Tulare Co. deputy mourned. Here are others shot, killed on duty in Fresno area

A Tulare County Sheriff’s deputy was shot and killed while responding to calls for assistance at home in Porterville on Thursday.

The deputy, 35-year-old Randy Hoppert, was shot with what the sheriff’s office later described as “a high-powered rifle” by a suspect who evaded authorities by moving among three houses in the area while using camouflage attire to shoot at deputies.

The deputies had originally arrived to serve an eviction notice at the home.

The suspect, later identified as David Morales, was eventually killed by law enforcement.

Hoppert’s condition was too volatile for transport to Fresno’s Community Regional Medical Center, so he was taken to Porterville’s Sierra View District Hospital, where he died. His body was escorted in procession, to the Tulare County Coroner’s Office on Thursday afternoon.

First shooting death in nearly two decades

This is the first shooting death of a deputy at the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office in nearly 20 years, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, a nonprofit that honors fallen law enforcement officers.

In 2007, detective Kent Haws was killed while investigating suspicious activity near Ivanhoe. According to The Fresno Bee reporting at the time, the killer walked out of the orange groves and shot Haws five times, including once in the “center of his forehead.”

Then, he walked away, leaving Haws on the side of the road.

The man, Jorge Banda, was carrying the gun when he was arrested a short while later. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but was eventually convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2012.

In 2023, a Selma police officer was gunned down while on a routine patrol in a residential Selma neighborhood west of Highway 99. Authorities at the time said Gonzalo Carrasco Jr. (a 24-year-old father-to-be) was “essentially executed” by a convicted felon in possession of an illegally manufactured ghost gun.

It was the first line-of-duty death in the history of the department.

In 2010, deputies with the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office were serving a search warrant for a suspected arsonist at a trailer in Minkler when they were ambushed.

Two law enforcement officers were shot and killed during the initial shootout and ensuing stand-off, which lasted seven hours.

Fresno County deputy Joel Wahlenmaier was killed (and a second deputy was injured) in the initial effort to get the man from of the home.

A 28-year-old Reedley police officer, Javier Bejar, was shot about an hour later while standing watch 244 feet from the trailer, according to Fresno Bee reporting. He was hit in the head and survived for several days before being taken off life support.

Bejar was the first Reedley police officer killed in the line of duty in the department’s 100-year history.

According to reporting following the shootout, the suspect, Rick Liles, “used prescription drugs, experienced hallucinations, was always armed.” He had told relatives “that he was willing to die, and would ‘take some cops out,’ and then kill himself,” The Bee reported.

Liles was eventually found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. After the shootout, officers found police scanners, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, four rifles (two with scopes), six semi-automatic pistols and two revolvers inside his home.

That shootout came nearly a decade after two Fresno County Sheriff’s deputies were killed in separate instances nine months apart.

Erik Telen and his partner were investigating a break in at an unoccupied home near Dunlap in 2001, when, according to The Fresno Bee, he was shot with “almost a full load of buckshot ... killing the deputy instantly.”

It was the first time that a Fresno County deputy had been killed in the line of duty in almost a century.

In May of the following year, deputy Dennis Phelps was shot in the face during a routine traffic check near Locan and Shepherd avenues. Following the shooting, the suspect stole the deputy’s cruiser and drove to the foothills, where he evaded law enforcement for nearly a week.

Mark Charles Volpa Jr., was eventually killed by SWAT officers at Big Sandy Rancheria in what The Bee described at the time as “a hail of gunfire,” that “penetrated the man’s heart, liver and lungs.”

Fresno Police Department hasn’t had an officer die from gunfire since the late 1970s, according to the Officer Down Memorial page.

In that case officer Lanny “Skip” Stevenson was off duty when he was shot to death while trying to break up a fight outside a party. At trail, the shooter claimed the gun went off accidentally, according to a story in The Fresno Bee in 1980.