PALMDALE : Woman Gets 2 Years in Fatal Drug Raid
A 32-year-old woman who scuffled with a sheriff’s deputy before a drug raid shootout in Palmdale last year that left her common-law husband and another deputy dead was sentenced Tuesday to two years in state prison for interfering with the raid.
Lancaster Superior Court Judge Thomas Stoever imposed the sentence on Dell M. Nickos of Palmdale, who pleaded no contest Dec. 10 to a felony count of resisting that results in the death of a peace officer. Under a plea bargain, she received the low-term sentence and had four other counts dismissed.
Sheriff’s deputies said Nickos, an admitted methamphetamine user, scuffled with one raiding deputy just before the May 11 shootout at her Palmdale mobile home. Deputy Richard B. Hammack, 31, was fatally shot by Nickos’ husband, John White, 37, before White was shot and killed by deputies.
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