Temecula, CA: Temecula freeway dedicated to slain deputy

10:00 PM PDT on Friday, August 6, 2010

By SARAH BURGE
The Press-Enterprise
It's been 17 years since Riverside County Sheriff's Deputy Kent Hintergardt was shot down while responding to a domestic violence call in Temecula.

Now, motorists traveling on Interstate 15 through the city will have a high-profile reminder of the sacrifice he made.

Signs dedicating the freeway through Temecula in his honor were unveiled at a Friday morning ceremony in Murrieta.

"I will always miss him and wish he could be there ... I will see him again one day," said Kena Hintergardt, who was born seven months after her father, Deputy Kent Hintergardt, was killed in the line of duty in Temecula in 1993.
Assemblyman Kevin Jeffries, R-Lake Elsinore, drafted the bill dedicating the freeway from Temecula Parkway to Interstate 215 in Hintergardt's memory at the suggestion of his widow, Linda Soubirous.

Soubirous, who became an advocate for law-enforcement families after her husband's death, said the dedication would honor not only Hintergardt, but all law-enforcement officers.

At the ceremony, Sheriff Stan Sniff recalled Hintergardt as a bright, talented deputy who was "cut down violently and without any warning."

On May 9, 1993, the 33-year-old deputy responded to an apartment complex where neighbors reported hearing a woman screaming before falling silent.

In the parking lot, Hintergardt encountered Mark John Kamaka, who had just strangled his 23-year-old girlfriend. Witnesses said Kamaka handed his driver's license to Hintergardt before pulling out a gun, shooting the deputy and fleeing. Kamaka, 37, later killed himself in his car.

Hintergardt had a 16-month-old daughter, Marissa, and another girl, Kena, on the way.

Sniff said Hintergardt's death is a vivid reminder of the sacrifices made daily by officers.

"There are very few professions in which you start out for work, each and every day, strapping on a firearm and putting on a bullet-protective vest. And then proceeding to calls for help from the community in which other citizens and other professions go, and are expected to go, in the other direction."

Reach Sarah Burge at 951-375-3736 or sburge@PE.com