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Judge Temporarily Denies Local Lawman’s Request for Dismissal from Dog Mauling Civil Rights Lawsuit

Nathan Mendes and his K-9 Bolt. Photo source: Instagram.

Etna Police detective and local jiu-jitsu teacher Nathan Mendes is the lone defendant in a civil rights lawsuit stemming from a Sept. 3, 2021 dog mauling incident suffered by then 18-year-old plaintiff Ryder Klenk.

Photographs of Ryder Klenk after he was released from Mercy Medical Center. Photographs by Megan Wion.

The dog mauling occurred in an open field adjacent to Mendes’ residence on property owned by the Crossroads Baptist Church in Bella Vista, a rural community 9 miles east of Redding.

The field at Crossroads Baptist Church where Taylor Merrick found his friend Ryder Klenk. Nathan Mendes’ property is adjacent to the church. Photograph by Shawn Schwaller.

Mendes is well known to A News Café readers who may recall Mendes was co-owner of Players Club Tampa, a strip club in Tampa, Florida.

His business partner was Carlos Zapata, an alt-right media propagandist, podcaster, Red Bluff restaurant owner and co-creator of Red, White and Blueprint.

Both men are former Marines.

Top: Nathan Mendes (left) and Carlos Zapata (right) in their U.S. Marine Corps uniforms; Bottom: Mendes and Zapata posing in their jiu-jitsu outfits and appearing in an advertisement for their martial arts courses.

Mendes is also a part-time faculty member for the Administration of Justice program at College of the Siskiyous, where in the fall of 2023, Mendes co-taught a course called Basic Police Academy. This winter, Mendes is co-teaching a Reserve Officer Training course.

As recent as 2021, Mendes also worked as a Special Agent for the California Department of Justice.

A News Cafe reported in August of 2022 that Mendes was hired in May of 2022 to work as the compliance coordinator at Shasta College.

Documents show that Nathan Mendes and Carlos Zapata owned the Players Club Tampa strip club.

According to a Shasta College spokesperson, Mendes is no longer employed by Shasta College in any capacity.

Mendes was also allegedly involved in an assault incident at his daughter’s wedding. No charges were filed.

Mendes’s law enforcement career reveals recurring violence

Almost from the beginning of Mendes’ law enforcement career, he’s been plagued by multiple reported acts of excessive force and violence.

Mendes started his law enforcement career as a Lassen County Sheriff’s Deputy shortly after being discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps around 2005. Mendes had served in the Marine Corp for six years, and was deployed to Ar Ramadi and Iraq. He refers to himself as a combat veteran.

News article featuring a picture of Mendes while he served in the U.S. Marines.

Shortly after starting his Lassen County job, Mendes was named in a wrongful death lawsuit alleging that he fired his automatic weapon more than 30 times, killing James Dean Basler at his Susanville residence. The lawsuit was dismissed because the plaintiff had legally separated from Basler before he was killed.

Following the dismissal of the Basler lawsuit, Mendes left his Lassen County deputy position to become a Siskiyou County sheriff’s deputy. But trouble soon followed Mendes into Siskiyou County, too. In 2009, Mendes was cleared for his role in the killing of a 41-year-old Holbrook man named Shawn Troy Prado. Prado allegedly approached Mendes and a fellow deputy in an aggressive manner while they investigated a home-invasion call at Prado’s sister’s house.

By 2009, after having worked in law enforcement for just a few years, Mendes had already fatally shot two people.

A year and a half after killing Prado, Mendes was named as the defendant in a lawsuit alleging he used excessive force while detaining a man named Clarence Harold White in Siskiyou County. Mendes was accused of breaking department protocol by using pepper spray and unauthorized restraint holds while detaining White. Mendes was also accused of battering White with his department-issued radio. Mendes was exonerated of any criminal charges.

In 2017, Mendes settled out-of-court with Humboldt County resident Jason Call, who accused Mendes of injuring him when Mendes violently broke a window during a 2021 home raid at Call’s home. Mendes was participating in the raid with other law enforcement officials. The settlement was connected to a larger lawsuit known as Jason Call v. SA Matt Badgley, et al.

In 2019, a few years before the dog-mauling incident, Mendes and others were named as the defendants in a lawsuit after two law enforcement officials who work and live outside of Northern California were severely injured during a self-defense training course taught by Mendes and the other defendants. Mendes was reportedly protected from the lawsuit by the Department of Justice.

Mendes, who has also worked in various other law enforcement positions, has managed to avoid facing serious charges for any of the violent actions that have followed him and his law-enforcement career.

Story catches attention of high-profile law firm

Photographs of Ryder Klenk after he was released from Mercy Medical Center. Photographs by Megan Wion.

A News Café first reported about the dog mauling in June of 2022. The story caught the attention of the Oakland-based Law Offices of John L. Burris (now known as Burris, Nisenbaum, Curry & Lacy). James Cook, a lawyer working on behalf of Burris’s law firm, started representing Klenk in August of 2022 as the plaintiff in a lawsuit known as Klenk v. City of Etna et al.

