CHP not liable for killing of man left behind

[Liberal_in_LA]

CHP not liable for killing of man left behind
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, October 1, 2009
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(10-01) 15:15 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- California Highway Patrol officers who arrested a drunken driver and left his two passengers in a deserted San Francisco parking lot at 3:30 a.m. aren't responsible for a shooting a few minutes later that killed one passenger and wounded the other, a state appeals court has ruled.

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Eighteen-year-old Brendan Burke, who survived the July 2003 shooting, and the mother of Robert Ramirez, 24, who was killed, sued the CHP for negligence, saying the officers put the two young men in danger by abandoning them in an Ingleside district neighborhood known as a high-crime area.

But the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco said Burke and Ramirez were already at risk in a car with an intoxicated driver and a sputtering engine. The patrol officers who arrested the driver and left the passengers, after Ramirez told them his brother would pick them up in 10 minutes, did not put them in greater danger and had no reason to expect that the young men would become crime victims, the court said in a 3-0 ruling Wednesday.

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Lawrence Murray, lawyer for Burke and Debbie Ramirez, criticized the ruling Thursday. He said the officers should either have waited until Ramirez's brother arrived or driven the two men to a police station a block and a half away.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/01/BAR119VNSN.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0SjK51dL4