It is often said that an attack on one policeman is an attack on all policeman. When a lawman is targeted by a perpetrator, the brethren in blue are generally unanimous in their support of one another. Such was not the scenario, however, for a former San Diego Police Lieutenant.

When thirty-six-year-old Doyle Wheeler was attacked in his Suncrest, Washington, home on April 19, 1988, many of his erstwhile colleagues dismissed the incident, believing it a farce orchestrated by, in their view, a disgraced former cop.

Doyle Wheeler had been a member of the San Diego Police Department for ten years before being scarred by one of the most infamous shootings in not only California, but also in American, history. But that was not the last of his traumas.

When an accused killer walked free after Wheeler testified against a fellow officer, many of the former policeman’s colleagues turned against him and, some believe, attempted to have him killed.

Doyle Wheeler

Doyle Wheeler received three Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for his service in the Vietnam War, during which he believes he killed several enemy soldiers in combat. After being discharged from the Army in 1972, he worked for a year at Sambo’s Restaurant in Spokane, Washington, before beginning his law enforcement career with the Astoria, Oregon, Police Department.

Wheeler joined the San Diego Police Department in 1974. After a January 1977 incident in which he shot and killed a man who had attempted to run over him with his car, Wheeler began having flashbacks and nightmares related to his war service.  Likely suffering from what today would be called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), he was given a stress-related disability leave in September. He returned to duty seven months later.

Wheeler drew the wrath of many fellow policemen in 1981 when he was part of a departmental investigation leading to the firing of thirteen officers after finding they were using drugs while on duty.  Wheeler says that soon thereafter, his house and car were vandalized, his police locker was broken into, and his police uniform was spray-painted yellow.

Despite being resented by many within the San Diego Police Department, Wheeler rose to the rank of Lieutenant by 1984, when a deadly incident traumatized him to the point where he could not return to duty.

A Veteran And A Lawman

On July 18, 1984, forty-one-year-old James Huberty entered a McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro, just north of the Mexican border and approximately twelve miles from downtown San Diego. Armed with several high-powered guns, he began firing indiscriminately.

Before being shot to death by members of the San Diego Police Department SWAT team, Huberty had taken the lives of twenty-one people and injured nineteen others.

James Huberty

At the time, the incident was the deadliest mass shooting in United States history.

A Deadly Rampage

Doyle Wheeler, in charge of the SWAT team, was one of the first police officers on the scene. For reasons that are still unclear, his order to fire on Huberty was not executed until twenty-six minutes after it was issued. Wheeler believes four teenagers were killed by Huberty during this delay.

The San Ysidro massacre had a traumatic effect on Wheeler’s emotional health and he was giving another stress-related leave following the incident. In March 1985, eight months later, he attempted suicide by overdosing on Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication.  He recovered, but he was unable to return to work and was forced to retire from the San Diego Police Department in July.

Traumatized By The Shooting

On April 24, 1986, nine months later, Wheeler was subpoenaed to testify at the murder trial of twenty-two-year-old Sagon Penn, an accomplished martial artist who had won several national tournaments in Taekwondo.

Penn was charged with killing San Diego Police Officer Thomas Riggs and the attempted murders of Officer Donovan Jacobs and Sara Pina-Ruiz, a civilian riding with Riggs.

Sagon Penn

Penn claimed Jacobs had beaten him with a night stick after pulling him over for a traffic violation in Encanto, a predominately black urban neighborhood in southeast San Diego, on March 31, 1985. Penn fled the scene in Jacobs’ patrol car but later turned himself in.

At his trial, Penn said he grabbed Jacobs’ gun and fired six shots in self-defense against both officers, striking them multiple times; Sara Pina-Ruiz was struck once as she sat in the patrol car.

                         

                                Thomas      Donovan                         Sara 

                                   Riggs           Jacobs                     Pina-Ruiz

Wheeler had been Jacobs’ supervisor while they served in the San Diego Police Department’s Northern Division. In testifying for the defense, he described Jacobs as a “hothead” and accused him of previously being “overly aggressive” in using excessive brutality on minorities. Several San Diego Police Officers corroborated that Jacobs had exhibited racist overtures, with one officer going so far as to say that Jacobs was “the most prejudiced white person I’ve ever known.”

Other officers, fellow lieutenants, and administrative personnel, however, scorned Wheeler for testifying against his former colleague.

Cop v. Cop

Wheeler Testifies Against Jacobs

Largely due to Wheeler’s testimony, Sagon Penn was acquitted of both murder and attempted murder in June 1986 and of manslaughter in July 1987.

Penn Is Acquitted

In June 1986, two months after his testimony at Penn’s trial and the same month Penn was acquitted of the murder and manslaughter charges, Wheeler, his wife Bobbi, and their two young children moved to Suncrest, Washington, an exurb and bedroom community of Spokane. Wheeler began working as a salesman, selling gifts and other items such as lapel pins.

Despite relocating 1,300 miles from San Diego, Wheeler says he soon received death threats because of his testimony at the Penn trial.

The Wheelers Move To Washington

On April 19, 1988, while Bobbi was out and their children were in school, two men broke into Wheeler’s home as he was fixing his icemaker. After being tied up with a rope and held at gunpoint, Wheeler says the intruders dragged him to an upstairs office where they beat him, burned him with cigarettes, and pinned one of his police badges to his chest. The former lawman says the assailants then threatened to harm his family and forced him to write this note: “To the San Diego Police. I lied at the trial about Donovan Jacobs and the Police Department. I’m sorry. I make this statement of my own free will. Doyle F. Wheeler.”

