In Memory

Manuel M. Reyes

Manuel M. Reyes

After receiving a copy of the 60th reunion Memory Book...My Son-In-Law, Ronnie Lloyd (Ken Lloyd's son) found these two articles about Manuel. Up to this point we didn't have a year that Manuel had died. He remembered his Dad was friends with him so many years ago. Thanks to Ronnie seeing Manuel listed as unknown year of death he was able to clear up the mystery!

 

Veterans home guard's death is a mystery / Cops think he was lured off job, killed, dumped next to his car

Peter FimriteChronicle Staff Writer

Nobody thought much about it when security officer Manuel Reyes stepped out of the guardhouse at the Yountville Veterans' Home shortly before midnight Sunday to check on a car at the front gate.

It wasn't out of the ordinary that the 58-year-old veteran guard would drive away in his patrol car either.

But things just did not add up when Reyes' body was found less than an hour later next to his crashed vehicle on a winding, rural road 10 miles away from where he was last seen alive.

Napa County Sheriff's investigators believe Reyes, who had worked at the home for elderly and retired veterans for 36 years and had a reputation as a friendly, helpful employee, was lured away from his job, slain and dumped next to the car.

But the circumstances surrounding the killing are a mystery.

"Suffice it to say that his injuries were not consistent with a traffic accident," said Napa County Sheriff's Capt. Mike Loughran.

Loughran declined to release details about the killing, the type of injuries Reyes received or theories about how he might have been killed, but he said investigators were pursuing several leads.

Among them is the identity of the person or persons who drove up to the guardhouse at the entrance to the 119-year-old college-style campus off Route 29 late Sunday and talked to Reyes.

According to Andrew Kotch, communications chief for the California Department of Veterans Affairs, Reyes was working the overnight shift and went outside, apparently to see what the driver wanted. Two other employees were in the guardhouse at the time, but Kotch said they had not heard anything unusual and could not see what happened next.

"We're not sure as to what transpired," Kotch said. "After he went out to address this vehicle, the next thing we know, there's a report of an accident involving his vehicle."

Loughran said a passer-by had spotted the car crashed into a tree on the side of Dry Creek Road near the intersection of Mount Veeder Road shortly after midnight. He said Reyes' body was a few feet from the car, and emergency workers who responded knew immediately that his injuries were not caused by the accident.

"It's about 10 miles from the veterans home, so one of the things we're looking into is how and why he ended up where he did," Loughran said.

A California Highway Patrol helicopter and dogs from the Napa and Sonoma counties sheriffs' departments searched the area, but no arrests were made.

Loughran said, however, that investigators were looking for a 5-foot-6 man of medium build in his early 20s who was seen at about 11:30 p.m. Sunday getting into a yellow taxi van in front of a restaurant on Main Street in Napa.

Loughran said the man was wearing a tan baseball cap, light-colored shirt and very baggy light-colored blue jeans. Loughran would not say why investigators were interested in him.

Reyes recently had left his wife and moved out of the family's Napa home, where neighbors said unsavory-looking characters had been hanging around for months, some sleeping in cars.

Kotch said Reyes had retired from the security detail in 2000 but was working part time at the veterans home, which serves 1,200 elderly and disabled veterans.

Follow up...

Man sentenced for fatal stabbing of security guard in Napa County

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BY ASSOCIATED PRESS

August 6, 2010

 

NAPA — A man convicted in the fatal stabbing of a security guard who was trying to help him out by giving him a ride has been sentenced to 26 years to life in prison.

Juan Jose Hernandez Mendoza was sentenced Wednesday by a Napa County judge for killing Manuel Reyes, a guard at the Veterans Home of California in Yountville in August 2003.

Prosecutors say Hernandez Mendoza stabbed the 58-year-old Reyes in his car. After the car crashed, Reyes was found dead on the side of the road.

DNA from the scene identified Hernandez Mendoza as a suspect, but he eluded authorities for years until he was arrested for molesting a child in Oregon — a crime for which he is serving nearly 15 years.

Because the 31-year-old Hernandez Mendoza will have to serve the sentences concurrently, he won't be eligible for parole for nearly 41 years.