Burris’ law office represented Rodney King, winning him $3.8 million in his 1994 civil rights lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department. The office has since won a series of high-profile lawsuits that involved law enforcement misconduct and civil rights violations.

Mendes and his friend, Alcohol and Beverage Control agent Brett Letendre, eventually admitted to being on the scene of the dog mauling, but they claim they arrived at the scene after it occurred.

Mendes and Letendre’s versions of what happened that night differ from one another, and also differ from statements provided by Klenk, and Taylor Merrick who found his injured friend, Klenk’s mother Megan Wion, and several segments of the sheriff’s report.

Photographs of Brett Letendre. Source: Instagram.

A judge dismissed Letendre, ABC, as well as the City of Etna from the case.

Mendes denied motion to dismiss lawsuit

According to court records, on Dec. 19, Judge Dale A. Drozd, a federal judge for the United State District Court for the East District of California, denied Mendes’ motion to dismiss him from the lawsuit. Judge Drozd also directed Mendes to respond to the most recent complaints against him within 21 days of Dec. 19.

James Cook, the lawyer representing Klenk, told A News Café the motion practice on the case has gone back and forth on several technical issues. One of the biggest technical issues impacting the case, according to Cook, is the question as to whether or not the court has the jurisdiction to hear the case.

While the public might look at Klenk v. City of Etna et al. and think it’s an open and shut case, the fact is it is not.

Accusations against Mendes

Complaints filed on behalf of Klenk accused Mendes of being present at the scene of the dog mauling. Although the complaints recognize Mendes was off duty, they accused Mendes of allowing two Etna Police K9s under Mendes’ supervision to attack Klenk.

Megan Wion and her son, Ryder Klenk, in happier times. Photograph by Megan Wion.

The complaint filed on behalf of Klenk also alleges that Klenk posed no threat to Mendes and was not committing a crime at the time of the dog mauling. The complaint alleges Klenk was attacked by the K9s behind the then-teen’s pickup in the church parking lot, and dragged to the middle of the open field where Klenk was later found.

The complaint accuses Mendes of using excessive force unrelated to legitimate law enforcement purposes. It also says Mendes allegedly acted in reckless regard to Klenk’s personal rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Lastly, the complaint also accuses Mendes of leaving Klenk before EMTs arrived without assuring the mauled young man had access to the medical attention he desperately needed.

Dog mauling recap

When Klenk did not return home on the night of Sept. 3, 2021, his roommate and friend Taylor Merrick set out to find Klenk. Merrick heard from another friend that Klenk had been dropped off at the church to pick up his truck at about 9 p.m. after hanging out with friends at Shasta Lake.

Based on this information, Merrick headed to the church to look for Klenk.

After locating Klenk’s truck in the church parking lot, Merrick exited his vehicle but did not see Klenk. Merrick did, however, hear moaning and crying coming from the field next to the church.

Merrick walked in the direction of the noises and found a bloodied Klenk on the ground in an open field about 100 yards from where Klenk’s truck was parked in the parking lot.

Klenk’s clothes were shredded.

His knees were damaged, and one of his calf muscles was exposed from being bitten by a dog, or multiple dogs.

Photographs of Ryder Klenk after he was released from Mercy Medical Center. Photographs by Megan Wion.

First-hand accounts said Klenk was surrounded by blood as he lay in the dry grassy field.

Klenk was also intoxicated after consuming alcoholic beverages with friends while at Shasta Lake. Once transported to the hospital, Klenk had only a hazy memory of being attacked by a dog, or multiple dogs.

Klenk was barely conscious and not able to stand up or walk without assistance when Merrick found him. It is estimated that Klenk had been laying in the field for more than an hour.

Approached by two mysterious men

At 11 p.m., shortly after locating Klenk, Merrick called 911 to report the emergency. While Merrick was on the phone with the 911 operator, he and Klenk were approached by two men who did not identify themselves, who later turned out to be Mendes and Letendre.

Merrick told the operator that the two men were attempting to get him and Klenk to leave the scene. The 911 operator could hear the two men attempting to get Merrick and Klenk to leave the scene over the phone.

The Shasta County Sheriff’s Office directed deputies to the scene in Code 3 fashion once it was determined men were trying to get Merrick and Klenk to leave the scene.

Merrick later reported to a Shasta County Sheriff’s Deputy that one of the men who approached him and Klenk said, “The cops don’t need to be called,” and said Klenk would get in trouble if he did not leave the scene, because he was a minor and was intoxicated.

After EMTs transported Klenk to Mercy Medical Center, hospital doctors and staff discovered Klenk suffered a number of other injures in addition to the bites and tears to his flesh, including a skull fracture, damage to his spine, and an air pocket in Klenk’s throat from a puncture wound. Klenk subsequently required personal care for weeks and was in so much pain when he was released from the hospital that he couldn’t stand or walk without assistance.

