The full implication of the most recent rightward movement in the constant swing of the pendulum between the polar opposite conceptions of what criminal justice reform in the State of California should be came too late to save Deputy Hector Cuevas Jr.’s life or spare the man now charged in his death, Ryan Dwayne Turner Jr, from what will very likely prove to be a lengthy or even lifelong prison sentence,
There is irony in the consideration that the lighter sentences that were meted out to Turner for his past criminal transgressions now mean, at least according to a significant number of local law enforcement professionals, that Turner will need to endure a long and sad consignment to prison. The sympathy of those sworn to uphold the law locally does not lie with Turner, however. Far worse, they say, indeed almost unbearable, for them is knowing that Cuevas is irretrievably gone and that they and Cuevas’s family will need to live through a loss of nearly infinitely greater dimension than Turner’s surrender of his freedom.
Turner and Cuevas were a half-generation and a world removed from one another.
Cuevas was born on January 26, 1989 in Los Angeles. His lineage included African, indigenous North American, European, Dominican, Puerto Rican and El Salvadoran roots. He was proud, it is said, to be identified as African American, though many who knew him only casually assumed he was Latino. He spent a major portion of his youth in Rialto, and attended Carter High School, where he was a standout on the football team and graduated in 2007.
Eventually, Cuevas matriculated at Central State University, a historically black land-grant college in Wilberforce, Ohio. While there, he played football and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration, graduating in 2013.
Shortly after his return to California, in 2015, Cuevas yielded to the call of the gridiron and returned to Carter High where he was installed as the Lions’ assistant freshman football coach.
In July 2019, after he graduated from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s Academy at Glen Helen, he was hired by the Upland Police Department as a patrolman. Three years later, he made a lateral transfer to the San Bernardino county Sheriff’s Department and was assigned to the Victorville Sheriff Station, where he was involved in patrol of that city and the Victor Valley District in general.
Turner was born on December 27, 2002, the son of Amy Bolinger and Ryan Dwayne Turner or Ryan Dwayne Turner Sr. Ryan Dwayne Turner’s mother was only marginally in his life when he was a young child, and as he grew, she left his life entirely, resulting in the San Bernardino County Department of Child and Family services twice seeking from her restitution for child support.
Under the care of his father, young Ryan did not get the best of guidance.
Records show that in December of 2004, when he was two years old, his father was convicted of possessing a switch blade knife, a misdemeanor. Thee followed a similar misdemeanor conviction in August 2005, for carrying a dirk or dagger; a felony conviction in November 2005 for felony battery with serious bodily injury; a January 2006 conviction of misdemeanor theft of personal property; an April 2007 misdemeanor conviction of possessing, manufacturing, or selling a dangerous weapon, a misdemeanor conviction in February 2011, when his son was 8 years old of driving with a suspended or revoked license and another conviction that same month of being in possession of dangerous drugs or a controlled substance; a May 2011 felony conviction of being in possession of dangerous drugs or a controlled substance and a June 2017 felony conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm.
By the time the younger Turner reached the age of 21, there was indication that the Turner apple had not fallen too far from the tree.
In July 2023, Turner Jr was arrested by the San Bernardino Police Department on a misdemeanor charge of stealing a motor vehicle, a felony charge of buying or receiving stolen property and a misdemeanor charge of carrying a loaded gun in public. In August 2023, he entered a guilty plea to the vehicle theft charge and the felony receiving stolen property and misdemeanor firearm charges were dismissed. He was sentenced to 101 Days, but was permitted, in in conformance with PC 4019, to serve just half of his sentence.
Penal Code section 4019 gives defendants confined in or committed to county jail two days of conduct credit for every four days of actual custody time served.
Shortly after being released, Turner Jr was arrested in November 2023 by the San Bernardino Police Department under somewhat similar circumstances to his previous arrest, and was this time charged with felony vehicle theft, felony receiving stolen property, felony burglary, two felony counts of carrying a loaded firearm in public and was hit with a felony enhancement of not having registered the firearms he possessed. Following the commission of that car theft, Turner had fled in the vehicle, leading the pursuing officers on a chase which involved injuries to others when the chase ended in a collision.