As he was writing, Wheeler could hear someone ransacking his downstairs bedroom. Afterwards, he was dragged to his family room where he was placed on the floor with his hands and feet tied together behind his back. He could still hear the ransacking in his downstairs bedroom.

Wheeler believed he later heard one assailant making a phone call, saying they were going to try to make the attack look like a dope rip-off. He said the other assailant shot him in the left side of his head and he played dead until he heard the men drive away. He then managed to free himself and summon help. The time was 1:58 p.m.

Wheeler was rushed to Spokane’s Deaconess Medical Center. He survived the attack and made a full recovery.

Wheeler Is Attacked

Wheeler told Spokane investigators he believed the attack was related to his tenure at the San Diego Police Department, saying he had heard the attackers mentioning “payback” for his testimony at the Penn trial.

He also strongly felt that Donovan Jacobs was in some way involved in orchestrating the attack.

Wheeler Fingers His Former Employer

Clearly still angered at Wheeler and citing his past mental troubles, Jacobs and other San Diego Police Department personnel, including Chief Bill Kolender, suggested to their Spokane counterparts that the former policeman may have staged the attack on himself for attention.

Although no obvious signs of forced entry were found into Wheeler’s home, Spokane investigators ultimately dismissed their San Diego counterpart’s suggestion that the former Police Lieutenant had engineered the incident and concluded he was truthful in his accounts of his beating. Medical personnel and Spokane police officers on the scene did not believe he could have tied himself up in the manner in which he was found or that his wounds could have been self-inflicted.

Scorned By San Diego Police

But Backed By Spokane Police

The assailants were found to have entered the home through an unlocked garage door.

Wheeler’s master bedroom had clearly been ransacked as he contended. He still had several of his San Diego police badges and the assailant appeared to be looking for a specific badge, but none had been taken. The words “San Diego Police” and “Donovan Jacobs” could be made out on the impression of the sheet beneath the notepad page on which Wheeler was forced to write the note.

Wheeler’s Home

Wheeler believed he recognized one of the perpetrators as an informant with the San Diego Police Department’s Narcotics Unit. Because the man worked undercover, his identity was protected.

Phone records confirm a call was made from the Wheeler home to the Narcotics Unit of the San Diego Police Department at the time of the attack. The thirty-second call, automatically tape-recorded, confirms a man asked for Donovan Jacobs, who had recently left the department. Before the call could be transferred, the caller hung up.

The results of a voice analysis of the recording were inconclusive, with experts determining the voice was likely not Wheeler’s, but it was possible he “made the call and tried to disguise his voice.”

Both Doyle Wheeler and Donovan Jacobs refused to take lie detector tests.

Wheeler and Jacobs Both Decline

Requests to Be Polygraphed

Sightings reported by two neighbors also seemed to corroborate Wheeler’s account.

Ty Green noticed a blue late-1970s or early-1980s Toyota, possibly a Celica hatchback, parked across the street from Wheeler’s house at around 1:15 p.m., just over half-an-hour before Wheeler phone 911. Ty also saw the same car speed away several minutes before the ambulance arrived at the home in response to the 911 call.

Ty Green

Doyle Wheeler’s Neighbor

In addition, the day before the attack, another neighbor, James Towey, had noticed a car similar to the Celica hatchback parked twelve miles from Wheeler’s home at the 5 Mile Shopping Center in north Spokane. Four men were talking around the car.

The day after the attack, Wheeler’s 1987 Toyota Tercel station wagon was found abandoned at the locale.

James Towey

The two men who attacked Doyle Wheeler have not been identified. In 1988, the dark-haired assailant was in his late twenties, six feet to six-feet-two-inches tall with a slender, athletic build, crooked teeth, and one large pockmark on his left cheek. Wheeler believes he may have previously worked as an informant with the Narcotics Unit of the San Diego Police Department.

The blond-haired man had a pockmarked face, was six-feet-tall and thin, and also appeared to be in his late twenties. He wore a gold earring in his left ear and had a tattoo of a double lightning bolt (a Nazi symbol) on his left hand.

The men may have been driving a dark blue late-1970s or early-1980s Toyota Celica hatchback. They would today likely be in their early-to-mid-sixties.

If you have any information relating to the identity of these men, please contact the Spokane, Washington, Police Department at 509-625-4100.

Composites Of Wheeler’s Assailants

Both Donovan Jacobs and Sara Pina-Ruiz filed civil lawsuits against Sagon Penn, claiming they were shot without justification. Jacobs’ lawsuit sought $5 million.

I have been unable to find the results of either civil suit.

Civil Lawsuits Filed

Sagon Penn was in and out of jail for the rest of his life. He committed suicide in 2002.

Penn Ends His Life

The strange saga of Doyle Wheeler was aired only once on Unsolved Mysteries. It was supposedly not re-broadcast and was excluded from later airings on Lifetime, Amazon Prime, and other streaming services because Donovan Jacobs threatened to sue the show over their portrayal of him.

Irate Jacobs

SOURCES:

• Associated Press
• Los Angeles Times
• New York Times
• San Bernardino County Sun
• San Diego Union Tribune
• Seattle Times
• Spokesman-Review
• Unsolved Mysteries