Family, Friends Mourn Sheriff’s Deputy Killed in Traffic Accident

It was closing in on 6 p.m. when Senior Sheriff’s Deputy Lisa D. Whitney phoned her supervisor at home to tell him she was driving to Camarillo to interview witnesses in a rape case she was investigating.

“I told her it was late in the evening, why don’t you wait until tomorrow,” said Sgt. Dave Williams, who was on vacation. “But she was just one of those people who just wanted to do the job.”

An hour later, a pickup truck barreled through an intersection, which lacked working traffic signals, and slammed into Whitney’s unmarked patrol car, authorities said.

She was pronounced dead Wednesday night at a local hospital--touching off a tragedy that has devastated law enforcement officers from four agencies.

As a deputy, Whitney, 28, had won the respect of her colleagues by gaining a reputation as a proactive cop who tracked down criminals. As a wife, she shared her love for law enforcement with her husband, Sgt. Scott Whitney of the Oxnard Police Department. And as an equestrian, she was a member of her department’s mounted enforcement unit who had made many friends with her horse-riding counterparts from other police departments.

“She was a huntress who went after the bad guys with a vengeance,” Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Chuck Buttell said. “This is a tragedy that is almost indescribable to me . . . . I’m numb as is most of the department.

“Everybody knew Lisa Whitney and everybody was better for it.”

Her mother, Jan Bryant, described her daughter this way: “She was respected, determined, loyal and a very loving person. And that’s across the board to her family and friends.”

Whitney’s death while on duty is all the more tragic considering that in many ways she had just embarked on a new phase in her life.

She was just three weeks into a promotion to investigator, assigned to Williams’ sex crimes unit. Last weekend, Whitney and her husband had moved into a new home in Ventura. And today, according to family members, would have been her fifth wedding anniversary.

“She and her husband were really a tight and loving couple,” said Vance Johnson, Whitney’s uncle who is a former Ventura County sheriff’s detective. “Scott is a real trooper. He’s handling this as best as anyone could handle it.”

Ventura Police Lt. Carl Handy, who recently worked security with Whitney at the Ventura County Fair, described her as “someone who obviously enjoyed life.” Handy was already wearing a black band over his badge in memory of a Los Angeles police officer who was killed in an ambush earlier in the week.

“Unfortunately, we’re wearing black bands a lot these days,” Handy said. “It’s a pretty severe loss for all of us.”

As friends and family grieve over Whitney’s death, detectives from the Ventura Police Department are investigating the accident. Authorities are focusing on the actions of Tanya Dawn Pittman, a 36-year-old Ventura resident who was driving the pickup truck, which allegedly failed to stop at the disabled light and struck Whitney’s car.

Pittman was reportedly traveling west on Telephone Road in Ventura when she approached Hill Road about 6:50 p.m. About 10 minutes earlier, a transformer explosion had knocked out power to the intersection’s traffic signals.

As a result, witnesses told investigators, vehicles were taking turns crossing the intersection after first stopping--as required by law--when Whitney entered the intersection. She was traveling south on Hill Road in her patrol car and was in the left-hand turn lane when she was broadsided by Pittman.

Rescue workers from the Ventura County Fire Department used special equipment to remove Whitney from her car. She was taken to Ventura County Medical Center, where emergency room doctors pronounced her dead.

Pittman, who suffered a bruised knee and possible internal injuries, was treated at the county hospital and released Thursday. As is typical in fatal traffic accidents, investigators will interview witnesses, reconstruct the accident and examine toxicology results on Pittman, before presenting the case to the district attorney’s office for review.

“This is one of those things that could have happened to anybody,” Johnson said of his niece’s death at the accident scene Thursday. “It was just her time to go.”

Raised in Fillmore by her mother and stepfather--Jan and Chuck Bryant--Whitney began working in the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department’s personnel office in 1988.

Law enforcement had run in the family, given that her uncle worked for the Sheriff’s Department and her grandfather was the founder of the original Ventura County Search and Rescue Team.

When Whitney decided to follow in their footsteps and graduated from the sheriff’s academy in 1990, she received Johnson’s former badge, No. 119, at his request. It was at the academy that she met her future husband, Scott Whitney, whose two brothers also work for the Oxnard Police Department.

Together the young couple embarked on a promising life, with his being promoted to sergeant and she being named Officer of the Year in 1996 while working as a patrol deputy at the sheriff’s headquarters.

The next year, Lisa Whitney was promoted to senior deputy and a year later she transferred to the department’s Major Crimes unit where she had just begun work as a sex crimes investigator.

Williams, her supervisor, said he chose her for his unit because of the outstanding work she had done as a patrol officer.

“A lot of officers don’t like handling these kinds of cases because they’re sensitive and they require a lot of [report] writing,” Williams said. “But Lisa just excelled so, when we saw we were getting an opening we worked to get her here.”

A hard-charging cop, Whitney had a tender side too. The reports she wrote showed she was sensitive enough to solicit information from both victims and suspects, Williams said. And as an investigator, she had a knack for seeking out the truth even in complex cases involving adult suspects and child victims.

“She was really an advocate of the truth,” Williams said. “That’s where her focus was.”

But she wasn’t all business. Her friends and colleagues described her as an upbeat woman who “always had a smile on her face.”

She was excited to move into her new home partly because it had a yard for her beloved pet dogs--a miniature beagle and golden lab. And her love for horses was also well known, particularly for her horse Duke.

In 1993, Whitney joined her department’s Mounted Unit and also belonged to the Mounted Unit Honor Guard. She had recently attended the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Training Academy, where she had been invited back as an instructor.

Whitney’s mother said she started her daughter with horses when she was 4 years old, just as her father had done with her. The two women shared their hobby, with Jan on hand in Canada to watch Lisa train at the Royal Canadian academy.

“She took [her love for horses] and made it part of her career with the Sheriff’s Department,” Bryant said. “That was something that was very important to us.”

Janice Clancy, a senior sheriff’s deputy who rode with Whitney on the mounted patrol, described the joy she and Whitney had recently experienced when they used their horses to aid fellow deputies in controlling a rowdy crowd in Fillmore.

“Lisa and I were able to get in front of the crowd and push everybody back,” Clancy said. “We were saying ‘This is so great’ and slapping hands. We were two women on horses.”

On Thursday, Clancy and more than a dozen others paid their respects to Whitney by leaving bouquets of flowers at the accident scene, where a makeshift memorial was erected.

In addition to flowers and candles, friends and family members signed a note that read “We’ll Miss You.” Other colleagues left flowers on her desk.

“She probably touched more lives in her young career than many people do in their entire lives,” said Linda Groberg, an assistant deputy district attorney who lived next door to the Whitneys at their old house.

“I know she wanted to go far in the department, but she just didn’t get the chance,” Clancy added.

A formal department funeral is scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday at the First Baptist Church of Oxnard at 936 W. 5th St. Interment will follow at Ivy Lawn Cemetery at 5400 Valentine Road. Viewings will also be held in Ventura at Charles Carroll Funeral Homes at 15 Teloma Drive on Saturday and Sunday from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Times Community News staff writers Holly Wolcott and Joel Engardio contributed to this story.