Upon pleading guilty to the felony car theft charge, the remaining charges were dismissed. Turner was sentenced to
16 months, which was again subject to the Penal Code Section 4019 half sentence reduction.
In January 2024, Turner again stole a vehicle, and when members of the Rialto Police Department attempted to stop him, he led them on a high-speed pursuit in which a Rialto police officer was injured when he collided with another car near the Rialto/San Bernardino border at Foothill Boulevard and Meridian Avenue.
When the Rialto police arrested him, they arrested and booked him for grand theft auto and felony evading. The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, however, charge him with felony vehicle theft, felony buying or receiving stolen property, along with two felony enhancements of committing a crime while out on bail or a recognizance release.
He pleaded guilty to felony car theft on the same day that he pleaded out to the charges stemming from the November 2023 arrest, and was sentenced to another 16-month sentence on the January 2024 theft, with the remaining charges being dismissed. He was permitted to serve the two 16-month sentences concurrently, to which the Penal Code Section 4019 half sentence reduction was applied, such that he was released in November 2024.
Four months later, on Monday, March 17, as he had done on some 760 days previously, Cuevas was uniformed and in place at the Victorville station just prior to the day shift beginning on Monday, March 17. After the normal formalities and routine, which included making certain that any reports or data entries he had made the previous day had been properly filed and routed to the destination or those to whom they were intended and that he had himself seen any memos or reports meant for him, by 7:25, he was in the Ford Interceptor SUV patrol vehicle assigned to him.
By 10:51 that morning, Turner, intoxicated, was in Victorville himself, behind the wheel of a stolen vehicle. At 10:58 a.m., a license plate reader flagged the vehicle he was driving as stolen. An alert through the sheriff’s High Desert dispatch center was made, giving those on patrol the make, model, year, color, location and heading of the vehicle. Cuevas was the second closest of four sheriff’s deputies who at once adjusted their own headings in an effort to converge on the stolen car. By 11:02, the vehicle Turner was in had been spotted near Mojave Drive and Amargosa Road and a pursuit, at times reaching in excess of 100 miles per hour, was on. Radio transmissions indicate that twice during the early phase of the pursuit, Cuevas was the pursuing deputy closest to and within visual range of the vehicle Turner was driving, providing confirmation that it was the stolen vehicle based upon its speed, evasive action and three of the numbers on the car’s license plate.
As Turner recklessly accelerated and ran both stop signs and red lights in an effort to lose his [pursuers] Cuevas was radioing his colleagues to describe the situation, including where the suspect vehicle was and its speed and direction and the traffic conditions surrounding it.
Cuevas, unwilling to push the interceptor to a speed exceeding 80 miles an hour in order to keep up with Turner and in doing so endanger those out and about and engaged in the late-morning Victorville bustle, had fallen into a position more than two full city blocks behind Turner.
Perhaps in an effort to prevent the driver of the stolen vehicle, whose identity at that point was not known to the pursuing deputies, from being able to discern the pursuing vehicles from the traffic behind him, Cuevas had doused his lights and siren. At 11:09 a.m. he was on El Evado behind the lead patrol car that was pursuing Turner, traveling at a high rate of speed, estimated at exceeding 75 miles per hour, when he entered the intersection with Seneca Road against a red light.
In the time between when the lead patrol car and Cuevas’s vehicle entered into the El Evado/Seneca intersection, a black Toyota Camry driven by 23-year-old Marcelline Demyan began a turn onto Seneca with the green light for the left turn lane from the opposite direction on El Evado. Cuevas attempted a last split-second maneuver around the Camry but clipped it, at which his Interceptor careened in an uncontrolled sideways spin across two lanes of traffic as he continued to progress up El Evaco until he hit a pole, which sliced the interceptor in half.
Cuevas was killed immediately and was pronounced dead at the scene less than 15 minutes later when medical first responders arrived.
The pursuit of Turner continued, with no few than nine patrol cars involved. At that point, some of those deputies did not know of Cuevas’s fate.
