GUILTY: Former San Mateo Co. Sheriff's Deputy Facing 9+ Years in Prison

By Bay City News Service:

A former San Mateo County sheriff’s deputy was convicted Thursday of forcing his way into an ex-girlfriend’s home and severely beating a romantic rival in a jealous rage last year, prosecutors said.

After two days of deliberations, a jury Thursday morning found Colin Troy Smith, 43, of San Carlos guilty of felony assault causing great bodily injury, witness intimidation and misdemeanor violation of a court order, District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said. However, the jury found him not guilty of a charge of residential burglary.

Smith is also facing a lawsuit filed in July by the beating victim, identified in the civil complaint as Erik Hartelius.

According to that complaint, Smith had only dated Zandra Elkholm for about three months when she broke up with him because she wanted to give her relationship with Hartelius another chance.

Days after the breakup, Smith spent the night of Aug. 16 and the early morning of Aug. 17 looking for her at different Redwood City bars while on-duty as a sheriff’s deputy, sending her text messages and demanding to know where she was.

At one point she told him and he went to the bar, asked her to go outside and yelled at her before leaving. Later, he saw her again outside of another bar, the Underground Pub, where she was talking to Hartelius, according to the civil complaint.

After confronting her again, Smith left, and then sent more text messages demanding to know whether she was having sex with Hartelius and threatening her if she was still with him when he got off duty.

Hartelius’s complaint alleges that Smith went to her home between 3 and 3:30 a.m. while still on duty and banged on the door but she did not answer.

He went straight to her house when he got off duty at 7 a.m. and threatened to break the door down. When Elkholm answered, Smith stormed inside looking for Hartelius and found him hiding in a bathroom.

Smith severely beat Hartelius, breaking his nose and eye socket, prosecutors said.

Facing felony charges for the attack and out on bail, he was ordered to have no contact with Elkholm, but found her in her car smoking a cigarette the night of Dec. 4, according to prosecutors.

He knocked on the window and yelled at her, called her names, said she would lose the case against him and warned her not to call police.

After he left she called police and he was arrested again.

Once the jury returned with Thursday’s verdict, Judge Leland Davis revoked Smith’s bail and remanded him into custody until his sentencing on Dec. 19, Wagstaffe said.

He faces a sentence of nine years, four months in state prison. The civil case against Smith is still pending, with Hartelius seeking unspecified damages for the attack. Wagstaffe called today’s verdict, “A very good outcome... it shows in our county it doesn’t matter, prince, pauper, politician or police officer, you get treated the same if you commit a crime.”