Late on a Sunday night, Ellsworth Fortman, an assistant chief for the Los Angeles Fire Department, walked out of Marci’s Sports Bar and Grill in Santa Clarita and climbed into his Dodge Ram pickup truck for the drive home.less than a mile when he slammed into a parked Toyota Corolla, propelling it 160 feet into a parked Mercedes-Benz. Fortman’s truck careened into a curb and toppled a streetlamp, sending live electrical wires onto the pavement. He then backed up and barreled off.
Critics inside and outside the department say the Fortman case is a stark illustration of a long-standing LAFD pattern of moving slowly to discipline members of all ranks and applying less stringent punishment to chief officers than to other employees, particularly nonwhite and female firefighters. Long delays in the disciplinary process have created a “crisis” backload of more than 70 cases pending a hearing before a Board of Rights, according to the report.
Jimmie Woods-Gray, president of the Fire Commission, a civilian panel that oversees the LAFD, condemned the department’s actions in the Fortman case. Getuiza said the department also had waited until after Fortman completed the terms of an agreement he struck with the court to resolve the criminal charges, which included community service.
Sheriff’s deputies summoned to the scene found among the wreckage the license plate from Fortman’s pickup. They traced the license number to Fortman. The woman, whose name was redacted from the investigative records, shared with the deputy text messages Fortman sent her that said “call me,” “accident,” “hurry,” “call me.”
The Sheriff’s Department previously said the deputies did not enter Fortman’s property to arrest him because they considered the incident a misdemeanor. Obtaining a misdemeanor arrest warrant at such a late hour — it was after 10:30 p.m. — is difficult, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman told The Times days after the crash.
The next morning, Fortman visited the home of Alyssa Ward-Vela, the owner of one of the damaged cars, to say he was responsible for the incident and give her his insurance information. Ward-Vela’s aunt, Kimberly Ward, said Fortman told her he lost control of the truck because he had diarrhea and had been vomiting.
He also said he felt he had no legal obligation to speak to the deputies who went to his home the night of the crash because they already knew who he was and had impounded the Dodge, according to the LAFD investigative report.