Sergeant Tells of Gunfight at Tuffree Home

Simi Valley Police Sgt. Anthony Anzilotti recalls that day last August in raw, vivid flashes. Gunfire bursting from Daniel Allan Tuffree’s house. Bright blood pooling around the sprawled form of Officer Michael Clark. The SWAT team’s armored truck smashing through Tuffree’s cinder-block wall to shield Clark from gunfire. Officers slipping in their colleague’s blood as they dragged him to safety.

And Anzilotti himself peering past his gun sights through tear gas and stun-grenade smoke at the prone, bloodied Tuffree--a former teacher at Chatsworth High School--wondering whether he was still armed, wondering whether to shoot him.

Thursday was an emotional day of testimony in the Tuffree murder trial in Ventura County Superior Court. Clark’s family and colleagues listened tensely as Anzilotti spoke, some fighting back tears.

Clark’s final call Aug. 4, 1995, Anzilotti testified, began quietly enough.

Clark drove to Tuffree’s house to check on reports that the man had been using alcohol and Valium and had stopped answering his phone. After knocking on the door to no avail, Clark radioed for Anzilotti--his patrol supervisor--to join him.

Anzilotti said he arrived and found Clark interviewing a neighbor, who said that Tuffree was “kind of a nut” and owned a gun.

Anzilotti replied that he and other officers had executed a search warrant at Tuffree’s house in 1992 and seized a .40-caliber Glock pistol that they later gave back.

The officers worked their way around the house, Anzilotti testified. They pounded on the front door. They tried unsuccessfully to open the garage.

Finally, he said, they radioed a dispatcher to try phoning Tuffree. But Tuffree’s phone was busy, Anzilotti testified. And when dispatchers had the phone company force the line free, it rang unanswered.

Worried that Tuffree was sick or hurt and they might have to force their way inside, Anzilotti said, he radioed for backup.

When Officer Michael Pierce arrived, Anzilotti began telling him about the 1992 seizure of the gun at Tuffree’s house, then broke off when he realized they could get inside through the back gate.

Anzilotti reached over the tall gate and lifted the inside latch with the handle of his baton, and they entered the yard.

Clark moved toward Tuffree’s western kitchen window with hand on gun, Anzilotti around the corner to the south side of the house with his own drawn pistol hidden behind his leg. Pierce stayed at the gate, calling the dispatcher to clear all traffic off their radio frequency.

As Clark walked past the mirrored windows across a yard with no cover to hide behind, he said matter of factly, “ ‘I’m in a [lousy] position,’ ” Anzilotti testified.

Then Clark spied someone inside and began talking, trying to coax him out.

“ ‘We just want to make sure you’re OK,’ ” Anzilotti recalled Clark saying.

“ ‘Go away,’ ” Tuffree replied in a slow, slurred voice, Anzilotti testified.

But they could not leave, Anzilotti said, because Tuffree could have been ill. And if he hurt himself after they left, they could be sued.

Suddenly, Clark’s calm voice rose, Anzilotti said. “He said, ‘Let me see your hands, show me your hands’ about a half a dozen times.”

Alarmed, Anzilotti moved back toward Clark’s side of the house and heard him shout, “ ‘He’s got a gun!’ ”

Seconds later, the shooting began.

As he rounded the corner, Anzilotti testified, he saw Pierce falling forward into a prone position with his gun in his right hand and his walkie-talkie in his left as he radioed, “ ‘Officer down, shots fired!’ ”

Anzilotti stepped back from the gunfire, vaulted the block wall, scraping his arm, and grabbed a shotgun from Pierce’s cruiser. As he ran, he radioed, “ ‘Clark, is that you shooting?’ ”

*

Anzilotti testified he ran up to the gate where Pierce was blasting away at the west side of the house, firing two dozen rounds from his department-issue Beretta.

A gunshot answered from inside. Anzilotti looked into the yard, he testified, and spotted Clark.

“He was lying face down, almost against the house, in a bright-red, large pool of blood.”

Anzilotti fired a shotgun round at the house and called out to Clark, he testified. “I kept reassuring him to hang on, and we’d come get him.”

Anzilotti and Pierce pulled back and radioed for the Special Weapons and Tactics team. When it arrived, Anzilotti suited up as a team commander and the unit’s armored truck plowed through the wall and into the yard, shielding Clark from gunfire coming from inside the house.

Anzilotti and four officers grabbed Clark and dragged him out to a cruiser. With lights and siren blaring, they rushed him to Simi Valley Hospital.

Meanwhile, SWAT team members evacuated neighbors from surrounding homes, then began firing tear-gas shells and stun grenades through Tuffree’s windows.

Unable to force Tuffree out, Anzilotti testified, the SWAT team went in, first tossing stun grenades that exploded with a deafening bang and a million-candlepower flash.

Stunned and bloody, Tuffree lay on his back by the sink in his underwear, still moving.

Anzilotti said he and his colleagues threw several more stun grenades.

When Tuffree rolled over on his face, Anzilotti testified, he almost shot the prone man because he could not see his hands.

SWAT officers screamed at him to crawl out, to show his hands.

“Those were the last words I’d heard Officer Clark yelling,” Anzilotti said. “And I was afraid [Tuffree] would come up shooting.”

Anzilotti edged up to Tuffree, keeping his gun trained on him, still wondering whether to shoot. He kicked Tuffree in the head to distract him, then yanked his arm from beneath him.

Tuffree’s hand came out empty, Anzilotti said. No gun.

And with that, Judge Allan Steele called a halt to testimony for the week.

Anzilotti is scheduled to continue testifying Monday under direct examination by Deputy Dist. Atty. Patricia Murphy, then under cross-examination by Tuffree’s lawyers.