In addition to the numerous physical injuries, Klenk also suffered severe psychological injuries resulting from the dog attack. He is literally scarred for life.

Shasta County Sheriff’s Office arrives to scene

Shasta County Sheriff’s Deputy Martina Ducati was one of the first officers to respond to the scene of the dog mauling. As Klenk was being tended to by EMTs and transported by ambulance to the hospital, Ducati showed Merrick a picture of a law enforcement official he knew who lived on a property near where the dog mauling occurred, and in the direction from which the two men had come.

Ducati showed Merrick a Facebook picture of Nathan Mendes. Merrick said that Mendes looked like one of the subjects.

Before EMTs and sheriff deputies arrived on the scene, Mendes and Letendre returned to Mendes’s residence between the time that Merrick was on the phone with the 911 operator and the time that first responders arrived just minutes later.

Sheriff’s deputies knocked at the front of Mendes’ residence after arriving to the scene, but Mendes did not answer.

Inconsistencies with sheriff’s office investigation

The day after the dog attack, Mendes was visited by Shasta County Sheriff’s Deputies. During questioning he admitted that he and his friend Brett Letendre had approached Merrick and Klenk. When Letendre was finally questioned by the sheriff’s office nearly a month later, Letendre told deputies he and Mendes had been drinking at Mendes’ residence on the night of the dog mauling.

As reported by A News Café, the men’s testimonies provided to sheriff’s deputies regarding when the men returned to Mendes’ residence and what they did afterward were inconsistent with one another.

Mendes told deputies he returned to his residence and promptly went to sleep after witnessing Klenk lying in the field while being tended to by Merrick.

Letendre, on the other hand, told deputies he returned to Mendes’ residence and washed Klenk’s blood from his hands. The Shasta County Sheriff’s Office report did not include any details regarding a search of Mendes’s property for blood.

The Shasta County Sheriff’s Office reports indicates that deputies spoke only briefly with Mendes at the front of his residence the day after the dog mauling. As previously stated, the report also included very little details regarding the brief examination conducted by deputies of Mendes’ K9s.

One of the most significant issues plaguing Klenk’s lawsuit is that the Shasta County Sheriff’s Offices’ paltry investigation did not identify the dog or multiple dogs that attacked Klenk.

California’s dog bite laws

California’s strict liability dog bite laws make owners responsible for any dog bite suffered by any person who is bitten by a dog in a public place or lawfully on private property.

Klenk was attacked by a dog or multiple dogs on private property, but it was the church’s property, not Mendes’.

Klenk’s mother, Megan Wion, who first contacted A News Café in the search for justice for her son said a Shasta County Sheriff’s Office sergeant told her, on a call from his personal cell phone, that the sheriff’s office knew who was responsible for the dog mauling suffered by her son, and why it happened, but that the sheriff’s office was not going to do anything about it because Ryder was an adult and had not pressed charges.

Medical report says K9s attacked Klenk

In stark contrast to the sheriff’s office report, the medical report produced during Klenk’s stay at Mercy Medical Hospital said Klenk had been attacked by law enforcement dogs that had been vaccinated for rabies.

Based on this information, which medical staff said they received from a sheriff’s deputy, medical staff ceased treating Klenk for rabies.

Klenk and his legal representation have faced an uphill battle in their lawsuit against Mendes. The most significant evidence that supports Klenk is the fact that a medical staff person at Mercy Medical Center wrote in their report that they were told by sheriff’s deputies that Klenk was mauled by K9s, and that Mendes has K9s on his property.

The dog mauling, likewise, occurred in a very rural area with only a few residential properties.

Other technicalities include the fact that Klenk was intoxicated and cannot serve as his own witness, even though he does vaguely recall being attacked by a dog or multiple dogs.

Some say there should be a more stringent set of laws for law enforcement officials who keep watch of K9s at their homes. They suggest law enforcement officials who keep K9s at their homes should be required to allow them to be monitored by video surveillance by the agencies they work for.

Yet others advocate for more K-9 restrictions, and that California should resurrect AB 742, a failed bill which would have outlawed the use of K9s in California.

One thing is for certain: Klenk and his family — with the help of Klenk’s lawyer James Cook — are still in search of justice, a justice that seems more elusive with each passing day.

If Klenk does not win the civil rights lawsuit against Mendes in the federal courts, Klenk’s next option is to take it to state court.

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If you appreciate professor Shawn Schwaller’s tenacious pursuit of this ongoing story, please consider a donation or subscription to A News Cafe. Thank you!

Shawn Schwaller

Opinion writer and reporter Shawn Schwaller grew up in Red Bluff, California. He is an assistant professor in the History Department at California State University, Chico and holds a Ph.D. in history and an M.A. in American studies. Schwaller specializes in North State stories about law-enforcement corruption and far-right politics. He can be reached at schwaller.anewscafe@yahoo.com and welcomes your story tips.

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