Victim of Friday Home Invasion Describes Being Handcuffed and Pistol Whipped, as Well as Daring Escape

Yesterday morning, officers of the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department arrested three Humboldt County residents–two men and one woman–in connection with a home invasion and assault on a man at his property west of Garberville.

According to the victim (who preferred to be anonymous)*, “On Friday at 11 a.m. on the dot–I know because I got surveillance–two guys walked up the driveway and they noticed me in the garage.”

The victim said when he came out of the garage, the two masked men were behind him. “At first I thought it was some carpenters or a tree survey crew,” he explained. “But then I seen the guns and they cocked them…They both had guns. One guy had a can of spray maybe wasp spray…At first, I thought it was a joke. I wanted it to be a joke.”

One of the men ordered the victim to “get the fuck on the ground or I’m going to kill you.”

“I was looking down the barrel,” the victim said so he did what they asked. The armed robbers told him to lay face down. “Then they put cuffs on me,” he explained. “It was tight.”

Then they ordered him back to his feet. “Get the Fuck up,” the victim said the men told him. “Now you are going to open the safe.”

But he said he wondered how did they know he had a safe? They also knew the safe was upstairs.

When they walked to the upstairs, the victim explained, “One guy had a gun to the back of my head.” The victim said the man kept “hitting” the back of his head with a gun. “When he was hitting my head with the barrel, I thought it was plastic,” he explained. “I thought maybe I could take them.” But the victim, who had previously had some martial arts training, held off.

“We went in the room,” the victim said. “I think he shut the door behind me…Then he said, ‘Go open the safe. You got two minutes.'”

When they stood in front of the safe, the victim said the men told him, “You got a minute and a half to open it….[So] I just pushed the code.”

Once the victim had unlocked the safe, he tried to run but fell. One of the men, the older more professional seeming one to the victim’s thinking, started into the safe.

“I didn’t have any money in the safe,” the victim said. “I had like my passport, my spare keys. I had my grandma’s ring. I had a pistol.” The safe had a some valuables but no actual cash.

“When the guy started rummaging through it, I knew they were not going to be happy with the stuff in the safe,” he said. “Something in my head told me to get out of there. I kinda got up. They were kinda focused on the safe.” But the younger man noticed him creeping on his knees toward the door.

“I just kept thinking I got to get out of here,” the victim said. “I crept towards the door. He hit me again…The gun went off…I just dropped. I was seeing colors. Blood was coming down…I thought the bullet…hit me.”The victim told us he never felt adrenaline pump like then. “My adrenaline was out of this world,” he told us. “I’ve been skydiving. I’ve been in car accidents. But I never felt anything like this.”

The victim said the younger man said something like “Fuck, I think I shot him.” But, the victim explained, “The other guy was focused on the safe.”

At first, the victim thought he would play dead. But when the men were distracted by the safe, he said he began thinking the men might torture him in an effort to learn if he had valuables hid somewhere else. “If I am going to die now, I’m going to die,” he thought. “I don’t want them to torture me.”

The victim said he got up and somehow, he’s not sure how, opened the door. “I went down the stairs fast,” he explained. “I just start running with the handcuffs. [The men] were pretty much right behind me…[One of the men] was right behind me. He was maybe grabbing my shirt…I don’t think I ever ran that fast in my life.”

The victim said he ran down his driveway. “I figured if I got on the main road maybe someone [perhaps a neighbor] would find me,” he told us. “As I was running, I was waiting for a bullet to hit me. [But] I was willing to take a chance. I ran and ran and ran.”He said he told himself, “Don’t stop or you are going to die.”

As the victim learned later from watching his surveillance tapes, at one point, one of the men stopped running and pointed a gun at him. “He aimed, but he didn’t shoot,” the victim said. “I kept running.”

The victim said he ran past what he thought was a grey Honda Accord (he later saw on the surveillance tape that it was black). “That must be their get away car,” he said he thought. He considered getting into it but didn’t know how he could drive with his hands cuffed behind his back.

“I guess there was a girl in the car,” the victim said. He learned from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department that there had likely been a woman in the car, a getaway driver. [Please note the woman who was later arrested with the two suspects was not proven to be involved in the crime.]

