O.C. Deputy Slain at Store

An Orange County sheriff’s deputy was killed early Saturday when a gunman sprayed his cruiser with dozens of bullets in an apparent ambush outside a Lake Forest convenience store.

Deputy Brad Riches, 34, is the first Orange County deputy fatally shot while on patrol since 1958.

Five hours after the shooting, authorities arrested a 39-year-old Lake Forest man, who allegedly walked into the minimarket with an assault rifle and told the clerk that his intention was not to rob the store but to use the weapon against police.

Riches suffered a dozen bullet wounds while he still sat in his patrol car. The deputy didn’t have time to draw his weapon, according to Sheriff Mike Carona, but did manage to put out an emergency radio call.

“He never had a chance to get out,” said Robert Bombalier, who was cleaning up at his martial arts center doors away from the store when the shots started about 1 a.m. Saturday. “There was so much blood. . . . I wish I could have saved him.”

A surveillance videotape recorded at the store moments before showed an armed man strolling into the shop and purchasing a pack of cigarettes.

According to Lt. Tom Garner, the man told the terrified clerk: “Don’t worry about this, I’m not here to rob the place.” Then, authorities said, he told her that he carried the weapon “to protect myself from the pigs.”

The videotape later provided a key break in the case when a detective recognized the man as someone he had arrested several weeks earlier. About 6:30 a.m., investigators arrested Maurice Gerald Steskal near his Lake Forest home, a few blocks from the 7-Eleven.

Steskal’s roommate said Saturday that the unemployed factory worker was furious over his recent arrest and regularly railed against the government and police, who he believed were watching him.

The shooting brought grief and shock to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which is unaccustomed to such violence against deputies, and to the quiet bedroom community of Lake Forest, which until April had reported just one homicide in the last year and a half.

Carona, speaking at the Mission Viejo hospital where Riches was pronounced dead, likened the death to losing a family member.

“Every single day a man or woman in this department puts on a gun, he risks his life. But today, you see it vividly,” he said.

“When one of my family, one of my deputies, is lying on a table dead, we understand that we’re vulnerable,” he added, “but we’re not going to roll over on our backs and let the criminals run over our communities.”

Lake Forest residents were also trying to come to terms with the crime.

“That’s probably the sleepiest 7-Eleven in the entire county,” said Larry Williams, a retired businessman who lives nearby and regularly buys newspapers at the store. “To hear about this sort of stuff happening here is pretty shocking.”

Riches, a nine-year veteran deputy whose hobby was carpentry, had built the wall of honor for the five deputies slain since the department started patrolling Orange County in 1889.

He spent eight years working in the jails before transferring 10 months ago to Lake Forest, according to the Sheriff’s Department. Officials said he regularly stopped by the 7-Eleven during his shift.

Divorced, Riches had no children. He leaves behind his father, Bruce, his mother, Meriel, and a brother, Robert.

“He was the kind of person who would give you the shirt off his back even if it was his last shirt,” said Dennis Strom, a friend of Riches. “Sometimes the really good people are taken early.”

It was about 1 a.m. when martial arts instructor Bombalier noticed Riches’ patrol car pull into the parking lot of the strip mall at Muirlands Boulevard and Ridge Route Drive.

The deputy had not even put the car’s gear in park when rapid fire rang out.

As the shots ended, Bombalier bolted for the door. He saw the gunman drive away and noticed Riches lying in his cruiser with wounds to his arm and chest.

The gunman had fired 31 times at the car. Bullets had torn through the deputy’s bulletproof vest and almost severed his arm, officials said. Bombalier ran to the deputy’s side.

“I asked him, ‘Are you OK?’ There was no response,” Bombalier said. “I checked his pulse. He was still alive. Strong pulse but fast.”

The martial arts instructor grabbed a phone and called police. Meanwhile, the 7-Eleven’s clerk rushed outside screaming. Bombalier said he returned to the patrol car and switched off the engine.

“At that point, his pulse died out,” Bombalier recalled. “He died in front of me, there’s no doubt about it.”

After watching an enhanced version of the store’s video footage, a deputy recognized Steskal from a recent arrest. The deputy, Andre Spencer, “knew the suspect as being aggressive, assaultive and non-compliant with law enforcement,” Carona said.

Deputies began staking out Steskal’s apartment on Lake Forest Drive about 5:20 a.m. An hour later, they watched him leave home with his former wife and drive away. The suspect had shaved off his mustache between the time of the shooting and his leaving the apartment, Carona said. Deputies stopped the car 10 minutes later and arrested him. Steskal was later booked on suspicion of murder.

In 1990, Steskal was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence and was arrested again three months ago on suspicion of resisting and obstructing a police officer, Garner said.

Steskal’s roommate, Cherie Brockway, said Steskal had complained about the arrest, which had followed a traffic stop. He told Brockway that deputies had strip-searched him on a busy street.

“He was against the government and police,” she said. “He thought that they were trying to control us.”

But Brockway said Steskal was good to her three teenage children and never expressed any plans for revenge over the arrest.

“It was hard for me to picture Maurice doing something like that,” Brockway said, “but I saw the video [on television news] and that was him carrying the gun” into the store.

Steskal’s aunt said she knew nothing about his run-ins with police. “He has always been nice to us,” said Dorothy Reilly, who lives in South County. “I can’t believe he’d do anything like this.”

Riches is the first officer killed in Southern California this year, according to Al LeBas, executive director of the California Peace Officers Memorial Foundation.

The deputy is the sixth in Orange County to die in the line of duty in the department’s 110-year history. Although two sheriff’s deputies have been killed on duty in the last 11 years, neither was slain on patrol.

Deputy Mark S. Tonkin, 31, died in 1988 in a helicopter crash during a surveillance operation near the Mexico border. Deputy Darryn L. Robbins was shot and killed by his partner on Christmas Day 1993 during an impromptu training exercise behind a Lake Forest movie theater.

Colleagues were shaken by Riches’ killing.

“I just know he got slaughtered out there,” said Sgt. Wayne Quint, president of the Deputies Assn. of Orange County. “He never had a chance.”

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Deputy Shot

Early Saturday morning Deputy Brad Riches, 34, was fatally shot while on regular patrol. The shooting occured outside a Lake Forest 7-Eleven convenience store.