Wiping away tears as they stood Thursday in front of their family home in Hope Ranch, actor Ron Ely’s two daughters condemned what they say was the unjustified use of deadly force and denial of medical care that contributed to the deaths of their mother and brother.
“Losing two of the greatest loves of our lives in one night shattered us,” Kirsten Ely said at a press conference on the one-year anniversary of the deaths of Valerie Lundeen Ely and Cameron Ely.
Ron Ely and his family are contesting the findings of the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office, which ruled that the fatal shooting of Cameron Ely by sheriff’s deputies last year was a justifiable homicide.
Cameron Ely, 30, was suspected of murdering his mother, Valerie Ely, 62, on the night of Oct. 15, 2019.
Cameron Ely, who was unarmed, was fatally shot by the responding deputies on the driveway of the residence at 4141 Mariposa Drive, where he lived with his parents.
Kirsten Ely said her brother “posed no threat” when deputies encountered him.
Joining Ron Ely’s daughters were two attorneys — John L. Burris and DeWitt M. Lacy — with the Law Offices of John L. Burris, which is representing the Ely family.
“The shooting itself was unjustified,” Burris said.
The attorneys presented “new evidence that Santa Barbara County sheriff’s deputies engaged in the unjustified use of deadly force and denial of medical care, resulting in the deaths of Ely’s wife and son.”
(Brooke Holland / Noozhawk photo)
In an email to Noozhawk, District Attorney Joyce Dudley said, “If I am presented with any new evidence, I will carefully consider it.”
Her office reviews all officer-involved shootings in the county.
During Thursday’s press conference, Scott Roder with the Evidence Room unveiled its digital reconstruction of the alleged events last fall. The company provides scene reconstruction services, including 3D modeling and forensic animation “to be used as legal or forensic demonstrative evidence at trial,” the Evidence Room’s website states.
The biomechanical illustration showed details such as the alleged bullet trajectory.
“Because the (Santa Barbara County) coroner’s department did not appropriately probe the trajectory of the bullet wounds, we cannot be 100 percent certain right now,” Lacy said. “However, we have a great matter of certainty these are actually the trajectory of the wounds, given what the DA (District Attorney’s Office) has reported and what the coroner has reported in the autopsy report.”
Sheriff Bill Brown released the following statement in response to the press conference: “Unlike the plaintiff’s attorneys in this case, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office and the county of Santa Barbara take seriously our professional obligation to avoid undue pretrial publicity about this matter since it is currently in litigation. It is important to remember that the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ allegations are just that — allegations, not facts.
(Brooke Holland / Noozhawk photo)
“We will respond to these allegations later and at the appropriate place, the district court.”
Burris said Cameron Ely was “shot a number of times with his hands up. He was shot a number of times in the chest area and a number of times in the back.”
Burris also said the star athlete at San Marcos High School was “clearly unarmed. There was no weapon of any kind, and so the justification for that just seems unjustified.”
However, an investigative report from the Sheriff’s Department’s investigation by Detective Matthew Banks stated that Cameron Ely told deputies he had a gun and he “bent forward at the waist, quickly moved his hands toward his waist, and yelled, ‘I have a gun!’”
The deputies fired shots that struck Cameron Ely’s “front and back, with no evidence at all that any shots were fired back at them,” according to Burris.
They emptied Ely’s pockets to check for weapons and found none.
“They did not find any weapons, but did find a metal garden hose tap splitter, a stack of playing cards, small rocks, a car key fob, an iPhone, crumpled papers, a bank card, a little plastic bag with a white powdery substance that later tested positive for cocaine, and a small plastic bottle labeled liquid vitamins,” Banks wrote in his report.
The district attorney’s report added that “when Ely disobeyed verbal commands by deputies, sprang to his feet and moved his hands to his waistband as if grabbing a weapon while saying, ‘I have a gun!’ shortly after killing his mother, his actions created a reasonable fear of death or great bodily injury in the minds of deputies … .”
The now 82-year-old Ron Ely filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department and four of its deputies in the wake of the incident last year. It was filed in September on Ron Ely’s behalf by his daughter, Kirsten Ely.
Their deaths were the direct result of “intentional, malicious, extreme, outrageous, wanton and oppressive conduct” by responding officers, according to the lawsuit.
The Ely family’s lawsuit against Santa Barbara County, the sheriff’s department and four named deputies seeks general and punitive damages in addition to survival, wrongful death and other compensatory damages to be determined by a jury, according to attorneys.
Based on a transcript of a video recording provided by the Ely family’s attorneys, “It’s pretty clear that even though there were a lot of statements made by the police — there is no statement at all, none, where Cameron (Ely) said he had a gun,” Burris said. “There is no statement at all that said to get on the ground.
“If he didn’t have a gun and he didn’t have a weapon, what was the basis of shooting him?”
Burris said deputies “may have very well thought he (Cameron) was involved in some other activity involving the mom, but that is not a basis to shoot and kill him.”
The lawsuit alleges that dashboard camera video from the deputies’ patrol car backs their case.
“Defendant deputies are heard instructing decedent Cameron to keep his hands up,” according to the lawsuit. “Defendant deputies did not ask any questions of decedent Cameron, nor did they announce that they were members of the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department …
“Suddenly, and without any warning or legal justification, multiple defendant deputies opened fire on decedent Cameron, striking him a total of 22 times with bullets from several department-issued weapons. Decedent Cameron immediately fell to the ground motionless.
“The shooting occurred less than 20 seconds after defendant deputies saw decedent Cameron walk around the corner with his hands up, the universal act of surrender.”
Speaking to reporters, Burris said, “Our view here is not necessarily about dealing with the criminal components, but we are very much concerned about the depiction of Cameron (Ely), and suggesting that he was lawfully killed by the police.
“It is our position his shooting and death was not the function of lawful police activity,” he said.
In addition, the lawsuit claims that deputies arriving on scene failed to ascertain whether Valerie Ely was still alive, and “actively obstructed fire department medical personnel from entering the home to provide treatment” to her.
Deputies responded to Ely’s residence shortly after 8 p.m. and found Valerie Ely lying on the floor, having suffered multiple stab wounds.
The lawsuit also alleges deputies failed to provide timely medical attention to Cameron Ely after he was shot, and noted that he already had suffered stab wounds and an injured leg.
Lacy said the deputies denied lifesaving medical care to Valerie Ely.
“Valerie, who was in obvious need of medical help,” Lacy said. “What should she expect from folks we call our ‘heroes’?”
Valerie “suffered from a stab wound to her lung,” Lacy said. “Certainly, it’s a devastating wound, but one that someone can live for quite some time if they receive appropriate medical help, which was not rendered.”
He later added: “For far too long, it has been thought these are problems that only exist in the black communities or in the brown community. I’m here today to tell you this is an American problem, and one we all have to join together to do something about.”
Kirsten Ely embraced her sister in a hug on Thursday afternoon.
Kaitland Ely-Sweet then said the deaths of her brother and mother “were preventable, which makes the pain even deeper.”
“The pain our family has felt is so immense that we are constantly living in a nightmare that we can’t wake up from,” she said.
— Noozhawk staff writer Brooke Holland can be reached at bholland@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.