“Luckily, I had my phone on me on the side…Somehow, I don’t know how,  I dialed 911,” the victim explained.”Help, I think I’ve been shot,” he told the emergency dispatcher.”  But he said, he didn’t dare just stay there. “Maybe they’ll find me and catch me,” he worried.

“Once I got far enough, I laid down and I put my legs through the cuffs,” he explained. “I’ve got long arms…I put one leg through and then I put the other leg through.”

He decided to cross the river so he headed over a steep embankment, “I slid through bushes and blackberries and poison oak,” he told us. “I looked at the river. I said, ‘Thank god it hasn’t been raining’…[Then] I jumped in the river.”

The victim said he thought, “If I get across the river, I’m safe.” But swimming in handcuffs even in a river made low and calm for this time of year because of the drought was tougher than he had expected. “I was almost drowning,” he explained. “I was kicking my feet…It was not easy…I finally touched the bottom. If we wouldn’t be in drought right now, I think I would have died.”

When he waded out, he thought he might be safe. “Once I got across the river, I felt a relief,” he told us. “I started just walking…Then I heard the sirens.”

He pulled his phone out and to his surprise it appeared to work.

He called a family member and local firefighter and businesswoman Diana Totten. “[Then] I called 911 again.” He tried to tell the dispatcher where he was but wasn’t sure he was clear. The adrenaline was still pumping.

He said he came up the embankment on the other side of the river by a house. There was a man that he asked for help. The victim said, “I looked crazy.” The man said he couldn’t help but the man showed him how to get the Camp Kimtu Road.

“I was walking with cuffs,” the victim explained. “And this guy drove by and gave me a ride to Tooby Park.”

Somewhere around this time, the victim said is when he knew he hadn’t actually been shot but had just been injured by the pistol whipping.

The Good Samaritan brought the victim to Tooby Park where the firefighters and others were staged. Law enforcement came and got a description of what happened.The victim said that he was taken to the hospital.

“I had head trauma and lots of road rash, but I didn’t need any stitches or staples,” he explained. “[Medical personnel] bandaged me up…The scabs on my wrist from the handcuffs are like out of this world.”

From the vehicle and other clues, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department had a pretty good idea of who the suspects might be and how they came to choose his house, the victim told us.He said that the Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputy told him that the black Honda Accord was stopped in Mendocino County by the Sheriff’s Department early yesterday morning. Inside the vehicle, the deputies found a woman and two men and items that had been taken from the victim’s home.

According to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Booking log, the woman’s name is Rochelle Clevinger, the men’s names were Wyatt Waylon Whitlow and William Orsina Mattingly. All three have had previous run ins with law enforcement.

• See Clevinger’s earlier arrest information here.

• Wyatt Whitlow was arrested in connection with an alleged cannabis facility robbery in 2019.

• Mattingly was wanted for allegedly assaulting an officer in March of this year. But has several previous arrests.
  

  William Orsina Mattingly [Booking photo from Saturday’s arrest]

Please remember, the charges against all three have not been proven in a court of law and they should be presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

*Please also note that the victim is known personally to this reporter.

Update 12:30 p.m.: Press release from the Humboldt county Sheriff’s office:

A Ramey Warrant has been issued for the arrests of William Orsina Mattingly, age 25, and Wyatt Waylon Whitlow, age 35, in connection to the April 23, 2021, robbery in Garberville.

Mattingly and Whitlow were arrested on April 24, 2021, in Ukiah, following a routine traffic stop by the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office. During that traffic stop, Mendocino County Sheriff’s deputies located items believed to be stolen from the Garberville residence.

Today, April 26, 2021, Sheriff’s deputies served a search warrant on the vehicle associated with the suspects, locating additional items linking the two to the crime.

Mattingly and Whitlow are being held at the Mendocino County Correctional Facility and will be transported to Humboldt County following adjudication of their Mendocino County cases. Mattingly and Whitlow will be booked into Humboldt County on a Ramey Warrant for robbery (PC 211) and kidnapping (PC 211).

Wyatt Whitlow current Booking Photo | Mendocino County

UPDATE: Two Men, Wyatt Whitlow and William Mattingly, Sentenced to 18 and 17 Years Each, for Home Invasion Robbery in SoHum Earlier This Year

Earlier: Law Enforcement and Medical Responding to a Report of Someone Injured Near Garberville