By Sarah Burge
The Press Enterprise
LAKE ELSINORE, Calif. — Friends and neighbors are raising questions about the death of a 58-year-old man shot by one of several officers who went to his Lake Elsinore-area home Friday to serve a drug-related search warrant.
Coroner’s officials have not identified him because his family has not been notified. But friends said the man was Fred Smith, a longtime resident of the unincorporated Lakeland Village area.
A makeshift memorial of candles, flowers and crosses, along with messages to Smith, was placed outside the chain-link fence around his mobile home on Rome Hill Road this week.
Sheriff’s officials said a deputy shot Smith after he pointed a shotgun at officers.
Debbie Fitzpatrick, who lives a couple of houses down, said Smith was on disability because of ailments that included serious back pain. She said she was his paid caregiver.
Fitzpatrick said that when officers burst into Smith’s home about 7 a.m., he likely was delirious from an opiate painkiller patch he had applied the night before. She doubted Smith would have been able to grab the shotgun he kept under his bed, she said.
“He was drooling,” Fitzpatrick surmised. “I guarantee you. When he changed his fentanyl patches, he was always out of it the next day.”
Clyde Rohrman, Fitzpatrick’s brother-in-law, said he had watched people he later realized were officers approach Smith’s mobile home. A few seconds later he heard gunshots, Rohrman said.
“Boom! It was so quick, I couldn’t believe it,” Rohrman said.
Lt. Evan Petersen declined to describe in detail the moments before the shooting, but said Smith was “very aware of what was going on.”
A deputy who filed a statement in support of a warrant to search Smith’s home wrote that a person he had arrested earlier this month for investigation of possession of methamphetamine and being under the influence led authorities to Smith. Deputy Robert Vega, who is assigned to the sheriff’s Lake Elsinore station, said the informant reported purchasing methamphetamine repeatedly from “Fred” at Smith’s address.
Vega wrote that he monitored the home over several days and saw several people coming and going.
Petersen said materials used in the manufacture of methamphetamine were among the items found in the home.
Friends scoffed at the idea that Smith, whom they described as a gregarious and sometimes absent-minded character, might have been manufacturing methamphetamine or selling anything more than small amounts of drugs. They said he was more of a user than a dealer.
Fitzpatrick said Smith got the shotgun recently because he had been robbed. He couldn’t stand to be alone, she said, and would often invite people he had just met into his home.
Whether someone needed a shower, to borrow a little money or make a phone call - he wouldn’t turn them down, Fitzpatrick said. But some stole from him and took advantage of him, she said.
“He just plain liked people,” Rohrman said.
Fitzpatrick said Smith enjoyed gardening and playing the Monopoly slots at Pechanga Casino. He had worked in construction when he was younger and, with his father, had built some homes in the neighborhood. She said coroner’s officials are unlikely to find any relatives - his parents are dead and he had no siblings. She said Smith sometimes listed her as his next of kin.
Neighbor Leticia Hernandez chuckled as she recalled how Smith often locked himself out of his home and would enlist someone small to climb through a window. Hernandez said she gave him a big keychain that said “Fred” on it.
“He was a good man. A good person,” Hernandez said. “We miss him.”
Copyright 2011 The Press Enterprise, Inc.