Former Pleasanton cop found not guilty of murder in DUI crash

A former Pleasanton police sergeant was found not guilty of second-degree murder in a drunk-driving crash that killed a young woman on a Sierra foothills highway.

The Tuolumne County jury on Thursday convicted Theodore W. Young, 64, of lesser charges including gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, and he faces up to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced in April.

Young was driving alone around 5 p.m. on Jan. 18, 2022, when his pickup truck crossed the center line on Highway 108 near Jamestown and crashed head-on into a car driven by Rebekah Gall, 27, of Oakdale. She died three days later in a Modesto hospital.

Young testified at his trial that he drank six or seven beers that afternoon, the Union Democrat reported. He was not injured in the crash.

The Tuolumne County district attorney pursued the murder charge because it was Young’s second DUI arrest. In 2017, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge in Sonora and was sentenced to a fine and three years’ probation.

Young had been living in Sonora, and he gave his occupation as “law enforcement” at the time of his arrest. A public employee database indicates he was employed until 2016 by the Pleasanton Police Department, retiring as a sergeant.

At the time of the fatal crash, Rebekah Gall was driving home from her job at the Tuolumne County Social Services Department. She lived in Oakdale with her husband of four years and their dogs, her family said.