husband in custody, and the wife beats you up.”

Oberlies, who had been investigating the case before the shooting, told internal affairs investigators that he was afraid of Kelley because he had been described as a member of the Navy SEALs team, an expert marksman and had claimed to have beaten six men in a bar one night.

“I want to tell you, I’m scared . . . ‘cause I can’t whip this guy, and he knows it, and I know it,” he told investigators.

Ruki Kelley’s attorney, Gerald Davee, said Tuesday that John Kelley was not a SEAL and that other claims “were either his own ego talking or were things he would have liked to be.”

At the time of the shooting, Ruki and John Kelley had been separated about a week, but he had been calling her to try and reconcile, Ruki Kelley said.

He had taken the children when the couple met at a downtown Denny’s, and they planned to rendezvous at the Mission Valley Denny’s, she said.

John Kelley told Ruki he had purchased airplane tickets bound for London and was determined to take the children. For reasons she would not explain Tuesday, Ruki Kelley said she would have divorced her husband if they had stayed in the United States but would have stayed married if the couple had agreed to live in England.

“I wasn’t fearful of my husband,” she said. “I was concerned for the safety of my children. He said he would take them out of the country, and basically everything just got out of hand. I was scared.”

She said police had advised her not to show up at the Denny’s in Mission Valley.

Attorney Davee said he has not figured out why Oberlies, an intelligence officer, had been assigned to a child-custody case, a dispute “so common that the Police Department ordinarily doesn’t even answer the call.”

A source close to the Kelley family told The Times in June that he had a contact--a sergeant--in the Police Department’s intelligence unit. Last year, he had given the sergeant’s name to Ruki Kelley, who called him. The sergeant then assigned Oberlies to the case, according to the source.

A district attorney’s report on the shooting confirms that Sgt. Bill Campbell assigned Oberlies to the Kelley case.

John Kelley’s children, ages 9, 6 and 4, are “confused and angry and ask me what happened to their father, and if the police are really their friends and protect people,” Ruki Kelley said.

Slipping into silence at times while she discussed her husband, Ruki Kelley said John “was a fun-loving guy. He had a marvelous sense of humor. He always kept people laughing and joking and was always up to practical jokes. On the other side of him, he was a businessman. He enjoyed challenges as far as the business world was concerned.”

Attorney Don Warren said John Kelley had invested in a car wash service and limousine business.