Off-duty CHP officer accused of threatening neighbor with gun faces 3 felony charges
New details emerged at a preliminary hearing Wednesday about an off-duty CHP officer who prosecutors say was drunk when he threatened his neighbor at gunpoint in August before resisting Santa Rosa police officers responding to 911 calls in the neighborhood near Trione-Annadel State Park.
Jeremy Finnerty, 48, is facing three felony charges: making criminal threats, the unlawful drawing or exhibition of a firearm in the presence of a person in a motor vehicle and vandalism. After hearing testimony from witnesses including neighbors and the Santa Rosa police officers who arrested Finnerty, Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Bradford DeMeo found probable cause for the case to go to a jury trial next year.
The incident occurred the night of Aug. 16. Just before 10 p.m., married couple Kevin and Loretta Adamson heard a loud explosion from inside their home on Parktrail Drive. Loretta Adamson’s car was parked on the street, so her husband went outside to move it into the garage to keep it safe from the commotion. When he started the car, though, he heard yelling and saw a person down the street holding a handgun.
Adamson, 62, said it was too dark for him to recognize the person, but that the figure started running “erratically” toward him, pointing the gun in his direction and screaming, “I’m going to f---ing kill you!”
“I was stunned, so I froze at first,” Adamson testified. “I thought I was going to die.”
The man stumbled a few feet away from the car and as he leveled the gun at the driver’s window, Adamson stepped on the gas and drove down the street. He stopped about a block away, worried about his wife, who was now home alone. When he turned around in his seat, he saw the man was chasing him.
As he drove around the block, Loretta Adamson, hearing the commotion, looked out the window and saw the man holding a gun walking toward her driveway. Loretta Adamson, 58, said the man was yelling, “Kevin, I’m going to kill you!”
Fearing for her safety, she locked the door leading from the house to the garage and a glass door at the back of the house. She ducked down on the floor to call 911 as she heard the man banging on the garage door, yelling.
When she heard the man breaking through the back door, she grabbed her dog and ran out of the front of the house.
“I was terrified,” she said. “I had never been so scared.”
Her husband had pulled back into their driveway to pick her up. They drove a few blocks down as they called 911.
Soon after, Santa Rosa police officers arrived in the neighborhood after receiving reports of a burglary at the house with an armed suspect. Officer Andrew Castro, who has been on the force for four years, testified Wednesday that when he arrived, he saw Finnerty standing in the middle of the street.
Finnerty, who was on leave from his job because of an injury, told Castro he was a CHP officer and was armed. He cooperated with officers as Castro removed the loaded 9 mm handgun clipped to his belt.
Castro recalled that Finnerty told officers that something bad was going on inside the house and started running toward the house. When officers repeatedly told Finnerty to stay back, he became aggressive and yelled at them, using expletives. Castro called the incident “chaotic” because officers still weren’t sure if anyone else was inside the house or what exactly was going on.










