The arrest
Joseph and Kera Turner describe themselves as preppers. Joseph served 17 years with the California Army National Guard. He’s a decorated war veteran who is medically retired from military service after being injured in Afghanistan. He has a bronze star and a combat action badge.
Kera is a stay-at-home mom who previously studied nursing. The couple have two children. They live in a remote area of eastern California. When the massive Dixie Fire erupted in 2021, and flames spread onto their property, the Turners were ordered to evacuate their small farm.
The Dixie Fire, California’s second-largest recorded wildfire, burned more than 1,300 structures and nearly 1 million acres. The couple quickly packed a truck and trailer with as many belongings as possible to evacuate. They headed to Reno and stored their possessions at a Lemmon Valley property.
“We wound up in Washoe County; our insurance put us there,” Kera said. “We had some assistance from old acquaintances (to babysit the children). They were watching our kids for five days. We were there every single day. We were also taking care of neighbors, our animals and so forth.”
That five-day stretch is when their evacuation got complicated. The Turners said a woman babysitting their kids reported them to Washoe County’s Child Protective Services. They said CPS lured them to the woman’s Lemmon Valley property only to be met with Washoe County sheriff’s deputies pointing guns at them.
“The CPS worker said she was going to come talk to us, not that we were going to get fucking guns in our face,” Kera told deputies in protest while she and Joseph were handcuffed.
A sheriff’s deputy denied they pointed guns at the couple, a statement contradicted by bodycam footage showing at least three deputies pointing guns at the Turners as they drove onto the Lemmon Valley property where they stored the truck and trailer.
“We entirely got ambushed with guns in our face,” Joseph said. Bodycam footage shows multiple deputies screaming at them to raise their hands after they already had. “Why would they point their guns at us and keep saying to put our hands up when our hands were up? Because they were hoping to notch some kills on their belts to get their adrenaline fix.”
They only learned later their toddler, a baby at the time, and adolescent remained in the custody of the babysitter while they were sent to jail. Their one-year-old, they eventually found out, had been taken, without their knowledge or consent, to Renown Regional Medical Center to be evaluated for sexual abuse.
“(It was) at the direction of Washoe County CPS,” Kera said. “They had never contacted us. They had not gained custody of the children. They had not gained our consent or anything like that.”
Kera repeatedly told deputies she was not aware the truck and trailer were stolen; she denied drug abuse and said the sheriff’s office was given a bogus report.
“I want my kids,” she pleaded to deputies as she was being arrested.
Their ordeal was only beginning.
Read part two tomorrow: The arrest. Subscribe to read the seven-part series.
