LAKE COUNTY – Responding to citizens' concerns about the adequacy of an investigation regarding a boating collision last year, Sheriff Rod Mitchell said he is asking the state Attorney General's Office to review the case.

The case involves a boating collision that took place just after 9 p.m. on April 29, 2006, in which a 24-foot powerboat driven by Mitchell's second-in-command, Chief Deputy Russell Perdock, collided with a 27-foot sailboat belonging to Mark Weber of Willows.

The collision severely injured Weber's fiancee, 51-year-old Lynn Thornton, who died days later.

Perdock does not face any criminal charges in the case.

In June, District Attorney Jon Hopkins announced he was pressing charges in the case against Bismarck Dinius, the Carmichael man who was sitting at the rudder of Weber's sailboat, Beats Working II, when the collision occurred.

Dinius faces felony vehicular manslaughter involving a vessel and misdemeanor boating under the influence of alcohol, as he was found to have a blood alcohol level of 0.12.

Sacramento County Sheriff’s Marine Services Unit Investigator Charles Slabaugh – who Mitchell asked to assist in the initial investigation – found that Perdock had broken federal inland navigation rules by not following the “safe speed” rule, which states that a boat operator should at all time maintain a speed that allows them to stop the vessel “within half the distance of forward visibility.”

Perdock told Slabaugh during an interview that he was going about between 40 and 45 miles per hours for a short period of time – one or two minutes, he estimated – immediately before the crash took place.

Slabaugh did not, however, suggest Perdock be charged in the case, while he did suggest charges against Dinius and also Weber, who he said violated federal navigation rules by not posting a lookout and by allowing his boat to operate without running lights.

Earlier this month, a two-part investigation by Dan Noyes of KGO profiled the case.

In a statement dated Friday, Mitchell said that those recent television news broadcasts “have left many good citizens apprehensive about the adequacy and fairness of the subsequent investigation. I have heard those concerns and they do resonate with me.”

Mitchell continued, “The Lake County Sheriff’s Department must operate unencumbered by doubt. Lynn Thornton’s loved ones and local citizens alike must be able to trust that we are fully open to inspection – in spite of unfortunate stereotypes of rural communities.”

As a result, Mitchell said he contacted the Attorney General's Office Aug. 20 to request that the Department of Justice (DOJ) conduct a review of the investigation conducted by the Lake County Sheriff's Office and members of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Marine Services Unit, who Mitchell asked to assist in the initial investigation.

The Attorney General's Office officially granted Mitchell's request Aug. 22, according to Mitchell's statement.

“I look forward to the outcome of the DOJ’s review and I am committed to accepting all of their findings,” Mitchell said.

“It is typical for law enforcement agencies to protect case evidence until it can be scrutinized in court,” Mitchell said it in his written statement.

In a rural county like Lake, Mitchell said that it is crucial that the small jury pool not be influenced by unvetted information from the media before jurors can be impaneled to hear the case's facts for themselves.

“I will release the DOJ’s findings to the public for review the instant that I am confident that it will not interfere with any local jury selection process,” he wrote.

This will be the second time the California Attorney General's Office has been asked to render an opinion on the case.

Hopkins said before he made the charging decision earlier this year, he forwarded it to the Attorney General's Office to ask for an opinion on whether or not his office should be recused from the prosecution due to the close working relationship it shares with the sheriff's office, as Lake County News previously reported.

At that time, the Attorney General's Office ruled that there was no reason for Hopkins not to prosecute the case, and so sent it back to his office.

It was that request, plus additional investigation and followup by District Attorney's Office staff, that resulted in more than a year between the time of the accident and the charges being filed, Hopkins previously told Lake County News.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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