LOS ANGELES – The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to review the case of a man convicted of assault for ramming a Los Angeles County sheriff’s patrol car with a stolen pickup truck and then driving toward the deputy a second time in Newhall.
Jesse Alan Tucker was convicted in May 2016 of assault on a peace officer, resisting an executive officer and fleeing from a pursuing peace officer’s motor vehicle while driving recklessly.
He was also found guilty of two counts of driving or taking a vehicle without consent after a prior conviction, along with a misdemeanor count of vandalism with under $400 damage.
In a Jan. 31 ruling, a three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal upheld Tucker’s conviction. But the panel ordered the case to be sent back to a judge in San Fernando to determine if an enhancement for Tucker’s 2010 conviction for grand theft of a vehicle — which had been stayed under his July 2016 sentence of eight years and eight months in state prison — should instead be imposed or stricken.
Tucker drove a stolen F-150 truck into the front of the patrol car on Feb. 2, 2015, while the sheriff’s deputy was questioning another man while searching for the truck, which had an active GPS location tracking device, according to the 33-page appellate court panel’s ruling.
Tucker ignored the deputy’s order for him to stop, backed the truck up and accelerated toward the deputy, who moved out of the truck’s path and fired a shot at Tucker, according to the ruling.
Tucker fled on foot after the truck crashed into a retaining wall. He was arrested later that night.
Less than a week earlier, Tucker had evaded two sheriff’s deputies in William S. Hart Park and drove through a chain link gate that was blocking the exit to the park.
Previous related story: Newhall man sentenced for ramming sheriff’s patrol car
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