Ryan Sabalow, Record Searchlight (Redding, California)

A Trinity County couple have filed a combined $10 million claim with county officials alleging they were stabbed by a murder suspect after being asked by a sheriff’s corporal to “check out” a neighbor’s home where a double murder had just occurred.

A pair of claims filed Friday in Trinity County allege Cpl. Ron Whitman used a cellphone March 13 to call Norma and James Gund of Zenia. The claim alleges Whitman asked Norma Gund, 49, to “check on Kristine” Constantino, without mentioning that just minutes earlier a woman had called 911 from Constantino’s Kettenpom home “whispering help, help over and over again.”

Instead, he told Norma Gund the call from the Gunds’ neighbors was likely a “phone malfunction due to inclement weather,” the claim alleges.

What Norma and James Gund, 59, didn’t know was Tomas Gouverneur had fatally stabbed Constantino, 33, and 26-year-old Christopher Richardson of Blodgett, Ore., the claim alleges.

The couple drove to the home to check on their neighbors and were hit with a stun gun and slashed by Gouverneur, who later died after crashing his car on Highway 101 during a chase with Mendocino County sheriff’s deputies.

Messages left with the Trinity County Sheriff’s Office this week weren’t returned, but in earlier statements, Sheriff Bruce Haney denied his office called the Gunds to ask them to respond to the 911 call.

Instead, Haney maintains the deputy, whose name he didn’t provide, told the couple to stay put and merely asked if they could see anything suspicious going on at their neighbors’ place. The deputy knew the Gunds were longtime local residents, and he was under the impression the Gunds could see Constantino’s home, Haney has said.

“At no time, was Mrs. Gund instructed to go to Kristine’s residence,” Haney’s statement said. “Nor would the Trinity County Sheriff’s Office ever send a citizen to perform a deputy’s job.”

Kettenpom is in far southwestern Trinity County, near Mendocino County. It’s a 2½-hour drive from Weaverville, the county seat, where the Trinity County Sheriff’s Office is.

Since the stabbings, residents have expressed worries about law enforcement response times in rural Trinity County, a place so isolated many don’t leave their houses without a gun.

The claim alleges that after being told by Whitman to head to Constantino’s house, the couple drove the quarter mile to the home in James Gund’s pickup. James Gund stayed in the truck.

Gund heard a commotion coming from inside. He got out of his truck and walked up to the door to check on his wife.

“Mr. Gund could see the suspect holding Mrs. Gund down and proceed to cut her throat with a knife,” the claim alleges.

He also saw a body on the floor with a bag on its head.

James Gund rushed inside. The claim alleges Gouverneur zapped him with a stun gun. The suspect tried to slash his throat as well, but James Gund was able to wrest the knife from his attacker and run off.

Though the claim doesn’t say how Norma Gund escaped, neighbors have said she was able to get to the truck and drive herself to a store in Kettenpom, where help was called.

The claim alleges that before he ran home, James Gund saw Gouverneur drive off. He got a description of Gouverneur’s car. James Gund headed to the store in a vehicle he retrieved at his house.

The claim, a precursor to a lawsuit, is the first time the Gunds have provided their account of the stabbings. They’ve previously declined to be interviewed. Norma Gund spent several days at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. The claim alleges she has difficulty speaking as a result of her slashed throat. Her husband wasn’t as seriously injured, though his throat still bears scars from the knife wound, the claim says.

Both suffer “significant emotional distress,” the claim says.

The claim said the Gunds have requested 911 transcripts of the conversation Norma Gund had with Whitman but were told none exist. The claim provides a dispatch log from the California Highway Patrol’s Eureka office, where Constantino’s 911 call was first routed before the CHP transferred the call to the Sheriff’s Office. Haney has said the caller hung up after providing the information to the CHP.

After the stabbings, the Sheriff’s Office sent out a statement saying there was “evidence of a marijuana operation” at Constantino’s home.

Later, when searching Gouverneur’s car, detectives found marijuana identically packaged to that at the Kettenpom house.

“The marijuana was packaged for sales,” and cash was found in the same bag, the statement said.

Detectives have declined to discuss whether Gouverneur used a stun gun in the attacks.

In April, citing an ongoing investigation, the Sheriff’s Office denied the Record Searchlight’s California Public Records Act request seeking 911 tapes, dispatch transcripts, investigative documents and autopsy reports.

In June, then Undersheriff Eric Palmer said the investigation was nearing completion. He said two search warrants were being finalized, although he declined to say where they were filed other than outside Trinity County.

In addition, he said, investigators were waiting for evidence technicians to finish combing through cellphone records and a GPS device found in Gouverneur’s car.

Palmer said toxicology tests on Gouverneur, Richardson and Constantino came back showing none had drugs in their systems. Gouverneur, 32, of Corvallis, Ore., was described by his hometown newspaper as a local musician with a fondness for knitting.

In June, Palmer said that although the evidence so far hadn’t shown that Gouverneur had an accomplice, his office wasn’t releasing details “just to make sure there’s no one else involved in this case.”

Palmer said the county’s attorney, who was expecting legal action to be filed, advised his office not to talk about the 911 call.

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