Less than three minutes after Cuevas’s Interceptor had been totaled in the glancing collision with the Toyota Camry and the direct collision with the pole, Turner, a San Bernardino resident who was unfamiliar with the lay of the land in Victorville, found himself cornered. Having continued north on El Evado past Hook Boulevard, Mojave Drive, Tawney Ridge Lane to where it discontinues in a T at Hopland Street, he made an eastward jog on Hopland before heading north again on the continuance of El Evado. Recognizing shortly thereafter that El Evado dead-ended before it would reach Rancho Road, he abruptly ditched the stolen vehicle at El Evado Road and Zuni Lane, seeking to flee on foot and blend into the nearby residential neighborhood but was taken into custody by deputies shortly thereafter.
He was booked on suspicion of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, felony evading causing death and possession of a stolen vehicle and held without bail at the High Desert Detention Center in Adelanto.
Within an hour of his death, Cuevas was being lionized as a “cops cop” who had risen from challenging circumstances to being a crusader against crime, one who had advocated by example; a father and husband; a man of faith; a football player, football coach and mentor; and an implacable foe to gangs. Tributes to him were being made to him by those closest to him and his professional colleagues, as well as by many who had never met or knew him.
A contrast was made with Turner, the demonization of whom reciprocally matched the elevation of Cuevas.
San Bernardino Police Chief Darren Goodman, who as the police chief of Upland in 2019 had sworn Cuevas in when he had first become a police officer, remembered him as someone he considered “my little brother.”
Goodman told the television cameras that Cuevas “was a very hard-charging, ambitious young man. He saw every day as an opportunity and not an obligation. He enjoyed this profession.” Cuevas, he said, wanted… “to be able to help kids who were disadvantaged [and wanted] to be able to help kids who may have had struggles in their lives, to show them there’s still a possibility that you can turn your life around and become anything you want to be. I think he wanted to use this career as a platform to do that, and he did.”
Word of what had occurred radiated outward, throughout the state and country and by late that afternoon, newspapers in England were lamenting what was being referred to as Cuevas’s “tragic” death.
Governor Gavin Newsom declared that the flags at the State Capitol Building and state government complex in Sacramento were to be flown at half-staff in memory of Cuevas.
An impromptu procession in honor of Cuevas that followed the transport of his body, involving scores of sheriff’s department vehicles and department helicopters, to the coroner’s office on Lena Road in the county seat materialized. Goodman left his office at the San Bernardino City Police Department headquarters to make a visually dynamic salute to the fallen deputy.
Video of Goodman’s statements were prominently featured in the CBS, NBC and ABC Los Angeles television affiliates’ coverage of Cuevas’s death.
Sheriff Shannon Dicus described Cuevas as “a cop’s cop. The one you’d want with you in that dark alley. The one who loved working with kids. The one who would work tirelessly to bring closure to crime victims.”
The Upland Police Department poste on its Facebook page, “On behalf of Chief {Marco] Blanco and everyone at UPD, we extend our deepest condolences and prayers to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. We stand with you in this difficult time as you mourn the loss of Deputy Hector Cuevas Jr. Deputy Cuevas also formerly served as an officer with UPD and will be greatly missed.”
Cuevas’s wife, Shervonne Wells, with whom he had two children, offered the media a brief statement. “The pain of this is immeasurable and words cannot fully express the depth of my grief,” she said.
Laufton Addison, a member of the community, gave this appraisal of Cuevas, “He was good at everything – a football coach and then the church Everything he put his mind to he completed. He was a really good guy. This should have never happened to him.”
On Tuesday, the day after Cuevas’s death, authorities in California and San Bernardino
County, in particular the state legislature and the district attorney’s office, found themselves being blamed for the permissive circumstances that had led to Turner’s misdeeds and indirectly led to Cuevas’s death, as the three charges that Turner was being held for – gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, felony evading and vehicle theft – were deemed insufficiently serious in response to Cuevas’s death.
