Shooting Near My Place

[redlevel]

Actually, about five miles up the road. I know just about everyone involved, except the deceased, very well.

This is one of those rural communities where an extended family has lived and owned property for right at 200 years. There is a "country store" that is still tended on a part time basis by a 97 year old matriarch. Luckily, she was not present when the excitement took place.

The deceased was in his mid-50s, and had lived "on the place" all his life. Some of his ancestors were probably slaves to the land-owning family, but I don't know that for a fact. I do know that he was at least a third generation tenant. He helped different members of the family, including the 97 year old lady who runs the store. He worked in her yard and garden regularly, since he was a child. He helped different members of the family, and grew up with them.

On Thursday, something snapped. I heard from a couple of sources that he was acting erratically, and some of his family took him to a hospital about 15 miles up the road. For some reason, he was not treated. I heard that he refused treatment. At some point Thursday afternoon, he was on the gravel road that passes through the community. First, he took a swing with a machete at a younger family member on a tractor. This person, whom I taught in HS, called his father, a man who went through school with me and was in my graduating HS class. John (my classmate) and his cousin Jack, with whom I taught school for 20 years, went to try to get the guy with the machete out of the road and back to his home. John, who is crippled up with back trouble, was in his pickup, and Jack was on foot.

To complicate matters, a family of three who are renting a home in the community came out of their house. They actually believed that it was a halloween prank! John and Jack finally persuaded them to get back inside and lock up.

I talked with Jack a good while Saturday. He told me that he tried to reason with the individual, and kept saying, "It's me, Jack! Just give me the knife and let's get back to the store!" He said the individual never showed any indication of recognition, and actually chased him around behind a house, swinging at him with the machete. At some point, John had called 911, and the Sheriff and a couple of Deputies arrived pretty quickly. (I coached the Sheriff in HS baseball, and taught the Chief Deputy History.) Seeing that there was no reasoning with the man, one of the Deputies tased him. It appeared to have little effect, and the knife wielding subject started after the Deputy, who stumbled when the man actually hit him with the flat of the machete. He was down on the ground and was about to be badly hurt when the Sheriff shot him in the hip. At that point, the attacker started again to raise his machete to chop the Deputy on the ground, and another Deputy shot him three or four times in the chest. These wounds brought him down, and were fatal.

I have linked to an article about the incident. Some of the comments at the end of the article illustrate how quickly the uninformed are to jump to conclusions. I haven't talked to any of the LE people involved, but I have talked to one participant and another eye witness. There is no doubt that everyone involved, citizens and Officers both, did everything they could to avoid killing the man. It appears that they probably endangered themselves by waiting as long as they did to use deadly force. I understand that the shooters are pretty distraught about what they had to do. We all are glad "Miss Essie," the 97 year-old storekeeper wasn't there. She could not have gotten away from him.
Machete-wielding Butler man fatally shot by deputies | Crime | Macon.com

[A10]

Very very sad. The deputy did the right thing.

[perrazi]

that is really to bad. hard to believe the hospital wouldn't treat someone that was violent, even if he did refuse. at the very least they should have called the sheriff to deal with him at that time.

[rojodiablo]

That is a real shame. Hope things calm down a bit.

[Sebago Son]

These are "Difficult Times, Hard to Deal With"... the stress of current societal conditions and the conflict within the nation is reaching deep into the fabric of even the most remote communities. I see it where I live too. I am saddened for everyone involved.

[Bluecoat76]

Thank you Sir for sharing this incident with us and in such detail. It's important to know what the human animal is doing wrong in all parts of the nation without media hype. It's the only real news we get. Sorry for your neighbors.

[shouldazagged]

Tragic. Sounds as if you nailed it and he "snapped" into a full-blown psychotic break. Almost certainly we'll never know why, but it happens.

I'm not prepared to assume that prevailing malaise or conflict in society at large was responsible. That's too easy a generalization. There have always been people who "snapped" for no obvious reason. There always will be. I treated many of them who were struggling to live with the aftermath of their berserk actions, and I haven't done that kind of work since 1992.

Actually the use of the taser seems to have helped reduce the incidence of LEO's being forced to shoot these folks. Too bad it wasn't enough in his case and the officers had to do what they did.

It may be interesting, if the autopsy included toxicology studies, to find out if he had something in his system that tipped him over.

Damn shame. And thank God "Miss Essie" wasn't present.

[the ringo kid]

Sorry about the tragic event. I wonder if the guy was trying "Suicide By Cop" kind of thing?

[feralmerril]

This sounds a lot like that thread a few weeks ago where a 107 year old black man was killed by the police because he didnt want to go to the rest home and locked himself in the house with a gun. Supposedly he was a nice tame gentleman all his life and went nuts.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3889826.html

[CAJUNLAWYER]

It's horrible and it happens a lot more frequently than you might think. Could have been a lot worse-he could have killed somebody like the guy down here did. Best friend who saw to it that he stayed on his meds died and the poor guy was alone. Went off his meds and went absolutely bat**** psychotic. Killed a neighbor and burned down his house and then shot and killed the responding deputy. Horrible all around.

[Ivan the Butcher]

It sounds like the whole community is close to being family, which means you all have suffered a great loss. You have my wife's and my condolences. Ivan

[redlevel]

Follow up on this incident;

I talked to the Sheriff a couple of weeks ago. He learned a lot of lessons from this incident, I think.

