By Derrick Pal
SACRAMENTO, CA – After hearing a harrowing and horrific story of an older woman hurled from a trailer into a deep ditch by a man she recorded illegally dumping concrete, a Sacramento County Superior Court this week ordered that the suspect be held for June trial.
Defendant Mathew Carpenter was charged in a preliminary hearing with one count of robbery with the enhancing allegation of inflicting great bodily injury, and one count of assault by means likely to inflict great bodily injury. All felonies.
According to testimony, on Sept. 12, 2020, at 10:12 a.m., Deputy Sheriff Brian Kraatz was dispatched to an assault call near the intersection of Happy Lane and Kiefer Boulevard located within Sacramento County limits.
According to Deputy Kraatz, when he initially arrived, “I saw a blue Subaru stopped in the westbound lane of Kiefer Road, and there was a white female adult, appeared elderly, she was bleeding from her arm, and she was complaining of having difficulty breathing.”
“She appeared shaken up, maybe a little bit of shock from the altercation she said she had. She was kind of leaning against her vehicle when I approached her. She said she saw a man dumping concrete on the side of the road there. She knew it was illegal to do so, so she began filming him,” said the deputy.
“Once he saw her filming him, she said…he became angry (and) flipped her off and started cursing at her. She told me that he was very large, muscular build, approximately six feet tall, maybe a couple inches shorter than that…I believe she said he was wearing a gray shirt, tan pants, and had a mask on his face…a white male adult,” added the deputy.
According to Deputy Kraatz, after the defendant began driving away “she said she continued west on Kiefer Blvd. As that was the path she was already taking, and then he ended up turning his truck and trailer that was attached to the truck in such a way that it blocked the road and forced her to stop.”
“She said that he then exited the vehicle and appeared to be holding a metal trailer hitch in his hand as he approached her, saying something to the effect of ‘do you want some of this’ as he approached her vehicle.
“She said he approached the passenger side of her vehicle, opened the front passenger door. He, reaching in, shifted her car into park, took the keys out of the ignition from her vehicle, and also took her cell phone. She said he threw them into the back of his trailer and then went to go get back inside of his truck,” the deputy added.
When asked by Deputy District Attorney Aaron Miller why the victim went to retrieve her belongings, Deputy Kraatz stated that “essentially, she would be stuck there on the road without the keys to drive her car, and without her phone to call anybody for help,” adding she had to get home because her husband was in hospice care and “believed he may be dying soon.”
But when the victim jumped into the trailer to get her items, the suspect jumped in after her and “threw her down outside of the trailer and into the ditch on the side of the road,” said the deputy, noting it was about a 10-foot vertical fall.
The victim did write the trailer’s license plate number, gave it the deputy who tracked it down to HD Supply, a local business in the Rancho Cordova area, where the deputy later visited and saw the trailer, “pieces of concrete” and other evidence.
According to Det. Chad Campbell, the victim identified the suspect in a “field show-up” where the defendant would be asked to identify the possible suspect at his residence, where the detective found large holes jack-hammered with missing concrete.
Campbell said the victim told him she was “100 percent guaranteed” the suspect was right one, and when asked about the truck located at the defendant’s residence, “she said that that was the exact truck she saw on the day of the crime.”
Judge Steven Gevercer found that there is probable cause to believe the charged offenses were committed by defendant Carpenter.
A jury trial is scheduled for June 14 at 8:45 a.m. in Dept. 9.
Derrick Pal is a fourth-year student at Sacramento State majoring in Criminal Justice and pursuing a minor in Sociology. He is from Elk Grove, California.
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Good thing we got a progressive reformer as the new AG, so this perpetrator can be properly handled by going back in time in the state government time machine and patching his childhood trauma with better social services.