A 32-year-old former Orange County sheriff’s deputy pleaded guilty Thursday to attacking his girlfriend and was immediately sentenced to three years of informal probation.
Kyle Edward Pickard accepted a plea deal from prosecutors and admitted three misdemeanor counts of battery, criminal threats and false imprisonment. Orange County Superior Court Judge Terri Flynn-Peister sentenced him to a day in jail, which he had credit for, and ordered him to perform eight hours of community service and attend a domestic violence batterers’ program.
“Mr. Pickard is happy to finally put this behind him and be able to move on with his life,” his attorney, Mark Fredrick, said.
Pickard got into a fight with his live-in girlfriend about 2 a.m. Jan. 19, 2020, in their home in Rancho Santa Margarita.
Pickard, who joined the Orange County Sheriff’s Department in July 2011, no longer works for the department, Fredrick said.
The case got bogged down in litigation over how deputies collected evidence in the case, according to court records.
In a motion to suppress evidence, prosecutors said Pickard dragged the woman down the stairs into a den and “bashed her head into a wall. Once in the den, defendant pushed her on the ground and continued to punch and strangle her, hit her head against the tile, repeatedly threatened to kill her, tell her that she was his prisoner as she begged him to stop or just go ahead and kill her.”
Fredrick moved to suppress Ring videos from the home as well as other evidence and information collected from his cell phone.
The couple went out for drinks to celebrate Pickard’s birthday the night of the conflict. Pickard got sick on the way home and passed out on the couch, so his girlfriend and two other friends went out to go to another bar but when it was closed, she returned home, prosecutors said.
When she got home again, the two got into an argument that turned violent, prosecutors said. The two both ended up calling first responders after she fled the home.
Pickard said she kicked him in the face and that he pushed her out of the house, prosecutors said.
According to his defense attorneys in the motion to suppress evidence, Pickard said he locked himself in a bedroom to avoid any more conflict with his girlfriend when she came back home that night. He said he woke up to her “screaming and kicking open the bedroom door,” his attorneys said.
“After barging into the bedroom, (the victim) kicked Mr. Pickard in the face,” his attorney said. “At that point, Mr. Pickard escorted her out of his home through the garage.”
Pickard refused to submit to a breathalyzer exam because he didn’t see the relevance to the dispute, his attorneys said. Pickard’s attorneys also argued that he never consented to letting investigators seizing and viewing his phone, but the motion to suppress the evidence was denied.