Marine detective sentenced to suffocate Sailor unconscious

Approximately five years after Jonathan Laroche resigned from the Police Department of El Cajón for multiple uses of excessive force against intoxicated individuals, and approximately one year after lies about that misconduct in its application to become a detective of the Navy, drown Unconscious an intoxicated and managed sailor. in the San Diego Naval Base.

The victim “seemed to be centimeters from his life,” said the United States district judge on Wednesday, John Houston, during a sentence hearing in the Federal Court of San Diego. “I was very close to death.”

Citing the need to send a strong disjection message to other police officers and point out the racial aspects of a case involving a white officer and black victim, Houston sentenced Laroche to 15 months in a federal prison, almost twice as much as that prosecutors recommended.

“He is disgusting. He is violent. He is extremely disturbing,” Houston told the defendant, who agreed as part of his guilt declaration agreement that never looks for another application of the law.

Laroche, a 41 -year -old Spring Valley resident, He declared himself guilty last year to federal charges to make a false statement and deprive the sailor of their rights under the color of the law. He admitted that while requested in 2022 a detective work with the Department of the Marine Criminal Investigations Division, he made false statements under perjury penalty about his reason to leave the police department of El Cajón and his disciplinary history.

He also admitted that in November 2023 in a security building in the San Diego Naval Base, he placed the poisoned and handcuffed sailor in a carotid restriction for 17 seconds until the victim lost knowledge. He admitted that several minutes later, when the victim was sitting handcuffed to a bank, he grabbed him by the throat and pushed his head against a wall.

The United States assistant prosecutor Seth Askins, told the judge on Wednesday that Laroche only stopped pushing the man’s head when a supervisor intervened, and then boasted of a colleague who “could drown someone.”

Askins said that Laroche was unnecessarily inserted in the situation that other officers had under control and that he also raised the sailor from the ground along the neck at one point after suffocating it unconscious and hit him with his fists and elbows several times.

The prosecutor said that it is understood that law agents sometimes make mistakes in the decisions of the second fraction. “That is not this case,” Askins told the judge.

Laroche told Houston that “he regretted incredibly what happened.” He said he had un treated anger problems and a post -traumatic stress disorder when he fulfilled three combat tours in Iraq with Marines. He said he addressed those problems not with professional help, but with alcohol and obsession with work.

“It was as fast and hard as possible and put the bad in jail, until I became one,” Laroche told the judge.

After leaving Marines, Laroche worked as a police officer from El Cajón from 2013 to 2018. The department issued a five -year reprimand in 2015 for using excessive force against an intoxicated man, with the prosecutors who write in documents of judgment that an investigator pointed out the time that Laroche had already been involved in eight force use incidents in less than two years.

El Cajón Police officials decided to cancel Laroche in 2018 after concluding that he had once again used excessive force twice in 2017. In those incidents, the department also concluded that he inappropriately turned off his camera and lied, according to the Tax. Instead of going through dismissal, department officials allowed him to resign.

Houston criticized that decision of El Cajon. “You have a pass,” the judge told Laroche. “(And then) you lied at work (of the Navy) and prepared to harm another person.”

Laroche was originally convicted in December, but Houston, a former federal prosecutor and reservist of the army who began his legal career in the Army Judge, the general body of the body, expressed concern that the recommended sentence of eight months of Askins was not severe enough.

Askins again recommended eight months in custody on Wednesday, arguing that I was in line with two Customs Officers and Border Protection sentenced in Recent years For similar behavior. But Houston said Laroche’s behavior was worse, and 15 months was appropriate. Laroche resigned from his right to appeal the sentence as part of his guilt agreement.

Originally published: February 12, 2025 at 5:06 PM PST