Sonoma supervisor sued over nearly naked night visit to neighbor

Sonoma County Supervisor Efren Carrillo has been hit with a $2.5 million civil suit for an incident in which he banged on his female neighbor’s window and door with beers in hand and dressed only in his socks and underwear, in hopes of having sex with her.

The woman, identified in court documents only as Jane Doe, filed a complaint for damages in Sonoma County Superior Court on Feb. 27 after the 33-year-old supervisor was acquitted in April of misdemeanor peeking charges.

“His behavior was reprehensible,” said Rachael Erickson, the plaintiff’s Santa Rosa attorney. “The criminal system failed, so we are now working out of the civil system.”

Carrillo testified that he was drunk when he went to his neighbor’s Santa Rosa home about 3:40 a.m. on July 13, 2013, with two bottles of Pliny the Elder craft beer, hoping to woo the woman into bed.

Carrillo knocked on her front door twice before he went into her backyard through an unlocked gate. He denied peeking into her bedroom window, but admitted that he had accidentally broken her window screen while he tried to get her attention.

The neighbor said she barely knew Carrillo and had no romantic history with him.

She testified that she had been startled awake by the sound of her bedroom window screen tearing and her blinds moving. She then “called emergency services at 911 while in fear for her life and safety,” Erickson wrote in the complaint.

During last year’s trial, the woman testified that she and two friends who were staying with her had armed themselves with kitchen knives after she looked through the blinds and saw “a man standing there with his hands on his hips, and his shirt off.”

Police arrested Carrillo at the scene. He was charged with peeking while “loitering, prowling and wandering upon the private property.”

During his trial, Carrillo blamed the encounter on his inflated ego and a drinking problem.

“There’s no excuse; there’s no reasonable explanation,” Carrillo testified. “It was my sense of arrogance, my sense of entitlement. Call it narcissism. Call it whatever you want.”

Erickson said the woman “is still suffering from anxiety and emotional distress. She is in counseling and has taken a lot of time off work. We want justice. This is about trying to make her whole again.”

The plaintiff is asking for $2 million in general damages for lost earnings, medical and psychological treatment, therapy and counseling, along with $500,000 in punitive damages.

Carrillo did not return phone calls Tuesday.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky