… demanding …
RAUCH: Are you all right, Detective?
BERRINGER: Yes. I’m sorry, I—
RAUCH: Take a moment. Is this testimony difficult for you?
BERRINGER: Give me a minute.
RAUCH: I’m surprised, Detective. You often testify in court. In fact, that’s part of your job. Is this case different?
BERRINGER: I’m fine, let’s go on.
RAUCH: Why is it different, Detective Berringer? Is it because you cared about Ana Grey?
JUDGE: We’ll take a fifteen-minute recess.
RAUCH: Are you ready to resume, Detective Berringer?
BERRINGER: Yes, I apologize, Your Honor.
JUDGE: No need. Go on.
RAUCH: You were giving an example of Ana Grey’s obsession with you.
BERRINGER: Ana said she wanted the nine hundred dollars back that she loaned me to fix my Harley. She picked the time to tell me this while I was at the Boatyard Restaurant in Santa Monica with my fellow officers, relaxing after work. She confronted me in front of them and the other patrons. It was embarrassing for the Santa Monica Police Department, which I take a lot of pride in, and to me personally. She verbally abused a woman friend of mine, also a police officer, who was known to everyone at the table, and made remarks about this woman’s character that were potentially damaging to her professional reputation.
RAUCH: This is Officer Sylvia Oberbeck?
BERRINGER: Officer Oberbeck.
RAUCH: What is your relationship to Officer Oberbeck?
BERRINGER: We are friends, colleagues, we came up together, she’s an excellent policewoman, and I have the highest respect for the way she does her job.
RAUCH: Are you romantically involved?
BERRINGER: We have been. In the past.
RAUCH: Did Ana Grey know you were romantically involved with Officer Oberbeck in the past?
BERRINGER: Yes.
RAUCH: What was her reaction?
BERRINGER: She went out of control.
RAUCH: What do you mean by “out of control”?
BERRINGER: She followed Officer Oberbeck and me in her car — her official Bureau car — and tailgated us up to speeds of one hundred miles per hour on the Marina Freeway. She pulled up behind us to the bumper of my car. She was very aggressive, revving her motor and honking the horn, forcing us onto the shoulder. When she got out of her car she was agitated. She said, “I know you were fucking this bitch and this is a perfect example.” Officer Oberbeck was terrified. I was pretty scared myself. She was pounding on the window and throwing rocks and ultimately tried to scald Officer Oberbeck with hot coffee.
RAUCH: I’m sorry, I’m lost, you were on the freeway and she had hot coffee …
BERRINGER: She had a cup of coffee in her hand when she got out of the car and she threw it.
RAUCH: What happened to Officer Oberbeck?
BERRINGER: The window was closed, it didn’t touch her, but that’s an example of how out of control Ana was. Completely out of control.
RAUCH: Was she out of control the night you came to her apartment to break it off?
BERRINGER: At first she was sad, upset, whatever, said she couldn’t take it, we had to make this work out, it was the only good thing she had left in her life.
RAUCH: What did you say?
BERRINGER: I said, baby, I love you, I care about you, but that’s just not going to happen. That’s not where I am right now. I’ve been married twice, I want my freedom, I told you from the beginning.
RAUCH: How did she respond?
BERRINGER: Again, she became more and more agitated. She’d been crying for a while — excuse the expression — she was really pissed off.
RAUCH: Officer Berringer, why did you go to Agent Grey’s apartment that night?
BERRINGER: She paged me.
RAUCH: Where were you?
BERRINGER: I needed to do some cardio training, so I was running the steps in Santa Monica Canyon when the pager came through. The signal wasn’t strong enough — reception isn’t good in the canyon — but I was eighty- five percent sure it was her, because she’d been trying to call me all day, so I ignored the page and finished the workout, and as I’m driving in my car, on Ocean Avenue, I became aware of someone pulling up in back of me, fairly close, putting on their brights. At this point I assumed it was Ana because I’d had that experience before, of her following Officer Oberbeck and me. She pulled up beside me, made eye contact, and gave me a hand motion that meant, Follow me. She then pulled in front of me and I proceeded to follow her to her apartment in the Marina. She pulled into the garage, and I pulled into the visitor’s spot outside her place, and we walked in together. She went into the kitchen to get something to eat. She wore running tights and running shoes and a spandex top and a jacket on top of that and she had her hair pulled up. She said, “Hi.” I said, “Hi. What’s going on?” And we had a general conversation. She offered me a drink, I said no. She said, “What’s going on, where have you been? I’ve been paging you.” She wasn’t being aggressive at that point. I said I’ve got things on my mind. She said, “Like what?” I said I wasn’t comfortable with the relationship anymore. She put her arms around me and told me she wanted to move in together. I told her that wasn’t in the cards.
RAUCH: Then what?
BERRINGER: She started blaming me for everything that was wrong in her life. She got on this theme of everyone screwing her over, including everyone at work. She said I was screwing her over and she was tired of it. I saw things going south real quick and I didn’t want a confrontation. Her arms were still around me. I said, “What do you want me to do?” She said we could start over. I told her no.
She became infuriated. She was breathing hard. She was tense all over and you could see her going off the scale, the most upset I’ve ever seen her. Then she came back to me for the last time. “What are you trying to tell me?” she said.
I didn’t have anything else to say, so I started walking toward the exit, and she turned away in the other direction, to the coffee table. I never made it to the door. I was looking back to see what she was doing. I wanted to make sure nothing was going to be thrown at me. She bent down and stood up and suddenly there were two bright flashes, and it was as if someone shot me with a drug. I don’t remember hearing the gun.
RAUCH: But you knew you were shot. What were you thinking?
BERRINGER: I was thinking, I know I can win this.
RAUCH: Can you explain why you thought that?
BERRINGER: It might sound corny, but Teddy Roosevelt said, “Those who are willing to enter the arena are always preparing themselves for the battle.” I’m a police detective and I take my job seriously and I like to think I’m always prepared. First of all, you know your body’s going to help you out. Fear is your body responding in a high state of arousal. Fear is okay. What you want to avoid is panic and indecision.
RAUCH: You did not panic?
BERRINGER: I thought, Okay, this is just like in training. Everything was moving slowly. It was like when I was knocked unconscious once when I got hit riding the Harley. Everything was woozy except I had this incredible tunnel vision. All I saw was Ana taking aim with the gun for round two.
RAUCH: And you were how far away from Agent Grey?
BERRINGER: I was almost to the door. I was in the dining room area. She was back near the coffee table, near the fireplace on the other side of the room.
RAUCH: So you were at least fifteen feet apart.
BERRINGER: Correct.
