Defendant threatened to ‘shoot it out’ with police before killing deputy, prosecutor says
In the weeks before Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Deputy Dennis Wallace was shot and killed, David Machado told people he wouldn’t be taken into custody and would “shoot it out” with police, a prosecutor said during his opening statement Friday.
Deputy District Attorney Sam Luzadas said this evidence would show that the murder was premeditated.
Machado’s defense attorney Marcus Mumford kept his opening statement brief, saying simply that many of the facts of the case are not in dispute but asking the jury to keep an open mind while they listen to the evidence. Mumford said it will show the shooting was not premeditated.
Machado has pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. That means, if he is convicted, the jury will determine whether he was legally insane when Wallace was killed. The difference would be incarceration in prison or a state hospital.
Machado is accused of shooting Wallace at Fox Grove Park in Hughson on Nov. 13, 2016.
The defendant was in his mother’s Dodge Caravan, which she’d reported stolen the week before, when Wallace contacted him.
The deputy got Machado’s license and gave his name to a dispatcher. The dispatcher told Wallace that Machado had a warrant for his arrest and there was an “officer safety bulletin” for him because of the threats he’d allegedly made about law enforcement.
“Deputy Wallace gave a brief response ... little did (the dispatcher) know that would be the last time anyone would hear from Deputy Dennis Wallace,” Luzadas said.
With no response from Machado, deputies went to Fox Grove
Getting no response from Wallace on the radio, other deputies went to Fox Grove to check on him.
The first deputy to arrive found Wallace “lying on his back a few feet in front of his patrol vehicle, his head in a pool of blood, with two gunshot wounds to the left side of his head, one to his temple and one to his neck,” Luzadas said.
The prosecutor said evidence will show that Machado fled, carjacked a man and woman in Ceres and attempted to carjack a woman in Lindsay, a small town in Tulare County, before he was captured.
Luzadas said the warrant for Machado was issued two weeks prior when he failed to appear on a felony case.
A little over a week before the shooting the sheriff department’s air support unit was dispatched to look for Machado in La Grange. He’d reportedly told two people there he knew he had a warrant, that he wasn’t going to be taken into custody, and that he was armed and would “shoot it out” with police, Luzadas said.
When Machado saw the helicopter overhead, he fled.
Two days later, Machado’s mother reported her Dodge Caravan stolen. She told police she was concerned police would shoot her son because he usually carried a pistol and had told her he would “shoot it out” with police before he’d be taken into custody.
Testimony in the case will begin Monday. The trial is expected to last five weeks.
This story was originally published March 22, 2021 at 7:05 AM.
