LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Michael William Arnold was hit by 106 bullets after he allegedly pointed an air pistol at law enforcement officers during a standoff 16 months ago. The story faded after initial news reports, but the San Bernardino County coroner's participation in lawsuits filed by the family recently renewed interest in the case.
Sheriff, California Highway Patrol and Hawthorne police bullets struck the 39-year-old man seven times in the head and neck, 50 times in the torso and dozens of times in other parts of his body.
At least 55 of the wounds, fired in a fusillade that included rounds from 9 mm pistols, shotguns and at least one AR-15 assault rifle, were serious enough to be fatal.
In wrongful death lawsuits, the Arnold family calls it a brutal case of overkill by sheriff's deputies, CHP officers and Hawthorne police.
San Bernardino County Coroner Frank Sheridan volunteered his services to the family.
"This strikes me as an extraordinary case of overkill. I have seen many cases of multiple gunshot wounds. I have never seen a shooting to even approach this one. It's incredible," Sheridan said.
An autopsy showed Arnold's blood alcohol level was 0.17 percent, more than twice the legal limit for driving.
"Something had depressed him that day. We don't know. He was acting irrational. He was a bit disoriented," said Robert G. Leff, an attorney who represents wife Eileen Arnold. She said Arnold was a recovering alcoholic.
The Hollywood property manager carried the air pistol to scare pigeons, she said.
For nearly an hour before the March 27, 1998, shooting, Arnold behaved irrationally and waved what looked like a handgun from his stopped Lincoln Town Car about 2 a.m. on the transition road from the southbound San Diego Freeway to the eastbound Century Freeway.
He appeared to be suicidal, sitting on the railing of the 100-foot-high ramp as though he were about to jump and pointing the gun at his head.
Arnold then got in his car and left the Century Freeway at Prairie Avenue, and drove to a wholesale meat company, investigators said. He got out of the car and ignored orders to drop the weapon.
Arnold was shot to death when he allegedly aimed the weapon at officers. A Sheriff's Department spokesman said at the time that deputies "were in obvious fear for their own safety and the safety of other citizens who may have been in the area."
Bullets also flew through the Hawthorne neighborhood, with one round hitting an apartment building two blocks away and coming to rest on a bunk bed next to a sleeping teen-ager.
When coroner's investigators arrived, Arnold was clutching the air pistol in his right hand. But Sheridan doubts he could have held onto the gun because of the nature and extent of his wounds.
"If, in fact, they claim the gun was still in his hand when he was down and dead, that is extremely unlikely, because he was shot in the right arm and also several shots went through the head," Sheridan said.
"A person shot in the arm or in the head is not going to keep the gun in his hand as he goes down."
Hawthorne police and the CHP referred questions on the shooting to the Sheriff's Department, which was handling the Arnold investigation.
"It would be inappropriate to comment at this time because of pending litigation," sheriff's Sgt. David Halm said Monday.
Former San Jose Police Chief Joseph D. McNamara, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, said the kind of firepower used in the Arnold case points to the need for departments to revisit use-of-force policies.
It can be traced, in part, to a "culture and climate in departments where officers have been conditioned through peer pressure and training to view their jobs like being a soldier in Vietnam," McNamara said.
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[posted 7/27/99]
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