Police: Deputy fired four times at gun-toting Guerneville man

A Guerneville man pointed a shotgun at three Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies Wednesday before one deputy fired at him four times, wounding him in the shoulder, Petaluma police said Friday.

Authorities later found that the shotgun wasn’t loaded, but Jeffrey Singleton, 46, had acted as if he were racking a round into the chamber before he pointed the weapon toward the three deputies, according to Petaluma Police Lt. Danny Fish.

Petaluma police are investigating the deputy-involved shooting and Friday identified the deputies as Teddy Van Bebber, who fired his handgun, John Littrell and Matthew Lupton. All three are on paid administrative leave pending the investigation.

Singleton remained under guard Friday in intensive care at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. When released, he will be arrested on suspicion of a variety of crimes and taken to the Sonoma County Jail, Fish said.

Deputies were called to Guerneville’s Fife Creek Commons apartment complex on Fifth Street on Wednesday afternoon over a man brandishing a knife and acting erratically.

Witnesses identified Singleton as the man, and as deputies spoke to people in an apartment courtyard, Singleton stepped out onto his second-floor balcony.

The deputies, standing below and about 20 feet away, asked him to come outside to talk. He refused, disappeared into his home occupied by his children, ages 13 and 7, and came out with a pump-action shotgun, Fish said.

The deputies shouted repeatedly for him to drop the gun. The man then cycled the action as if to get a shell into the firing chamber and brought it to bear on the deputies, according to the investigation.

“He basically racked the round, made that shotgun sound, and was bringing the weapon downward and he points the gun at the deputies,” Fish said.

They didn’t have their guns drawn as they spoke to him, Fish said. Information on whether Van Bebber was the only deputy to pull out his gun wasn’t available Friday from police. But he was the only one to fire, according to the police report.

Van Bebber, the son of veteran Sonoma County Sheriff’s Sgt. T.J. Van Bebber, has been a deputy for two years. Littrell has eight years in law enforcement, and Lupton was a correctional officer before he became a deputy in 2008.

Wednesday’s shooting was the second deputy-involved shooting in one week. On April 22, a Bay Area woman was shot and killed after leading deputies on a high-speed chase then backing her car toward them in Sebastopol, knocking at least one deputy to the ground, according to police.

Santa Rosa detectives are investigating the Sebastopol shooting. Petaluma police were asked to conduct the investigation into the second shooting.

Both investigations are ongoing.

Fish said the deputies’ statements have been corroborated by several witnesses who either saw or heard the Guerneville shooting, coupled with evidence collected from the scene.

Fife Creek Commons is a 48-unit complex with at least half of its units set aside for low-income residents, and some of those include residents with mental health issues, according to Press Democrat news reports of the $20 million project’s 2012 opening.

Petaluma police said they had no information regarding whether Singleton was being housed in a mental health apartment but said that such information wouldn’t be released.

You can reach Staff Writer Randi Rossmann at 521-5412 or randi.rossmann@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @rossmannreport.