Del Norte County Sheriff Deputy Deanna Esmaeel, mother of “The Sandlot” star Marty York, was found dead on Thursday at her Crescent City, Calif., home, the victim of an apparent homicide.
“We are all deeply heartbroken with the loss of Deputy Esmaeel,” Del Norte Sheriff Garrett Scott said in a statement. “Our hearts and prayers go out to her family, friends, and co-workers.”
“This is the hardest post I’ll ever have to write but I found out from the sheriff department last night that my mother was murdered by a man she was seeing,” York wrote on Instagram on Friday. “The emotions I have are horrible right now between rage, vengance [sic], crying. There is a nationwide manhunt underway, please if you’ve seen this man contact the authorities immediately!”
A warrant for the arrest of Esmaeel’s boyfriend, Daniel James Walter, AKA Edward Patrick Davies, was issued by the Honorable Judge Darren McElfresh, the sheriff’s department stated as they appealed to the public for help in locating the suspect.
York posted the flyer on his Facebook page.
“More information on this piece [sic] of sh*t!” he wrote. “Please find him I am going through such horrible emotions, anger, sadness, rage. I want vengeance! You killed my mom.”
“Mom please come back,” the actor wrote in a follow-up post.
“You messed with the wrong guys mom assh#ole,” he later wrote.
On Friday, the authorities announced that Walter’s black Mazda was located. Some five hours later, they confirmed that Walter “was located and detained by Brookings PD and is in custody in Curry County, Oregon.”
York rose to fame as a child actor in the 1990s, appearing in such shows as “Boy Meets World,” “Saved by the Bell,” and “Hey Arnold!”
He is best known for playing “Yeah-Yeah” in the 1993 coming-of-age baseball film, “The Sandlot.”
(Video: YouTube)
In 1997, after surviving a serious car accident that nearly killed him, York quit acting. In 2021, he sat down with NBCLX’s Cody Broadway and discussed a possible return to Hollywood.
The actor admitted that he was kind of “a bad kid” back in the ’90s.
“[I’ve] seen a lot as a child. I’ve seen a lot of drug use, hung out with the wrong kids, kids that stole, kids that did X-rated things in front of me. I did see a lot of things growing up that a lot of kids probably wouldn’t see, around 10 or 11 years old,” he said. “It affected my mentality a little bit. It affected my outlook on the world, on right from wrong. [I] became kind of a bad kid.”
(Video: YouTube)
By the age of 17, York revealed, “I think I was just completely exhausted.”
Fatigue, he explained, played a part in his car accident, which came “at the height of my career.”
“I was at school, I had an audition I had to go to,” he recalled. “I was driving to the audition, and I was extremely tired, nodding off. But I kept waking myself up, and I was going about 60 miles an hour, and I was driving down a two-lane road. I don’t remember much else except my eyes closing, and when I opened my eyes, I woke up in an emergency room with my leg in traction basically hanging from a metal pole.”
In 2017, York’s sister, Nadia, died tragically at the age of 28 from a heroin overdose.
“It, it changed me. … You just can’t explain what it’s like to think about your brother or sister being there one moment joking with you and then the next minute, you’re putting your sister in the ground and knowing that you’re never going to see her again,” he told NBCLX. “It took a big piece of me because she was a beautiful, smart girl, and she didn’t deserve to die like that.”
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Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
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