Rights Suit Against Deputies in Boy’s Death Rejected

A U.S. District Court judge has thrown out a civil rights lawsuit filed by the parents of a 16-year-old Moorpark boy who was struck and killed by a train last year while running from sheriff’s deputies.

But a wrongful-death claim against the county is expected to go forward in state court in the coming months.

Earlier this year, the parents of Drew Diederich sued the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and two of its deputies after their son’s civil rights were allegedly violated during a traffic stop in Moorpark.

The federal lawsuit alleged that the deputies taunted Diederich while he was under the influence of LSD, a hallucinogen, and allowed him to run into a dangerous area where he was hit by a train.

“They teased him and asked him if he was seeing spiders and snakes,” said Los Angeles attorney Samuel Paz, who is representing Diederich’s parents.

“After they did that, he ran away and the officers simply watched him run,” Paz said. “They knew that he was running toward a train track and they didn’t try to stop him.”

But U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins ruled that even if the deputies provoked Diederich--and lawyers for the department contend they did not--such conduct does not amount to a constitutional violation of a person’s civil rights.

“The court does not doubt that teasing an intoxicated teenager was ill-considered and unprofessional,” Collins wrote in her order. “But it did not demonstrate deliberate indifference to Diederich’s well being.”

Collins granted a motion filed by the Sheriff’s Department to dismiss the federal claims. Lawyers said the case is now expected to proceed on grounds of wrongful death in Ventura County Superior Court.

Oxnard attorney Philip Erickson, who is representing the Sheriff’s Department and Deputies Paul Ferruzza and Jeffrey Lawrence, said he does not expect the case to hold up any better in state court.

“I think it would meet the same result,” he said.

Erickson said sober witnesses at the traffic stop said they had no idea that Diederich was going to flee the scene. He said neither of the deputies chased Diederich after he ran from the area.

A continuation school student, Diederich was one of four teens stopped by police on the night of May 23, 2000, in Moorpark.

A sheriff’s deputy spotted a carload of teens pulling out of a Vons parking lot and called for backup as he pulled them over at High and Walnut streets.

The officer said he believed the occupants of the vehicle had been using drugs and he ordered Diederich and three others out of the car. A search of the car uncovered marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

Police said Diederich bolted and jumped an 8-foot, chain-link fence onto nearby railroad tracks and then stared down an oncoming freight train until it ran him over.

Diederich had been enrolled in a drug abuse program at the time of his death, and his use of LSD that night is undisputed. The teen’s death was ruled a suicide--a conclusion his parents have contested.