Death Penalty Weighed in Officer’s Slaying : Simi Valley: Neighbors share vivid memories of suspect in fatal shooting of Michael Frederick Clark.

While friends and colleagues mourned slain Simi Valley Police Officer Michael Frederick Clark on Saturday, prosecutors weighed whether to seek the death penalty for his accused killer, Daniel Allan Tuffree.

Neighbors, meanwhile, shared their vivid memories of Tuffree as a man who they said liked to shoot his guns at passing cars and whom they regarded as “just a bomb waiting to go off.”

Clark, the first Simi Valley officer to be fatally shot in the line of duty in the department’s 29-year history, was new to the force. He came from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Devonshire Division in the San Fernando Valley just five months ago in search of a better place for his family. He and his wife, Jennifer, lived with their 4-month-old son in Moorpark.

Clark was, his father said, “doing what he loved” when he confronted the suicidal Tuffree.

Tuffree, who underwent surgery Saturday for gunshot wounds, was no stranger to the police. Officers had answered numerous gunfire complaints at Tuffree’s house and had arrested him about two years ago on accusations that he shot up a passing pickup truck.

But after seizing Tuffree’s gun and holding him briefly that day in 1993, neighbors and investigative sources said, police let him go.

They even gave back his semiautomatic pistol, said a source close to the investigation.

And when police arrested Tuffree again on Friday after the shootout that killed Clark, another source said, they confiscated the same gun--a .40-caliber Glock.

Tuffree, 48, was never charged in the 1993 shooting, the source said, because the Ventura County district attorney’s office did not think the case was strong enough to go to court.

Ventura County Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin McGee declined to comment Saturday on the earlier shooting allegation involving Tuffree, saying it is still being looked into.

“I don’t know any details on that,” McGee said. “There’s a bunch of stuff that’s still under investigation.”

And Simi Valley Lt. Tony Harper said, “I cannot, nor would it be appropriate to, comment at this time on any cases we’ve dealt with previously regarding this individual.”

Tuffree went back to shooting and throwing rocks at passing cars and even blew out windows of adjacent buildings, neighbors said.

About a year ago, said Brian Henry, a neighbor, Tuffree shot out windows a hundred yards away from his house--firing across his own street, a set of railroad tracks and heavily traveled Los Angeles Avenue to hit the panes of an industrial building.

“He was always firing off his weapons,” said Brian Henry, 28, another neighbor. “The police came out here a lot.”

But Ronald Gonzales, who lives next door to Tuffree, said he never noticed anything vindictive or unusual about Tuffree.

“I’ve lived here eight or nine years. I’d see him going to work or coming home from work. He was always friendly,” said Gonzales, 44. “That was just a rumor about the guns. I never saw any.”

Charles Tuffree, 69, of Anaheim, a distant cousin of Daniel Tuffree, said he used to see Daniel when he and his wife first moved to California about 10 years ago. Although he had lost touch with his cousin, Charles Tuffree was still surprised to hear about Daniel’s alleged role in Friday’s shooting.

“It’s the last thing I would have imagined,” he said, describing Daniel as “sort of an egghead type” who played computerized chess.

Charles Tuffree recalled that Daniel was heartbroken when he separated from his longtime wife, Susan, several years ago.

“He was very quiet and studious,” Charles Tuffree said. “She was the one who was gregarious and talkative.”

Tuffree taught social studies at Chatsworth High School in the late 1980s, but it was not known what he did recently for a living.

A longtime teacher at Chatsworth High, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuffree appeared to undergo an emotional transformation during his brief teaching career at the school.

“I thought he was a likable fellow at first,” the teacher said. “But he seemed to be increasingly troubled. He became more and more introverted, keeping to himself, like he was depressed.”

Some colleagues at the time, according to this teacher, said Tuffree was deeply pained by a difficult divorce.

“I felt sorry for him because I saw a man I liked becoming more and more uncommunicative,” the teacher recalled. “He was a sad, sad man.”

