Randal Tanner spent nearly four years in wheelchairs and nursing beds after San Diego County sheriff’s deputies pinned him to the ground during a 2019 van tow stop in Otay Mesa, leaving him quadriplegic and unable to use his hands. He died on February 12, 2023, and the county medical examiner later ruled his death a homicide tied to blunt force injuries of the head and neck. Yet the civilian watchdog board that cleared the deputies of wrongdoing back in 2020 says it still cannot reopen that finding because there is, in its own words, no new evidence.
The case, first detailed by The San Diego Union-Tribune, began on May 31, 2019, when Deputy Donald Glover approached Tanner’s van on Piper Ranch Road. The van was illegally parked more than 18 inches from the curb and its registration had lapsed more than six months earlier, according to the newspaper’s reporting. Glover called a tow truck to impound the vehicle, and he and his partner, Trissa Taguacta, pinned Tanner to the ground with pressure on his back, then hit his head on the curb. Tanner told them, “I can’t move, I’m paralyzed,” and deputies requested emergency medical services to evaluate him for a head injury before he was transported to Scripps Mercy Hospital.
A Body Camera Ruling That Cleared the Deputies
Tanner never walked again after that encounter. He developed quadriplegia, a cervical spinal cord contusion injury, cervical myelopathy and neurogenic shock, and he spent the next four years cycling through rehabilitative and skilled nursing facilities, wheelchair-bound and unable to use his hands. The Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board reviewed the incident in 2020, using sheriff’s office body-camera video that was posted alongside the department’s initial reports, and found the excessive-force allegations against Taguacta unfounded while concluding that Glover’s actions were justified.
Tanner was never charged with a crime connected to the encounter. His only prior brushes with the law, per the Union-Tribune’s reporting, were a 2016 arrest on suspicion of illegal possession of ammunition and possession of concentrated cannabis, and a separate 2016 arrest on misdemeanor cannabis-possession and unlawful-lodging charges. He was born in San Jose in 1961 and had received a medical discharge from the military before finishing basic training, according to the paper’s account of his background.
Homicide Ruling Reopens Old Wounds, Not the Case
Near the end of his life, Tanner was intubated and suffered septic shock. He ultimately died from small bowel ischemia and necrosis, and the county medical examiner ruled his manner of death a homicide. Under California medicolegal standards, that classification means the death resulted from the direct action of another person — it is a factual determination, not a legal finding of criminal intent or unlawful conduct, according to guidance from the County of Los Angeles Medical Examiner that outlines the statewide standard…