A Lake County man remained hospitalized Thursday after being shot in the leg by one of several men who burst into his parents' Clearlake Oaks home a day earlier.
A second shooting occurred when the Clearlake police chief and a lieutenant were targeted as they pursued the suspects, including a man formerly employed by the victims. Neither officer was hit by the gunfire, which culminated with the arrests of four people on suspicion of conspiracy, attempted murder, assault on a peace officer and other charges.
For Jacob Bogner, 32, the resulting leg fracture and a battered skull from a pistol whipping were both painful and depressing, though it took him a while to notice, he said Thursday from his hospital bed at Enloe Medical Center in Chico.
Bogner said his overwhelming concern Wednesday morning, when he realized strangers were inside the house, was the safety of his mother and his young niece and nephew - and his sense that the robbers didn't have much of a working plan.
Their apparent inexperience and his own inexplicable lack of fear made it possible, he said, to play a bit of cat and mouse that distracted one or two of the robbers. He said he could tell that his mom, Janeane Bogner, had slipped away from the men after she initially answered the door, and he hoped to divert them from finding her or the two kids, aged 5 and 7, who were visiting while their mother worked.
As the only man home, Jacob Bogner said, "I took the heat to save them, basically."
The ordeal began around 8:40 a.m. when Janeane Bogner opened the front door of the High Valley Road home to find several men on her doorstop, one in a hoodie asking for "Lonnie." Her husband's name is Ronnie.
She yanked back the stranger's hood before slamming the door and attempting to lock it, but the men kicked it in with a large crash. Her cry for help drew her son into the dining room, he said.
He immediately encountered a man pointing a .40-caliber gun at him. Bogner was temporarily in a daze, he said, and ended up back in the bedroom with the man, who told him, "this is your day to die," and ordered him to get face down on the floor.
Jacob Bogner only kneeled, contemplating his next move as the man left him there. He heard conversation in the living room that made it clear the men didn't know where his mother was, let alone the kids, he said.
So Bogner left the room again hoping to make sure. When his assailant saw him, Bogner ran back into his room, shut and locked the door.
He immediately heard someone kick it. Then a gunshot came through the wood and entered his leg, near his knee, and the man again kicked the door hard, twice, cracking it open.
"All of a sudden, he's standing there," Bogner said, unsure if the intruder knew he'd been hit.
Bogner found himself back on the floor where the man struck him multiple times in the head with his gun.
At one point, another man came in and looked through the property in Bogner's room. At another point, Bogner tried dialing 911 on his cell phone, but the call didn't go through. The men asked for car keys, money and guns, and finally departed, some of them reportedly driving away in the senior Bogners' Cadillac Escalade.
Around that time, Bogner heard his mother in a spare bedroom talking in a low voice, reporting the incident to police. Jacob Bogner then saw his sister's children huddled by the bed.
His mother said, "You're bleeding! You're shot," he recounted Thursday. "I'm like, &‘Yeah, my knee.'"
But Bogner said he was less interested in attending to his wounds than in finding out what the robbers took when they left.
About that time, Clearlake Police Chief Craig Clausen and Lt. Tim Celli were monitoring news of the robbery by radio and took to the streets to see if they could catch up with the suspects, District Attorney Don Anderson said.
They spotted a Chevrolet Malibu matching the description of the suspects' car coming down the hill on Sulphur Bank Road into the Clearlake Park area of town, Anderson said.
The vehicle stopped on 16th Street, and three or four men piled out, leaving behind the female driver, Jenaya Drevelyn Jelinek, 22, of San Francisco, who was later arrested, he said.
As the men fled into the bushes, about three shots were fired at police. One of the shots stuck a nearby house, sheriff's officials said. Unable to see into the bushes, police did not return fire, Anderson said.
Authorities soon tracked the suspects to a house about a block away on 15th Street and surrounded it, Anderson said. Two men quickly surrendered, and eventually a third, he said.
Tyler Christian Gallon, 18, of Clearlake and Dion Andre Davis, 25, of San Francisco, along with Jelinek, were being held Thursday in lieu of $250,000 bail. Also arrested was Sean Douglas Foss, 20, of Clearlake. Lake County Sheriff's officials would not provide his bail information.
One of the suspects was a man who had worked for Ronnie and Janeane Bogner's weed control company until his dismissal some time ago, Anderson said.
It was unknown whether a fifth suspect remained at large, Anderson said. Accounts of the number of people involved were conflicting.
The Bogners' Escalade was recovered from an embankment off of Sulphur Bank Drive on Thursday morning, the Sheriff's Office said.
You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com.
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