LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A lifelong Lake County resident and Lake County Sheriff’s deputy who died in the line of duty on Tuesday has come home.
The body of 50-year-old Robert Rumfelt was transported via a procession of law enforcement agency vehicles from Napa County to Lake County on Thursday afternoon.
Under the stretch of a hot, late-summer sky, the procession wound its way along an 80-mile route from Napa County up Highway 29, headed for Lakeport.
The line of sheriff’s, police and California Highway Patrol vehicles took about five minutes to pass each of its key locations.
The procession passed slowly through Middletown, where along the side of the road were several Cal Fire engines and other units, with firefighters standing at attention and saluting.
The town’s sidewalks were lined with well-wishers, holding flags and signs. In a pasture along the highway near Middletown, there was even a little group on horseback, holding American flags.
From there, the line of vehicles passed Hidden Valley Lake, then arrived in Lower Lake, turning toward Kelseyville.
More community members were waiting along the route, including children with handmade signs expressing love and thanks, perfect strangers who didn’t know Rumfelt alongside people who had met him in his role as a deputy or – before that – as a Lakeport Police officer.
There also were high school football players not just from Clear Lake High – where Rumfelt was an assistant coach – but from Kelseyville, Lower Lake and Middletown along the route, as well as youth leagues, in honor of his time as a football coach.
On through Kelseyville they traveled, and then to Lakeport, where the procession drove the length of Main Street. Lakeport Public Works Director Doug Grider and his crew made sure that American flags dotted the route in honor of Rumfelt’s service not only in law enforcement but in the US Marines.
Two fire ladder trucks sat on either side of the street at Main and Third streets, an American flag draped between them for the hearse and its escort to pass under.
The procession, led by CHP motorcycles, then arrived on N. High Street, at Chapel of the Lakes Mortuary, shortly after 5:30 p.m.
There, dozens of deputy sheriffs and command personnel, as well as members of other agencies including the Lakeport Police Department, stood at attention between two lines of Clear Lake High School football players wearing their red jerseys.
When the hearse parked, and as they prepared to bring Rumfelt’s body out, the group paused in silence.
Then mortuary staff eased the big man’s body out of the vehicle, wrapped in an American flag.
Draped in stars, Rumfelt was carried inside, as Sheriff Brian Martin stood at the mortuary door, saluting.
Rumfelt’s family and close friends then entered. Family members in attendance included Rumfelt’s father, Bob, a former Lakeport mayor who himself served as a sheriff’s deputy for a time.
Outside, the Clear Lake High School football players silently deposited a little mountain of red roses on a table, then gathered together quietly for a prayer. Afterward, they hugged each other.
Nearby, a team of sheriff’s chaplains – Terry Cara, Pastor Mike Suski of Lakeport Christian Center and Pastor Steve Nesheim of Kelseyville Presbyterian Church – looked on. They and other members of the sheriff’s chaplains corp have played a key role in comforting the men and women in uniform in recent days.
By the time the procession arrived in Lakeport, it had been less than 48 hours since Rumfelt died in circumstances that are still the source of close investigation by the District Attorney’s Office.
Rumfelt and fellow Deputy Nate Newton had responded to the 900 block of Boggs Lane in Lakeport on Tuesday night to back up Lakeport Police Sgt. Joe Eastham on a call involving several people fighting.
Rumfelt and Newton would arrive on scene where 21-year-old Alex Michael Castillo of Nice was reported to have been assaulting his wife and her family members. He currently is on probation for domestic violence, according to District Attorney Don Anderson.
Castillo assaulted Rumfelt and Newton as they worked to apprehend him. After a Taser was used on Castillo, he was arrested.
A short time later, as Rumfelt was driving from the scene in his Ford SUV patrol vehicle, he crashed into a tree on Hartley Street north of 20th Street, officials said.
Anderson said it’s believed that a medical emergency – possibly a heart attack – led to Rumfelt having the crash.
In the meantime, Castillo has had a charge of voluntary manslaughter and assault with a deadly weapon added to a host of other charges, including domestic violence, for the case.
Castillo is being held on $1.5 million bail, according to jail records.
Rumfelt’s body had been transported to Napa County for an autopsy, a key part of the investigation into the circumstances of his death. When his family decided to bring him home after the procedure was completed, his fellow members of law enforcement came together to organize the procession.
Lake County Sheriff’s Office staff remain busy with their normal duties but also are gearing up for Rumfelt’s memorial service, set for Saturday, Sept. 9, at Don Owens Stadium at Clear Lake High School in Lakeport.
They’ve already experienced such events. In April 2016, they bid farewell in a large public funeral to Deputy Jake Steely, who died of injuries he suffered while saving his son from the ocean after the boy fell into the water on the Mendocino Coast.
A line-of-duty death, however, hasn’t occurred for the Lake County Sheriff’s Office since May of 1981, when Sgt. Richard Helbush stopped to help a broken down car along Highway 29.
Helbush didn’t know that the two people he found with the car, Bill Cox and Annika Deasy, were on the run from a murder in Stockton.
Helbush was shot several times and died at the scene, with Cox and Deasy taking his vehicle and service weapon and fleeing the scene, only to be caught later following a gunfight with law enforcement officers that included then-Deputy Don Anderson, now Lake County’s district attorney.
The nature of Rumfelt’s death, having occurred in the line of duty, now places him in a small, dearly-held group of men for whom a memorial stands in Courthouse Square in downtown Lakeport.
In addition to Helbush, Rumfelt now joins the ranks of Sheriff George Kemp and Deputy William Hoyt, all of them having died while on duty.
Kemp was mortally wounded by burglary suspects near Lakeport in May 1910.
Hoyt was shot in the courthouse in October 1967 after three prisoners attacked another deputy and took his weapon. Hoyt, who was unarmed, was shot in the chest but managed to get a weapon from a nearby counter, shooting and wounding one of the prisoners, before he collapsed and died.
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Procession returns body of fallen deputy home
- Elizabeth Larson
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