A rookie LAPD officer was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence after a bicyclist was struck and killed on Christmas Eve in Ontario, police said.
Aaron Kleibacker, 39, was driving south on Bon View Avenue when his vehicle hit the bicyclist about 7:37 p.m. on Dec. 24, said Corp. Eliseo Guerrero, spokesperson for the Ontario Police Department.
Kleibacker initially fled the scene, Guerrero said, but came back. Kleibacker underwent a sobriety test and was found to be above the legal limit, according to Guerrero. He said he didn’t know whether Kleibacker identified himself as a law enforcement officer to investigators, but was cooperative.
Guerrero said that particular stretch of Bon View, a two-lane road with relatively little traffic, “hasn’t been a problem in the past.”
The bicyclist was taken to a hospital, where he died of his injuries, Guerrero said. The medical examiner’s office identified him as Fabio Cebreros, 38, and police said he was from Chino.
Kleibacker was booked into the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter and released on Christmas Day, according to an online jail roster. Charges are pending.
Emails sent to accounts listed for Kleibacker went unreturned on Thursday.
Kleibacker had most recently assigned to Rampart Division, and his social media presence suggested that he joined the department after serving in the U.S. Marines.
An Los Angeles Police Department spokesperson on Monday confirmed that Kleibacker was still employed, but otherwise declined to comment about the case. Officers who are under a probationary period after graduating from the police academy can be fired outright for alleged misconduct, without having the option of pleading their cases in a board of rights hearing like other officers.
His arrest was the latest in a series of incidents involving alcohol, a persistent issue in the LAPD.
In April, an off-duty lieutenant who has posted anti-drunk-driving messages online was charged with felony DUI in connection with a crash on the 605 Freeway in Santa Fe Springs that injured at least one person.
The lieutenant, Matthew Ensley, allegedly had a blood-alcohol level that was more than twice the legal limit when he was arrested. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and is expected to return to court this month to set a date for his preliminary hearing. In the meantime, his statewide policing certification has been temporarily suspended, pending the outcome of his criminal case.
Drunk driving, and the department’s supposedly lenient handling of such cases, has received scrutiny in the past by the Police Commission. The civilian oversight body voted to tighten the department’s alcohol policy, lowering the acceptable blood-alcohol level for an off-duty, armed officer to 0.04% in some situations.
The commission weighed in on the issue of off-duty drinking in response to a 2021 Times report suggesting that the department has failed to develop clear policies despite multiple cases in recent years in which officers who were off the clock and armed allegedly caused trouble, broke laws and shot people while intoxicated.
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