By Alana Bleimann
HUMBOLDT – After allegedly overdosing and driving in the middle of the wrong lane, 21-year-old Kyle Retta and three officer witnesses were heard at a preliminary hearing before Judge Kaleb V. Cockrum here last week in Humboldt County Superior Court
On a late evening in September of last year, Officer Kellen Brown said he observed a vehicle parked in the roadway, blocking it. And a man, later identified as defendant Kyle Retta, was standing outside the vehicle, on the road.
As Brown approached Retta in his patrol vehicle, he said “he [Retta] took off…drove into oncoming lanes.” He added that there was no traffic coming in the defendant’s direction when he drove onto the wrong lane.
The tire of the defendant’s vehicle went over the double yellow line far enough for Brown to “know it’s a safety hazard…for oncoming traffic,” so he tried to stop the vehicle “but it sped up from 5 mph to 30 mph.
“His speeds were not consistent,” Brown stated after public defender April Anne Van Dyke questioned the defendant’s true speed. The posted speed limit in the area was 35 miles per hour, Brown later noted to the court.
At this point, Brown saw a black object, about two feet long, being thrown from the driver’s seat.
The item was thrown into an upcoming intersection toward the west side in which there are “houses and cars.” Although Brown saw the item being thrown from the window, he did not see the item actually land on the ground nor get past the roadway.
Retta continued driving into the intersection, running a stop sign. Eventually, Retta yielded to a side road. This entire pursuit only lasted for 2 miles.
After the vehicle pulled over, “the driver came out of the car” and “he was on his phone speaking to his mother,” Brown said. Retta was told to get off the phone, to which the defendant complied, but kept the phone in his hand.
He was then handcuffed and placed in the patrol vehicle, under arrest.
Brown later learned that, at the time, Retta was a prior convicted felon and was on probation for one charge of firearms and a stolen vehicle. And he was driving with no license.
Located in Retta’s vehicle was “a canister of bear mace and a large knife” and on the defendant’s hip was a sheath, the officer said, who noted that after placing Retta in the patrol vehicle, “he was becoming unresponsive in the back seat.
“He was very placid, slouched over, his breathing was a little bit impaired and he was not responding to questioning.” According to Brown’s past experience, these physicality traits are consistent with an opioid overdose, so he immediately administered a dose of Narcan, upon which the defendant “jerked his head away, as most people do, and began to say profanities.”
An ambulance was then called to transport the defendant to St. Joseph’s Hospital.
In the hospital, Retta was handcuffed because he “was agitated and did not want to be there,” said the officer, adding, “He was yelling at staff, I don’t recall exactly what he said, he said he’s gonna get out of here… if I get of these cuffs I’m gonna f*** you up,” Brown stated.
Brown did not receive notice from hospital staff of whether the defendant was actually experiencing an overdose. Once released from the hospital, Retta “began to tense up his arms” in an attempt to release himself and he also “kicked down a chair at the nurse’s desk.”
Upon being placed into the back seat of the patrol car, the defendant, according to the officer, “kicked the deputies and had to be forced into the vehicle” and Brown testified he “had to drag him across the seat as he was kicking, not wanting to go into the vehicle.”
Brown noted to the court that Narcan can sometimes make individuals who are overdosing very angry as “it takes away their high, which they don’t want.”
Following Officer Brown’s testimony, Deputy Krystal Arminio was brought into the courtroom, who retrieved, she said, the object allegedly thrown by Retta—it was “a black shotgun in the southbound lane,” in the middle of the road.
“It looked like it had been run over by vehicles because it was broken,” Arminio stated, who said she also found “a plastic baggie of suspected methamphetamine….more than 1 gram” under a white truck parked directly next to the gun.
Arminio stated that she tested the suspected drug for methamphetamine, which came back positive and that 1 gram of this drug is a “usable amount.”
Officer Raymond Nunez testified next that a one month later, in August, around 2:05 a.m., the defendant was located driving extremely close to another vehicle. He pulled the car over, and Retta was the driver and that he “did not have a license and was on probation.”
Upon performing a search of the vehicle, Nunez noticed another person in the car. “She was a juvenile,” he said, and that “at the time of the traffic stop, she was 16 years old.”
In the vehicle, he testified, there were narcotics and drug paraphernalia. Several pipes were located “in the center console” as well as prescription pills and suspected meth in the “trunk area of the vehicle.” The meth was located in a pink zip-up bag which also contained “female clothing.”
The prescription pills were found in a tan purse that the young female stated was hers. The defendant was then asked to leave the vehicle, then he was detained and placed in handcuffs.
The prosecution claimed Retta’s actions were a “disregard to public safety” and that “we were lucky no one was harmed.”
But defense counsel claimed that this was “a very short pursuit” in which he was “driving very slow,” thus not putting anyone at risk, adding that “you have to…impede traffic…there were no other cars on the road at the time. There’s not enough evidence to sustain the preliminary hearing.”
Judge Cockrum did not hold Retta accountable for the “pink baggie with the female’s clothing” but held him to answer to the traffic violations.
Further hearings and trial are set for early February of this year.
Alana Bleimann is a junior at the University of San Francisco majoring in Sociology with a minor in Criminal Justice Studies. She is from Raleigh, North Carolina.
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