By RANDI ROSSMANN
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Tuesday, July 19, 2011 at 7:48 a.m.
A midnight shootout at a rural Petaluma home left an off-duty Marin County sheriff’s deputy and his killer dead in the violent aftermath of a broken romantic relationship.
Only the quick actions of the brother of the woman who was the focus of 28-year-old Thomas Halloran’s rage ended the violent encounter and possibly saved other people from being hurt or killed, authorities said.
But by then, Jim Mathiesen, a 49-year-old father of two from Petaluma, lay mortally wounded outside the home after Halloran shot the off-duty deputy twice in the chest.
Halloran, in turn, was shot to death by the brother, who authorities have not identified.
Mathiesen had gone to the home of friends on Liberty Road at about 12:15 a.m. Tuesday after Halloran had sent a text to his ex-girlfriend threatening to kill her and her family. The 22-year-old woman was at the home at the time with her mother, brother and grandfather, according to Assistant Sonoma County Sheriff Lorenzo Dueñas.
Mathiesen, a close friend of the family, had been helping the woman deal with her ex-boyfriend for several weeks.
“He was trying to get this person out of her life,” Dueñas said.
Halloran was a parolee with a lengthy criminal record in Sonoma and Marin counties. He’d been arrested previously for threatening and stalking a different woman, records show.
But Dueñas said the family thought Halloran did not know where they lived, which may explain why no one called 911 to report his threat.
After discovering that Halloran was on the property Mathiesen went outside to confront him. Halloran pulled a handgun and shot the unarmed deputy twice in the chest, investigators said.
“He came over and before my dad could reason with him, he shot him,” said a tearful Vincent Mathiesen, 21, the son of the slain deputy.
The son went to the crime scene early Tuesday morning and described his father as “a great guy who tried to help everybody.”
The family had reached out to Mathiesen because of his law enforcement background and long connection to the ex-girlfriend’s mother, a friend since high school.
Deputies would not identify the family members because they said they were concerned about possible retaliation. Dueñas said investigators were looking into whether Halloran had any gang affiliations.
Friends indicated Halloran had been obsessed with his girlfriend, and was distraught over the break up of the relationship.
“Nicole an (sic) I broke up . . . sucks . . . she was a nice girl . . . loved her a lot, still do . . . sucks,” Halloran wrote in a July 12 Facebook message to a friend.
He elaborated in another posting:
“ . . . I had surgery last wk it went good . . . not even limping anymore but I think that and taking the pain meds last week made her walk, but life goes on . . . I’m off them now and getting my stuff strait . . . maybe once I get (expletive deleted) back on track I can start a friendship with her . . . she is a nice girl and still in crazy love with her.”
Halloran also created a fake Facebook page on which he pretended to be his ex-girlfriend and posted embarrassing things about her, law enforcement officials confirmed. The page listed the woman as being in a “complicated” relationship.
When the first shots rang out from the front of the house, Halloran’s ex-girlfriend fled to a neighbor’s home, Dueñas said.
Halloran then forced the woman’s mother at gunpoint into the garage and told her to get into a vehicle so that they could “go find her daughter,” Dueñas said.
The woman’s son, who had been startled awake by the initial shots, peered into the garage and saw that his mother was being accosted and forced to the car.
Someone in the house called 911 for help at 12:12 a.m., saying Halloran had a hostage at gunpoint and that one person had been shot.
The son in the meantime went back to the garage after getting a firearm. He found his mother on the driver’s side of the vehicle and Halloran on the opposite side, still pointing a weapon at her and making demands, Dueñas said.
The son opened fire, striking Halloran in his lower body, Dueñas said. He said Halloran was moving to a different vantage point when the son fired again, mortally wounding Halloran.
Dueñas said based on the initial investigation authorities consider the son’s actions to be a case of justifiable homicide.
“Based on what we know so far, that was a pretty heroic act on the part of the son to save his mother and other people in the house,” Dueñas said.
Dueñas declined to specify the weapons that were used during the confrontation while investigators piece together the forensic evidence.
Neighbors and passersby Tuesday morning said they were shocked at the violence in the pastoral Liberty Valley, a neighborhood of rural homes and farm land.
“We haven’t seen anything like this in our neighborhood,” said one woman who declined to be identified. “It’s a little unsettling.”
“You don’t expect it to happen right here,” Jose Romo said. “They’re a really nice family.”
Marin County sheriff’s officials released a statement late Tuesday morning calling Mathiesen a “well-known and respected deputy.”
“This is tragic news. Jim died trying to help others. He was known for his kindness and his helpful nature,” Sheriff Bob Doyle said.
At the time of shooting, Halloran was on both parole and probation for previous crimes.
Christine Cook, assistant district attorney in Sonoma County, said Halloran went to prison last year for a 2008 domestic violence-related offense. He was released on parole from Avenal State Prison in the Central Valley in November 2010.
He was still on parole in May when he was arrested for trying to get pills with a fake prescription. He was charged with two misdemeanors, including commercial burglary, but agreed to plead guilty to a single count of fraud and he was sentenced to two years’ probation, Cook said.
“Knowing he had a parole violation pending and placing the defendant on probation allows us to hold additional future jail time over their head,” Cook said.
In the 2008 case, Halloran was convicted of threatening and terrorizing a woman. At that time he was sentenced to jail time and probation, but was sent to prison after he failed to follow the terms of his probation, which included staying away from the individual and attending programs for batterers and substance abusers.
There also is an existing restraining order on file, issued in 2009 on behalf of a woman requesting protection from him. It is not related to this case.
Court records and past newspaper accounts indicate Halloran had worked as a criminal informant in Marin. Barry Borden, Marin County’s chief deputy district attorney, said he could not confirm if Halloran was a confidential informant or if he was currently working with any law enforcement agency.
He said Halloran had misdemeanor convictions in 2001 and 2007 and his probation in the last case ended in 2010, but did not elaborate.
“I can only tell you what is in the public record,” Borden said.
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