By Sarah Roebuck
Police1
LOS ANGELES — The mother of a fallen Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department deputy is distraught the district attorney isn’t pursuing the death penalty in her son’s case, according to an interview with ABC News.
Clinkunbroomer, 30, was shot as he sat in his patrol car at an intersection on Sept. 16. He died at a hospital after being found unconscious in the vehicle in the city of Palmdale, according to LASD Sheriff Robert Luna.
“It just seems that the district attorney wants to spare a life, when [the suspect] didn’t spare my son’s life -- he executed my son,” Kim Clinkunbroomer, Ryan Clinkunbroomer’s mother, told ABC News.
During a news conference last week with sheriff’s officials and the Clinkunbroomer family, LA County District Attorney George Gascón reiterated his stance against the death penalty.
Gascón stated that the murder charge carries three special circumstance allegations: the offense was executed against a law enforcement officer, the perpetrator was lying in wait, and a firearm was discharged from a vehicle.
“If I thought the death penalty was gonna stop people from committing brutal murders, I will seek it. But we know that it won’t. The reality is that the death penalty doesn’t serve as a deterrent and the death penalty does not bring people back,” Gascón told KABC.
“How dare you, on national TV, tell me you’re not seeking the death penalty because it won’t bring my son back? My son’s not coming back, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do your job,” Kim Clinkunbroomer told ABC News.
The suspect in Clinkunbroomer’s killing, Kevin Cataneo Salazar, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
The sheriff said Clinkunbroomer was a third-generation deputy, following his father and grandfather into the department, and had been assigned to the Palmdale station since July 2018. He was also newly engaged.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Etny83h770o