In the case of the discontent with state laws, the liberalization that occurred with regard to reducing penalties for certain crimes was a function of both direct voter decisions as well as changes made by the state legislature. The concept of realignment, i.e., reducing the prison population by housing prisoners convicted of what were deemed less serious offenses in county jails rather than state penitentiaries did originate with the state legislature. Nevertheless, reducing the penalties for certain drug-related offenses and other crimes came about with the voters’ passage of Proposition 47, which reclassified certain nonviolent crimes from felonies to misdemeanors and raised the threshold for felony theft from stealing merchandise or items valued at $450 to ones worth $950 or more. With regard to the perception that Turner was slipping off the hook with regard to being held to account for Cuevas’s death, such an interpretation was premature, given that the district attorney’s office, which was utilizing its investigative division to look into the matter, had yet to file any charges whatsoever in the case, as that review was yet under way. Supporters of the Cuevas family and “Back the Blue” law enforcement advocates called for dispensing with the third degree murder – manslaughter – and instead seeking a first degree murder conviction against Turner, which, they said, given the special circumstances pertaining to the way in which Cuevas was killed, allow the death penalty to be applied to Cuevas.
On Wednesday, March 19, in a press conference held in Rancho Cucamonga within a short distance from the West Valley Courthouse/Rancho Cucamonga Justice Center and both the sheriff’s department’s Rancho Cucamonga Station and the District Attorney’s Office’s [quarters], both District Attorney Dicus and District Attorney Jason Anderson participated in a press conference in which the charges being leveled against Turner.
“We filed murder charges against Ryan Turner as it relates to the death of Deputy Cuevas as a result of the reckless indifference of driving that was displayed on Monday,” Anderson said. The circumstance that led to Cuevas’s death, which involved a “pursuit that lasted over 9 minutes at speeds over 100 miles an hour that included running at least four red lights,” Anderson said, allowed his office to proceed with a prosecution of Turner under 2800.2 of the California Vehicle Code for reckless evading. Since it could be established that sheriff’s officers were pursuing Turner and that he fled from them in a vehicle and did so with willful or wanton disregard for the safety of others by ignoring red lights and the sounding of the pursuing clearly and distinctively marked sheriff’s vehicles’ sirens and the showing of their pursuit lights, a conviction will ensue, Anderson said.
“Based upon the conduct that we’re aware of from Monday and subsequent[ly discovered] conduct on behalf of Mr. Turner, we believe that clearly the evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt to support all the counts we have in the complaint,” Anderson said. “This was not the first time Mr. Turner has fled when he was caught with a stolen car. In fact, it seems that each time it happens that is what occurs. It certainly factors into our idea that this is a murder case.”
Sheriff Dicus said, “I’d like to thank Jason Anderson and his bureau of investigation for taking a stand against criminals like Ryan Turner. Hector was the type of law enforcement officer that we all want to be. In this case we’re talking about a recidivist that has had this pattern of behavior over and over again and unfortunately, now we’re talking about the death of a law enforcement officer.”
Cuevas had paid the ultimate price in living up to the ideals of the sheriff’s department, Dicus said.
“We do have protocols where we try to keep these things as safe as possible to the public,” the sheriff said. “But we’re willing to take that risk and we’re willing to take that risk on behalf of our public. We’re not going to let criminals skate, period.”
California voters in 1994 approved Proposition 184, the “Three Strikes Sentencing Initiative,” which was represented as needed reform of the state’s criminal justice system. It mandated harsher sentences, including life imprisonment, for people convicted of a third felony offense. Intended to deter repeat offenders and protecting public safety, it came under criticism for what was said was its overly punitive nature and disproportionate effect on minority and impoverished criminal defendants. Changes were made to the law, including a 2012 amendment that allows for re-sentencing of certain non-violent third-strikers, followed by Proposition 47 in 2014.
In November 2024, Proposition 36, which was drafted for the purpose of undoing much of the liberalization contained in Proposition 47, was passed by California’s voters. Proposition 36 dispensed with the lighter sentencing guidelines and reduction of certain felonies to misdemeanor status contained in Proposition 47, reintroducing stricter penalties for repeat offenses, particularly for theft and drug-related crimes. The spirit of consequences for criminal action embodied in Proposition 36 and the shift toward tougher enforcement came to late for Deputy Cuevas. It was pointed out by several that had Turner been kept in prison for the full duration of the 16 months he was sentenced to in February 2024 for his vehicle thefts in November 2023 and January 2024, Cuevas would have avoided his grim fate and the ineffable loss sustained of his family, close acquaintances and professional associates would not cloud their lives.