Family members of man found dead in pillar sue ex-deputy they allege left him there
The family of a man who was found dead outside a Lancaster supermarket in 2018 sued the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department last week, alleging that deputies knew 35-year-old Raymundo Rivera had become trapped in a pillar and left him there to die.
For six years, the complaint said, Rivera’s family thought his death was an accident — at least based on how the Sheriff’s Department had described it in official reports.
Then in May they started to suspect otherwise, when the ex-girlfriend of a former deputy named Aaron Tanner filed an unrelated lawsuit alleging the erstwhile lawman had physically abused her for more than two years, bragging that he was in a deputy gang whose members would “take care of her” if she told anyone.
A new lawsuit accuses a former Lancaster deputy of using the Rattlesnakes ‘deputy gang’ to threaten his ex, among other misconduct.
In her legal complaint, the woman — identified only as Jane Doe in court filings — also alleged that Tanner had boasted about chasing Rivera and then watching him fall into a pillar outside a WinCo supermarket in Lancaster and leaving him there to die. Afterward, she said in her lawsuit, the deputies “made false reports that they lost track” of Rivera as he fled.
On Wednesday, Irene Pena and Michelle Rivera — the dead man’s widow and daughter, respectively — filed suit in L.A. Superior Court, accusing Tanner and other unnamed deputies of engaging in deliberate misconduct, including abandoning Rivera in a “life-threatening situation and subsequently falsifying reports to conceal his actions.”
The suit accused the Sheriff’s Department of fostering “a culture of lawlessness,” failing to discipline deputies involved in law enforcement gangs and “encouraging a code of silence to protect deputies who engaged in misconduct.”
Attorneys for Tanner did not respond to a request for comment. According to the Sheriff’s Department, Tanner separated from the agency in December 2023.
Sheriff’s officials told The Times in a statement that the department “does not condone any acts that violate the civil rights of others” and that it is working to hold deputies accountable.
“The department has been conducting several comprehensive deputy gang investigations that have never been done before, and, for the first time, we have fired employees for violating the existing deputy cliques and subgroups policy,” the statement said. Since those terminations, the department has implemented a more robust policy banning deputies from being in hate groups or law enforcement gangs.
Four L.A. County sheriff’s deputies were fired and others were disciplined after a dispute involving members of a gang known as the Industry Indians.
“It feels unreal that someone came forward,” Rivera’s widow told LA Public Press last year, after her attorney filed a notice of claim in June, signaling the family’s intent to sue. She told the news organization that she only learned of the allegations regarding her husband’s death when she saw an article about Doe’s suit in The Times.
Her lawyer, Jesse Ruiz, said he was grateful the allegations came to light.
“It’s a long wait for justice,” he told The Times. Normally, he said, wrongful death cases have a two-year statute of limitations — but he hoped the recent discovery of “deliberately hidden” evidence could change that calculation.
According to the family’s lawsuit, on Aug. 11, 2018, Rivera was being chased by deputies — including Tanner — on West Avenue K-4 in Lancaster.
“The pursuit arose under circumstances that remain unclear and questionable,” the suit says, “reflecting the potential for unnecessary escalation by LASD personnel.”
At the time, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officials said Rivera appeared to have been the same man who’d fled after deputies tried to pull him over for having a fake license plate. He crashed his car, officials told KNBC, then fled onto the roof of the supermarket and vanished.
Several days later, the WinCo manager noticed a foul smell and called repairmen, who started removing bricks from a column outside the store and discovered a decomposing body.
“He may have gotten inside there and gotten down to try and hide from the deputies and then couldn’t get out,” then-Lt. John Corina told local media at the time. He said it was “one of those strange cases.”
Two years later, Tanner and Doe got into a relationship, according to her suit. While they were together, she alleged, he told her he was an influential member of a “gang” called the Rattlesnakes and made several other admissions — including about the 2018 chase.
L.A. Sheriff’s Department announces policy it says will ban deputy gangs, hate groups
After breaking off the relationship in late 2022, Doe said Tanner and other members of the Rattlesnakes stalked her at work. Two years later, she sued Tanner and the county in L.A. Superior Court, asking for $5 million. The case has since been moved to federal court, where it is still pending. In a December court filing, Tanner’s lawyers broadly denied the allegations against him.
Meanwhile, in the suit filed last week, Rivera’s family said deputies “recklessly tortured” him by leaving him to die when they could have “easily pulled him to safety.”
The suit also described “systemic failures” in the Sheriff’s Department, including “inadequate training, supervision, and oversight of deputies, particularly those associated with deputy gangs,” which it said are “operating within and perpetuating a culture of misconduct and lawlessness.”
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
