Scene of Battle After Chase : Suspect and Deputy Shot in Nellie Gail Ranch Gunfight

An Orange County sheriff’s deputy and an auto theft suspect were wounded during a running gun battle early Monday near a cul-de-sac in the exclusive Nellie Gail Ranch area of Laguna Hills.

“I thought this was the end. . . . I thought I was definitely going to die,” said Sheri Eyles, 20, who watched the suspect jump from his car, fire a pistol at pursuing deputies and run, ending up on her front doorstep.

Eyles said she went to the second-floor balcony of her parents’ house after she heard sirens blare through the normally quiet rural neighborhood of new homes.

As she watched, the suspect ran along the back-yard fence, then slowed to reload his pistol as he passed the two horses the family keeps in an open corral. She then ducked for cover, and moments later she heard banging, then shots at the house’s front door. Eyles shouted down to a deputy in her back yard that the man was out front.

She again took cover as deputies confronted the suspect on the front door step and fired, wounding him twice.

“I heard officers say, ‘We got him,’ and they were very happy,” Eyles recalled, calm and composed about 8 hours after the bloody shoot-out. “It is not the kind of thing you expect to happen, especially in this neighborhood.”

The gunfire, which left the suspect in critical condition with two bullet wounds and a deputy with a minor head wound, followed a 5-mile chase from Mission Viejo.

A spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department identified the suspect as Matthew Glenn Kaufman, 25, whose last known address was Portland, Ore. Authorities refused to release the deputy’s name, but sources identified him as Steve Ripple, a veteran of several years with the department.

Both men were taken to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo. Nancy Gasho, a hospital spokeswoman, said that Kaufman had been shot once in the chest and that a second bullet had grazed his forehead. He was being treated for a collapsed lung. She said the deputy, with a bullet graze on his head, was alert and about to be discharged when X-rays revealed that he had also suffered a concussion.

The chase began in the 22000 block of Barlovento in Mission Viejo at 7:47 a.m. as a deputy approached the driver of a 1985 silver Lincoln Town Car, according to Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Richard J. Olson. The car was registered to Billie R. Scott of Bonanza, Ore., and had been reported stolen from the San Francisco area in late April.

As the officer walked up to the car, the driver stepped on the gas and sped away, Olson said, adding that he is unsure if any shooting occurred during the actual chase, which involved about six sheriff’s cruisers.

The chase ended when the suspect stopped his car in the 27100 block of Sundowner Drive, a short cul-de-sac street with about six houses. Two sheriff’s cruisers pulled up close behind, and two backup cars were also closing in, Olson said.

Eyles, who was getting ready to feed her horses, had been drawn to the balcony of her home by the sirens. Her parents had left for work and she was alone in the family’s new two-story house at 25801 River Falls Road.

The Saddleback College sophomore said that she saw the suspect’s car stop at the end of Sundowner Drive, just on the other side of her next-door neighbor’s house, followed closely by several sheriff’s cars.

Bullet Hole in Windshield

Eyles said she saw a thin man with a beard get out of the car and begin shooting at officers who had taken cover behind their vehicles. One bullet apparently struck Deputy Ripple in the forehead. But the projectile passed through the skin around the deputy’s skull and then came out. One sheriff’s car had a bullet hole in the lower left side of the windshield on the driver’s side.

Eyles said the officers then leveled their guns at the man, but she wasn’t certain if they shot back. However, bullet holes riddled the windshield of the suspect’s car, as well as the passenger-side windows of both the front and back doors.

Next, Eyles said the man began running down a horse trail that skirts the back yards of the homes on the north side of River Falls Road. She said the man passed her neighbor’s back yard and then turned and ran along a side brick wall toward her own house.

As he passed the horse corral, she said, the suspect slowed a little to reload, digging deeply into his pockets for bullets.

“The first thing I thought about was my horses,” she said, explaining her concern that they might be caught in a cross-fire.

Afraid the man might see her, Eyles said, she ran inside the house and tried to call her mother at work. But there was no answer.

Then she heard a banging and shots at the front of the house. She said she screamed to an officer she saw in her back yard to tell him where the fugitive had gone. Later, she said, deputies told her that the suspect had accidentally fired his gun twice while pounding on the front door.

Moments later, deputies confronted the suspect and shot him on the front door steps.

Evidence of the terrifying event still remained visible as Eyles spoke with a reporter. Blood and gunpowder stained the Eyles’ front stoop.

Olson said the district attorney’s office is investigating the shooting, a routine practice in officer-involved shootings.