{"id":368189,"date":"2010-02-26T13:58:20","date_gmt":"2010-02-26T18:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c630a53ef0120a8d8a635970b"},"modified":"2010-02-26T14:25:35","modified_gmt":"2010-02-26T19:25:35","slug":"neighbor-says-fresno-county-shooting-suspect-was-security-guard-on-disability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/368189","title":{"rendered":"Neighbor says Fresno County shooting suspect was security guard on disability"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"JOHN<\/a><\/p>\n

A security guard on disability because of back pain is believed to be behind the killing of a Fresno County sheriff\u2019s detective and the wounding of two other law enforcement officers, a neighbor said Friday.<\/p>\n

Rick Liles and his wife, Diane, had rented a mobile home for more than nine years on a ranch in the rural community of Minkler, 20 miles east of Fresno, said Peggy Minkler, wife of the property owner.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had very little company,\u201d Minkler said. \u201cThey were good renters, kept up the place really good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then on Thursday, Liles allegedly opened fire on officers serving a search warrant at his home in connection with a recent spate of arsons and a shooting.<\/p>\n

A sheriff\u2019s detective, who authorities plan to identify Friday afternoon, was killed.<\/p>\n

A sheriff\u2019s deputy was wounded and was in stable condition. The third victim was, Javier Bejar, 28, a police officer in the nearby community of Reedley. He is on life support but is not expected to recover, said a Reedley city official.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Sheriff\u2019s deputies responded to the shootings with a huge show of force, flooding the bucolic community with patrol cars, a bomb squad, a SWAT team and a helicopter, and closing the area for several hours. Liles was found dead in the mobile home Thursday afternoon. <\/p>\n

Minkler said her family had no inkling that Liles might be involved in such an incident. She denied talk that there had been a feud on the property between Liles and her sister-in-law, who rented a nearby mobile home. Instead, she said, there were minor spats between them in recent months.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in what the family believed were unrelated incidents, the ranch had been the scene of a series of arson fires. The ranch has been in the family since the 1800s; the family grows persimmons, oranges, plums and walnuts.<\/p>\n

In September, Minkler said, two rental properties — a shop and a storage shed– were burned. Over the next few months, 14 more arson fires were set, Minkler said. Some burned patches of grass, and, once, several boxes used in fruit-picking were burned.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been totally confused. We had no idea who was doing it,\u201d Minkler said.<\/p>\n

Never did they suspect Liles, she said. Indeed, the night of the September arson, Liles was helping out with a flashlight, moving a car that would have been burned.<\/p>\n

Then Monday, Minkler said, bullets were fired through her sister-in-law\u2019s mobile home and a nearby store. One bullet <\/strong>hit her sister-in-law in the buttocks, she said. The next day, sheriff\u2019s investigators told the family that they were getting close to having enough evidence for a search warrant.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t come right out and tell us who they suspected,\u201d Minkler said. \u201cWe were totally in denial, that [Liles] would do something like that. We really didn\u2019t know\u201d whom investigators suspected.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever they had up to that point, I think the shooting gave them enough evidence to get the search warrant,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Minkler said Liles had worked as a security guard at night, sleeping during the day, for several years. Then, a few years ago, back pain kept him from working, she said. Minkler said she didn't know if Liles was taking pain medication, but that he was scheduled to have surgery.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis back was pretty severe. I talked to him about back surgery that I had had,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

— Sam Quinones<\/p>\n

Photo: Fresno Bee<\/em><\/p>\n

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A security guard on disability because of back pain is believed to be behind the killing of a Fresno County sheriff\u2019s detective and the wounding of two other law enforcement officers, a neighbor said Friday. Rick Liles and his wife, Diane, had rented a mobile home for more than nine years on a ranch in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5470,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-368189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5470"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}