People v. Flores CA4/3

FACTS AND PROCEDURE

The Detention and Search of Flores’s Person and Car The testimony and an electronic recording accepted into evidence at the suppression hearing established the following facts: Around noon on September 15, 2012, two Orange County Sheriff’s deputies, Mark Baltodano and Anthony Garza, were patrolling an area of Stanton in a marked squad car. As Baltodano drove through a strip mall parking lot, he observed activity in a row of parked cars. A woman later identified only as “Davis” was squatting down along the driver’s side of a white Nissan, her head at window level, leaning in toward the driver. Flores was in the driver’s seat, also in “kind of . . . a squatted down position.” Considering this “suspicious behavior,” Baltodano told Garza “to keep his eyes on them” as the deputies drove past. Baltodano testified Davis and Flores “looked at us” as the squad car passed by and, when Baltodano made a U-turn to head back toward the white Nissan, Davis stood up, walked away from the approaching squad car, and threw “an object” underneath a Hyundai parked nearby. The deputies pulled up behind the white Nissan and Garza headed toward Davis to detain her. Meanwhile,…