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On November 18, 1943,
Deputy Sheriff Walter J. Leinberger, a popular deputy in the Broderick
area (now known as West Sacramento) was shot to death outside a Bryte
cabin where he had gone to arrest a man for burglary.
Deputy Leinberger, accompanied by his wife
Zetta, was attempting to arrest 38 year old Luis “Ironmouth” Balle, when
Balle burst out of the cabin firing his pistol, slaying Deputy Leinberger
as his wife watched. Mrs. Leinberger, who had never fired a gun before,
took her husband’s weapon and fired six times at the gunman. She thought
she missed him, as he was able to escape, but it was later discovered that
she wounded him twice in the arm.
In less than twenty-four hours, authorities
caught up with Balle in a Sacramento alley. During a shoot out with the
lawmen, Balle sustained bullet wounds that later proved fatal.
Ralph W. Bonnetti, then a Folsom Prison guard
and a close friend of the slain deputy, was among the officers who finally
caught up with Balle. Bonnetti was later hired as a deputy by Sheriff
Forrest Monroe, and in 1952 was elected judge of the Washington Judicial
District Court in Eastern Yolo County.
Deputy Leinberger’s son William, who was
eleven years old at the time of his father’s death, joined the Yolo County
Sheriff’s Department in September 1956, and retired as sergeant in 1984.
In November 1991, county law enforcement
officials gathered to dedicate the Sheriff’s new $3.5 million
minimum-security detention center to the memory of Walter J. Leinberger.
http://www.camemorial.org/index.html |
