Justice4Medina

Jennifer's Story

"I LOVE U JENNIFER"were the words Corporal Medina spray painted on the wall of a remote village in the western desert of Iraq.  Leaning against the wall, helmet off, with hands clasped to his front, he snapped this photo of himself to send to his young wife waiting for him back home in Oceanside.

   When Jennifer got the photo, what she saw was her Robby's gentle smile, and the quiet longing she knew he had to finish his tour in Iraq and return home to start their family.

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   Four months later, in the middle of the night on November 16, 2006, Corporal Robert J. Medina, a motor vehicle operator in the 1st Marine Logistics Group, United States Marine Corps, died when his truck was rammed by a car then sprayed with volleys of small arms fire. He was 22 years old.

   Bullet strikes peppered his truck. Two rounds hit him, one severing his aorta. His lifeless body was pulled from the truck by his assailants onto the street where it lay uncovered for hours.

   This attack did not happen on the streets of Fallujah. Corporal Medina had returned from Iraq with his unit to Camp Pendleton, California three months earlier. 

   Corporal Medina was shot while driving his own pickup truck on Coast Highway 101 in Solana Beach, California.  He was unarmed.

   The gunfire that killed him came from San Diego Sheriff's deputies, California Highway Patrol officers, and possibly other law enforcement agencies involved in a lengthy road chase that had reportedly begun about an hour earlier in Oceanside.

   The crime for which Medina paid the ultimate price?  Suspicion of DUI and failure to yield.

   A post-mortem investigation by the Marine Corps concluded that at the time of the incident, the medaled Marine exhibited signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or "PTSD", with related symptoms of depression, alcohol and substance abuse.

   All that Jennifer knows is that when her husband came back from Iraq, "he was just different."

   What went so terribly wrong that night?

   A Sheriff's incident report blames Medina for trying to run over deputies and officers who had gotten out of their vehicle after ramming Medina's truck to a stop.

   But the County Medical Examiner's report tells a far different story.

 

 If you know anything about the true circumstances surrounding Robby Medina's death, or think you may know someone who does, please contact Jennifer's attorneys at:

NORTH COUNTY LAW FIRM (760) 633-4060 or email:  Info@NorthCountyLawFirm.com

   According to the Medical Examiner's investigator, the "officers and deputies had poor visibility and it appeared that there was someone being dragged by the front bumper."

   What the officers and deputies supposedly mistook as a fallen officer was really the front bumper of Mednia's pickup knocked loose by the ramming and "hanging on only one side."

  Deputies and officers then opened fire.

   Medina was killed because police mistook the bumper of a pickup truck for a fallen officer.

   One of those firing at Medina was San Diego Sheriff's Deputy Mark Ritchie, who the year before had shot and killed a Hispanic robbery suspect during a solo foot chase. Ritchie hit that suspect with two rounds in the thigh, knocking him to the ground. Deputy Ritchie then reloaded his weapon and fired six more rounds into the wounded suspect's chest, killing him. The suspect had a knife on his person, but no gun.

   Ritchie has been sued for excessive force in at least three separate civil lawsuits.  And no one in the County government is talking.

  More than one year, three months have passed since the killing of Robert Medina and the San Diego County Sheriff's Department still refuses to release any of the details of the chase and shooting, claiming confidentiality.

   The San Diego County District Attorney's office has been conducting a criminal homicide investigation into the shooting, but still has not completed its report.

   To this day, no one from the District Attorney's office or law enforcement has ever spoken to Jennifer to tell her the truth about how and why her husband died.

   So she went to a lawyer for help. Her lawyers presented written claims to the law enforcement agencies involved in her husband's death.

   No one has accepted any responsibility and no one has explained the discrepancies in the officical reports.  The Sheriff's department has refused all requests to provide details.

   Now a lawsuit has been filed to get to the truth...to finally get justice for her fallen Marine...Justice4Medina.