On Friday, police officers rushed to Tuffree’s house on a report that he had called his insurance company and threatened to kill himself.

Tuffree talked briefly with Clark through an open door, police said, and then began shooting. Clark was hit once in the right forearm and once, fatally, in the back, coroner’s officials said.

Officers Tony Anzilotti and Michael Pearce shot back. They were unable to rescue Clark without exposing themselves to gunfire, police said.

SWAT officers drove an armored vehicle alongside the house to shield them long enough to retrieve their wounded comrade.

Clark, 28, was pronounced dead soon after at Simi Valley Hospital.

After a five-hour standoff, police fired more than two dozen tear gas and concussion grenades into the house. They surged inside, handcuffed Tuffree and hustled him off to Los Robles Hospital for treatment of gunshot wounds.

Prosecutors are weighing whether to pursue the death penalty against Tuffree, a sentence prosecutor McGee said is allowed in the murder of a police officer.

Tuffree underwent surgery Saturday at Ventura County Medical Center for five bullet wounds, said Sgt. Bob Gardner, a Simi Valley police spokesman.

“The hospital listed him as stable, alert and aware,” Gardner said.

Tuffree was held in the jail section of the hospital until surgery was finished. Then he was to be booked into the Ventura County Jail on suspicion of murder.

On Saturday morning, family members laid bouquets of flowers near the spot where Clark was gunned down.

“Last week, he told me he was so proud that he had used CPR to save someone who had a heart attack,” said his father, Frederick Clark, pausing to choke back tears.

“This call, this was a distress call,” he said of his son’s final moments. “He went out there to help someone who was in distress, who was suicidal. Again, he was trying to help someone. That was the kind of man Michael was.”

The mood was somber among police at the Simi Valley department and at the LAPD’s Devonshire Division.

Flags were lowered to half-staff, and officers pasted strips of black tape over their badge numbers in mourning.

They passed the hat around the Devonshire Division for donations for Clark’s wife and infant son, and there was talk of having his name carved into a stone memorial outside dedicated to officers killed in the line of duty.

Well-wishers deluged the Simi Valley police headquarters with flowers.

One woman walked in with her little daughter and placed a bouquet and an envelope of cash into a desk officer’s hand.

“There’s some money for the family,” she sobbed.

As they walked out, her daughter asked, “What are you crying for?”

“Hush,” the woman responded, and they scurried back to her car.

Strangers also left bouquets on the lawn of Tuffree’s house as detectives inside finished picking over bullet casings, empty tear-gas shells and other residue of the violent shootout.

Clark was the latest Los Angeles officer to take a job in the Simi Valley department, said Simi Valley Detective Randy Foushee, the department’s recruiter. Like the others, he had come in search of better pay, higher workplace morale and a safer place to raise a family.

Just weeks before his death, Foushee said, Clark was pestering him to hire a friend from the Los Angeles police.

Ironically, said Foushee, Clark and some other LAPD transplants have at times complained about the lack of action on duty in Simi Valley, which ranks consistently in FBI statistics as one of the most crime-free cities in the U.S.

In fact, he said, applicants must agree to join patrol officers for a ride-along before they can be hired.

“That’s one thing you try to impress upon them is, it is a lot slower pace out here,” Foushee said. The former Los Angeles officers “who do come and touch base with me--yeah, they overall wish it were a little bit busier.”

Mack Reed is a Times staff writer and Scott Hadly is a Times correspondent. Also contributing to this report were Times staff writers Nick Riccardi and Eric Slater and correspondents Rod Bosch, Tracy Wilson and Paul Elias.

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FYI

A trust fund has been set up at the main branch of the Simi Valley Bank for Officer Clark’s wife, Jennifer, and infant son. Checks can be made out to the Michael Clark Trust Fund and sent to Simi Valley Bank, 1475 E. Los Angeles Ave., Simi Valley, Calif. 93065. Checks and several large cash donations had already been dropped off at the bank by early Saturday, a bank spokeswoman said.