Former San Mateo officer continues testimony

The three options Winchester said he offered Sherry C. — who he could tell was intoxicated — were finding a room at the motel, driving to an address in Mountain View she said she was trying to get to earlier in the day or continuing to loiter and risk getting arrested. Having encountered Sherry C. three times earlier that day, Winchester opted in his fourth encounter with her to employ verbal judo — which he said is a police term for offering options someone might have available to them and listing them from most favorable to least favorable — in an effort to get her out of trouble.

Based on his experience with people under the influence of drugs and alcohol, Winchester said he felt her state that night was likely to continue to deteriorate.

“I felt that if she continued, she was probably going to start spiraling down and she was going to get into trouble,” he said. “I wanted her to leave.”

Deputy District Attorney Alpana Samant has alleged Winchester approached Sherry C. as she was sleeping in her car at the Motel Avalon after midnight, told her she couldn’t sleep in her car and that she should get a motel room. Because she didn’t have cash, Sherry C. wasn’t able to get a room there and Winchester told her she could follow his patrol car to a gas station with an ATM, according to Samant previously. The prosecutor has alleged he instead drove to the Coyote Point Recreation Area with the intent of sexually assaulting her.

When she took the stand Monday, Sherry C. said she didn’t want to go with Winchester to the Coyote Point Recreation Area because he had already groped her breasts and genitals during what he called a search in a dark part of the Motel Avalon parking lot. But she said she went along with his suggestion to find an ATM because he was a police officer and she was under the influence, adding she didn’t want to go to jail and become separated from her dog Honey.

“I was afraid of what else he was capable of doing,” she said. “He’s a cop and I’m under the influence and I didn’t want to go to jail.”

Three options

Sherry C. alleged Winchester told her she had three options when the two of them were in a parking lot in the Coyote Point Recreation Area, which is where she alleged he drove instead of taking her to one of the gas stations on Peninsula Avenue that he described to her at the motel. She acknowledged Winchester never described what the three options were, but she took them to mean three different ways to have sex because he knew she had been drinking and had found prescription pills without her name on them in her car in the motel parking lot, which is where he threatened to take her to jail.

Sherry C. described the park as incredibly dark, and said she told him she would not orally copulate him when he told her she had three options, prompting him to ask her why she wouldn’t. When she said she had a condom in her car, Sherry C. said Winchester told her to get it and proceeded to have sex with her on the back of his patrol car.

“None of this added up for the appropriate way an officer should act,” she said.

But Winchester said he didn’t order Sherry C. to follow his patrol car out of the Motel Avalon, and instead told her she could follow him toward an area where she could get cash in case she wasn’t familiar with the area. He said his only physical contact with Sherry C. at the motel was a pat-down search, which he said was over her clothes and was not intrusive.

When Sherry C. was receptive to following his patrol car out of the motel, Winchester said he directed her to turn left at the intersection of North Bayshore Boulevard and Peninsula Avenue so she could find gas stations on the west side of Highway 101, while he turned right onto Coyote Point Drive.

Winchester said in an Oct. 23, 2015, interview with inspectors from the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office that he was surprised to see Sherry C. drive her car behind his patrol car at the entrance of Coyote Point Recreation Area after giving her directions on where she could find cash. In a decision Winchester would later describe as “boneheaded,” he said in the interview he suggested she drive further into the park behind his car so she could find a place to sleep off her intoxicated state.

‘Hide-out’

Winchester said Friday he initially drove to a restroom on the northern portion of the park, near a place he called his “hide-out” and where other San Mateo police officers have gone to write reports and relax for a few minutes. But he eventually drove west on a walkway, with Sherry C. following him, to a parking lot outside a playground, noting he didn’t want her to be in an area where he had been planning to spend the rest of his shift ending at 3 a.m.

“I didn’t want her hanging out where I hang out,” he said.

Winchester confirmed he and Sherry C. smoked cigarettes in the parking lot outside the playground before he left around 2 a.m. to drive back to the restroom. When he returned to the parking where he left Sherry C. at around 2:08 a.m., she was still there, and they smoked cigarettes again before they both left the park at around 2:34 a.m.

Winchester said his goal while they smoked in the park was to let Sherry C. talk about what was on her mind, noting she primarily talked about the fight she got into with her boyfriend and another woman at the Americas Best Value Inn the morning of Oct. 19. Though another San Mateo police officer responded to a call related to the fight, Winchester first met Sherry C. several hours after the fight when someone reported wanting her off the America’s Best Value Inn property, where she had returned after going to the hospital.

Winchester said the two did not have any physical contact during the 51 minutes they were at the Coyote Point Recreation Area, and confirmed with his defense attorney Paul DeMeester that no sexual acts took place between them, and no options were discussed at the park.

In custody on $3.1 million bail, Winchester is expected to return to the stand Monday and DeMeester is expected to resume direct questioning of Winchester.

anna@smdailyjournal.com

(650) 344-5200 ext. 106