A 24-year-old Marin County Sheriff’s Office deputy died last Thursday after crashing his car into a tree off Highway 1 just north of Point Reyes Station. Ryan Zirkle, a Petaluma resident who grew up in Novato, had been responding to a 911 hang-up call placed nearby at around midnight.
According to a preliminary investigation by the California Highway Patrol, Mr. Zirkle lost control of his car as it entered a left curve and careened off the right side of the road. In a press conference last Thursday, Sheriff Robert Doyle said that although it was not raining at the time, the road had been wet.
Mr. Zirkle had started his shift at the Point Reyes substation at 7 p.m. Wednesday night. He was not permanently stationed in West Marin, but rotated between it and three other county substations, as do many deputies. Sergeant Brenton Schneider reported this week that deputies always respond in person to hang-up calls, though such calls can often result from phone malfunctions or the weather.
Mr. Zirkle’s beat partner was the first to arrive at the scene after a report came in of a crash, and emergency personnel soon followed. It took 35 minutes for fire crews to extract him from his car. He was flown by helicopter to the trauma center at Petaluma Valley Hospital, where he died shortly after arriving.
“Deputies, paramedics and doctors did all they could, but Ryan didn’t survive,” Mr. Doyle said.
Mr. Zirkle, who had served as a deputy since December 2015, leaves behind his fiancée, with whom he recently purchased a home, and his mother, father and two brothers.
He was a star football, baseball and basketball player at San Marin High School before attending Butte College and then Chico State University, where he graduated in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in communication studies.
“The main thing about Ryan is that he was the kind of kid that others looked up to,” said Mark Whitburn, who taught Mr. Zirkle freshmen English and coached him in varsity baseball at San Marin High. “He had an infectious smile and he made other people better, made the class better, the team better, the school better.”
Last Thursday afternoon, a law enforcement procession escorted a car carrying his body from a morgue in Sonoma County to a mortuary in Marin. A deputy is standing guard there around the clock until this Friday, when a memorial will be held at the Marin Center Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium.