A farmworker will receive $1.7 million after he was mistakenly shot on his doorstep by the police

Riverside County will pay $1.7 million to settle a lawsuit from a Thermal farmworker who was shot three times after sheriff’s deputies came to the wrong house looking for a gunman in the middle of the night two years ago.

Juan Carlos Rodriguez-Ayala, 36, was shot on the doorstep of his trailer on a moonlit evening in September 2015 as police stealthily approached his home with their guns drawn.

Rodriguez mistook the cops for car thieves, so he stepped outside holding a shotgun, then was shot in the bicep and shoulder, shattering his bone. Another bullet missed Rodriguez and burrowed through the wall of his trailer, ending up in a bedroom with his common-law wife and their infant child.

County supervisors approved the settlement in mid-October, but the details of the deal were not released until last week, after repeated requests by The Desert Sun. Rodriguez will receive a lump sum of $1 million, plus monthly payments of $678 for the next 40 years. The rest of the money will go to his wife and children, the agreement states.

The amount is just the latest sum in about $37 million that Riverside County has paid out in shooting and wrongful death lawsuits filed against the sheriff’s department over the past 10 years, according to records obtained from a public records request

CATCH UP: The cops thought he was a gunman. He thought they were robbers. They met at his doorstep, guns drawn.

In nearly all of those cases, the sheriff’s department admitted no wrongdoing. The Rodriguez case is no different. Deputies insisted the shooting was Rodriguez's fault because he exited his home pointing the shotgun in their direction and that they identified themselves as police before they opened fire.

Rodriguez’s attorneys argued the opposite – the shotgun was slung over their client's shoulder and the deputies shot him before they identified themselves as police.

This dispute became one of the central arguments of the lawsuit. Rodriguez consistently maintained his claim that police shot first, despite repeated questioning from deputies, even in the moments after he was shot.

“How come you didn’t drop it when we said ‘Police?’” a deputy asked Rodriguez as they waited for the medics arrive, according to law enforcement documents.

“When you said ‘police’ you already shot me, man. You shot me like first,” Rodriguez responded.

Two deputies shot at Rodriguez – Paul Heredia and Miguel Ramos. A third officer, Sgt. Jessica Vanderhoof, was present but did not fire her weapon. The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office cleared all deputies of criminal wrongdoing and deemed the shooting justifiable in 2016.

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The DA’s Office later released more than 300 pages of investigation records to The Desert Sun, revealing the shooting as a chaotic event mired in fear, confusion, coincidence and misinformation.

The events that led to the Thermal shooting began at about 1:50 a.m. on Sept. 26, 2015, when a man called 911 to report that his son was outside of their home, firing a gun. The man said he needed help, and asked for some cops to come out to the house – 69470 Polk Street.

Deputies responded to the address, but found only a reservoir on the edge of a farm. There was no gunman. No witnesses. Not even a house where they could investigate.

What the police didn’t know at the time was that the address they had been given was wrong. It would later be discovered that the 911 caller, who had been drunk, had conflated two addresses, making up one that didn’t exist, according to case documents. But police were now searching for a gunman with no clue they were in the wrong place.

The deputies searched the area for nearly an hour. They tried to call back the 911 caller but got no answer. Stumped, they began to explore down a dirt road, which ran along the edge of the reservoir and disappeared into the fields. Eventually, they stumbled upon a farmworker who pointed them further down the dirt road, where two trailers sat on Fillmore Street.

Those were the only homes in the area, the farmworker said. Whatever the cops were looking for, it was probably down there.

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Bolstered by a new lead, the cops walked back to their patrol cars, drove toward the trailers, parked far enough away that their headlights wouldn’t be spotted, then proceeded on foot, trying to stay stealthy.

At the trailers, the cops read an address off a mailbox – 69470 Fillmore Street. The house number matched the address given by the 911 caller, even though the street was wrong. A tire swing was swaying the front yard, as if someone had just been there.

Inside the house, Rodriguez was fast asleep. Barking dogs woke Rodriguez’s wife, who then woke him up. He rose out of bed and walked to the living room to peek out a window. A flashlight was gleaming in the corner of his property, near the gate to his driveway.

Rodriguez has said in court documents he thought the people outside were car thieves, so he grabbed a shotgun from under his bed and headed for the door. The gun was loaded but the chamber was empty, which means he could not have fired without first cocking the weapon. But police could not have known this by merely looking at the weapon.

“I was afraid that he was going to shoot me,” said Deputy Mike Ramos, describing the shooting to investigators. “And so I said ‘police!’ and I was already – I wanted to shoot him as quick as I could before he had a chance to shoot me. … I was already reacting to what he was going to do.”

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After the shooting, the deputies identified themselves as being from the sheriff’s department. They ordered Rodriguez out of the house, then had him lay on the lawn until an ambulance arrived. He was rushed to John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital, then later transferred to Desert Regional Medical Center.

Police interviewed Rodriguez about 10 hours later, as he lay in his hospital bed. A transcript shows that detectives asked him six separate times if he was pointing the shotgun or ready to shoot when he exited the trailer. Rodriguez's answer was always the same –The gun was slung over his shoulder by a strap.

“That’s the way it was,” Rodriguez told investigators.

When contacted this week, Rodriguez’s attorney, Ian Samson, declined to discuss the shooting, citing a section of the settlement that barred Rodriguez, county officials or attorneys from answering questions from journalists about the case.

Editors note: A prior version of this story spelled Ian Samson's name incorrectly. The error has been corrected.

Investigative Reporter Brett Kelman can be reached at 760 778 4642 or at brett.kelman@desertsun.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @TDSbrettkelman.