A Bedford County deputy sheriff was justified when he fatally shot a man who was linked to an armed home invasion in Bedford County this summer, the special prosecutor handling the case said Wednesday.
Deputy Juette Renalds fired four shots at David Mendoza-Alvarez, 32 — striking him twice — after confronting him in a cul-de-sac in Bedford County in the early hours of July 30. Mendoza was unarmed at the time, and no gun was found in the pickup truck he was driving.
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However, Renalds — whose name had been withheld until Wednesday — believed he was in imminent danger when Mendoza rushed at him, Mary Pettitt, commonwealth’s attorney for Montgomery County, wrote in a letter to the Virginia State Police announcing her decision not to file criminal charges against Renalds.
Bedford County Commonwealth’s Attorney Randy Krantz disqualified himself from the investigation and requested that Bedford County Circuit Court appoint a special prosecutor.
According to Pettitt’s report, the autopsy of Mendoza found the cause of death to be a gun shot to the head. He also had a gunshot wound to his upper right arm. His blood contained 0.13 mg/L of methamphetamine, making him legally too intoxicated to drive. Two glass smoking devices were found in his clothing at the time of the shooting.
The series of events that led to the shooting, detailed in the letter, started with a home invasion in the 1500 block of Stewartsville Road in Bedford County.
About 8 p.m. on July 29, a woman reported that a man forced his way into her house, pulled her out of the shower, pointed a semi-automatic handgun at her and demanded her car keys. She got the keys, and he pulled her outside, where he pointed a gun at her head and demanded that she hand him the keys or he would kill her.
The woman, Melissa Cochran, threw the keys into the woods. A passing tractor-trailer distracted the intruder, and she ran back into her house. The intruder fled on a blue and white motorcycle, Cochran said.
About 8:50 p.m., Renalds found the motorcycle and driver on Stewartsville Road near Harvey’s Creek. Renalds activated his emergency equipment, but the motorcycle sped up and drove into a field. Renalds was not able to keep up and lost sight of the motorcycle on a farm on Scenic View Drive, where a motorcycle was later recovered.
Pettitt wrote that two other deputies stopped a vehicle traveling on Scenic View Drive. The driver identified herself as Mendoza’s girlfriend. She said the person on the motorcycle was Mendoza; the two of them recently had moved to Bedford from California; Mendoza was addicted to heroin and was suffering from withdrawals. She had no knowledge of him having a handgun.
On his way home around 12:30 a.m., Renalds spotted a pickup truck at the intersection of Virginia 122 and Virginia 24. The truck, later determined to have been stolen from W&L Prop Repair on Stewartsville Road after 8 p.m., recklessly turned onto Virginia 122.
At least four police vehicles became involved in the pursuit. The truck turned onto Oakwood Knolls Drive, a dead-end residential road without street lights.
At the end of the road, the truck made a turn back toward Renalds, striking the front of his police vehicle.
Both vehicles stopped, and Renalds came around the side of his car with his service pistol drawn and approached the truck from the rear. As he approached, the driver got out of the truck.
Another deputy, Darren Hedrick, had an in-car camera, but it was positioned on the passenger side of the pickup truck, so the body and hands of Renalds and Mendoza were not visible. The video shows the driver’s feet moving toward Renalds and Renalds’ feet moving backward, placing the two 10 to 15 feet apart. Hedrick said he heard Renalds shout something but could not make out the words, Pettitt wrote.
Renalds said he saw the driver put his hand inside his overalls and start to pull his hand back out and move toward Renalds.
Renalds fired and struck the driver, who he recognized as the person who fled on the motorcycle earlier that night, and Renalds believed he was armed, dangerous and desperate, Pettitt wrote.
“At the time Mendoza rushed at him, Deputy Renalds possessed a reasonable belief that he was in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury based on the earlier armed home invasion, the life endangering driving, and the intentional turn and wreck into his police car,” Pettitt wrote. “Deputy Renalds believed that his life, the lives of the officers backing him up, and the lives of the public were endangered.”
