Report Clears Police in Suspect’s Death

The Oxnard Police Department is not criminally liable in the 1996 case of a man who died in police custody after being arrested on suspicion of driving drunk and causing a car wreck, the Ventura County district attorney’s office concluded in a report released Monday.

Although one prisoner complained that a police officer struck 55-year-old Luther Thomas Allen in the chest while he was in custody and another said Allen screamed for medical assistance to no avail, their claims were questionable, and the rest of the evidence shows that Allen repeatedly declined to be taken to a hospital, according to the report.

Therefore, neither the Oxnard Police Department nor any of its employees should be held criminally liable for allegedly failing to take proper care of Allen--whose blood-alcohol level was determined to be four times the legal limit--while he was in custody, wrote Deputy Dist. Atty. Greg Phillips.

“Luther Allen died as a result of massive trauma to his chest and abdomen caused by his intoxication and negligence in driving his truck,” Phillips wrote. “The Oxnard Police Department and its officers did not breach their duties to him.”

Relatives of Allen, who last year filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Oxnard over his death, could not be reached for comment Monday. Their attorneys also could not be reached for comment.

Allen was driving his Ford pickup truck south on Ventura Road about 4:25 p.m. Oct. 1, 1996, when he failed to stop for a red traffic signal, rear-ending a Cadillac and causing a chain reaction of accidents, police said. His speed on impact was 35 to 45 mph, witnesses estimated.

Two firefighters and a paramedic examined Allen, an Oxnard resident and retired Port Hueneme naval base worker, at the scene. They noticed no major external injuries but remarked that he smelled of alcohol and appeared to be intoxicated. Allen denied being drunk or injured and refused hospitalization, police said.

After Allen flunked a field sobriety test, Oxnard police arrested him on suspicion of driving under the influence and took him into custody, giving him two breath tests. The tests found Allen’s blood-alcohol level to be 0.25. A sample of Allen’s blood was later tested, and the blood-alcohol level was found to be 0.33--more than four times the legal limit, according to the report.

“Mr. Allen’s brother and sister-in-law told investigators that at 9 a.m. that day Allen was at their house drinking,” Phillips said in his report. “Their opinion was that Allen was a heavy drinker, drinking whiskey every day, and was possibly an alcoholic.”

At the police station, Allen repeatedly complained of chest pains but declined numerous times to be taken to the hospital, police said.

He was placed in a cell, where he was checked about every 10 minutes for approximately an hour before he was found unconscious about 7 p.m. He was pronounced dead at St. John’s Regional Medical Center within the hour.

According to an autopsy by Ventura County Coroner Ronald O’Halloran, Allen died of chest and abdominal injuries resulting from his accident, including a partial tear of the thoracic aorta, multiple rib fractures, a lacerated spleen, blood in the area between the lungs and heart, and blood in the abdominal cavity.

Several of the other arrestees in custody later gave accounts similar to those of police: that Allen was drunk and seemed to be in pain but did not ask for medical assistance.

However, two others--both of whom had prior convictions--gave different accounts of what happened while Allen was in the holding cell. One, a man whom Phillips said he was unable to find to re-interview, said he heard an officer mention that Allen was in pain because he’d been hit by another officer. Another, a woman with a long record of run-ins with Oxnard police, said that she heard Allen “going off” in his cell, screaming and waving his arms in a plea for help.

Because the woman “dramatically embellished” her version of events between her initial interview with Oxnard detectives and a video deposition she later gave, and because her testimony contradicts other evidence, Phillips concluded that the truthfulness of her account was questionable.

“During her time in custody, she has been assaultive, belligerent and generally disrespectful to authority,” Phillips wrote. “This and her unsupported claims as to Allen’s demeanor can only lead to the conclusion that [she] has an axe to grind or another agenda.”