First, the taser didn't work well because the subject had several layers of clothes on. Sheriff said they had longer contacts/probes or whatever now on order.

The Sheriff was upset because he realized he jeopardized his deputy by not shooting to kill. He told me he actually had the sights on the subject's head, but lowered his aim to the hip, hoping he could fire a debilitating shot. It almost got the deputy hurt or killed, because the .40 cal hollow point didn't even slow the subject down. The other deputy was forced to fire the fatal shots. I can't really fault the Sheriff. He was trying to keep from having to kill the guy. I know there will be comments about what he should have done, etc., but I can't second guess him. Like I said, it was obvious that he was still agonizing over this when I talked to him.

He (the Sheriff) told me it was time to order new firearms for the department. He said they will be .45 caliber.

[Steve in Vermont]

The officers ended up in a situation, that they had no part in creating, where they had seconds to make a decision involving the taking of another life. They did the best they could under the circumstances. They shouldn't beat themselves up over this, and no-one else should either. It's simply a tragedy for everyone.

[feralmerril]

I am not, never was nor will be a cop. I was a night watchman for 35 years with a huge company. I have read too many of these storys and knew first hand of a couple more similar ones. I believe many times the issue is forced and some nut gets killed when it could have easily been handled better and would have been a non event. Probley very many are handled well daily that we never hear of. When I lived in california I remember two different similar cases. First one a mentaly unstable black woman holed herself up in a carls junior with a knife. A group of deputys ended up killing her. Seems to me they could have sent in a dog or something. Another time a mentally challenged young man was walking with a hoe. Same department, a deputy pulled alongside and ordered him to drop "The weapon", (a garden hoe), he proceeded to walk and ignored the deputy, and they sent his saddle home.
Without going deep into it, for many years I handled two nephews that were mentaly challanged. My sister had six kids and God knows why but two of them have some type of psycho schizophrenia. Her husband died young and she had her hands full and I got to raise them a number of years. I had occasion to disarm one with a knife once and several other events so am slightly experienced.
One morning at work I got a call where a employee had lost it and was acting out and keeping people at bay. This guy was in maintenance. (Janitor) They were triplets all identical that worked there. I knew them but could never tell them apart. They had mental issues but were good workers. Anyway this guy went berserk. It seems someone stole his mop!
He was throwing things at all who tried to approach him. Somehow he gave me no trouble. I talked to him, escorted him out of the plant to his vehicle. Not once in anyway did he seem to acknowledge or recognize me.
I handled it in a manner that he was able to cool off a few days and keep his job. Frankly, I never bothered to write a report to my betters.
Some people just have to make a big deal of everything.

[Arik]

Buying 45 instead of 40 is just a knee jerk reaction. Was there an autopsy? Was the guy on anything? If he didn't recognize Jack he could have been on something or even had a tumor. Sometimes when people act weird just out of the blue it's a brain tumor or some sort of brain damage. Cases like that often it's not the type of the caliber but the amount of them used. He probably would have had the same reaction being shot in the hip with a 45.

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[Doug M.]

Originally Posted by redlevel

Follow up on this incident;

I talked to the Sheriff a couple of weeks ago. He learned a lot of lessons from this incident, I think.

First, the taser didn't work well because the subject had several layers of clothes on. Sheriff said they had longer contacts/probes or whatever now on order.

The Sheriff was upset because he realized he jeopardized his deputy by not shooting to kill. He told me he actually had the sights on the subject's head, but lowered his aim to the hip, hoping he could fire a debilitating shot. It almost got the deputy hurt or killed, because the .40 cal hollow point didn't even slow the subject down. The other deputy was forced to fire the fatal shots. I can't really fault the Sheriff. He was trying to keep from having to kill the guy. I know there will be comments about what he should have done, etc., but I can't second guess him. Like I said, it was obvious that he was still agonizing over this when I talked to him.

He (the Sheriff) told me it was time to order new firearms for the department. He said they will be .45 caliber.

*
Tasers are not always going to work. It is possible that the additional layers of clothing impacted that, but I doubt that there are probes enough longer to make a difference. In addition, the Taser was not an appropriate choice in this situation. Sad, maybe, but this was never anything but a shooting situation.

At least the Sheriff has been enlightened as to the possible impact of the decision he made. He could indeed have gotten that deputy hurt or killed, and like the use of the Taser, it was not appropriate. In departments that are more aware of use of force and the realities of it, both of those decisions would have been grounds for discipline for violating safety/tactics standards.

Mental cases are hard to address, because some number of them will be like this decedent, and there will be no choice but to shoot. Here, after chasing one of the witnesses, there is no question that shooting was justified and talking was not. Unfortunately, public perception is always in the back of the mind, and the general public does not know anything more about use of force than they learned from watching "Gunsmoke". The otherwise pathetic facts of the offender's life are not considerations when the time to assess use of force is made, and the force is applied. The only person who acted almost appropriately, and it looks as though he waited too long, was the deputy who finally shot until the threat was resolved. (But he should have been using a rifle, of course.)

It's unfortunate that the outcome had to be this way, but LE does not shoot near as many people as they should (nor do private citizens), by a factor of about 20. We have learned a lot about the dynamics of potentially lethal encounters in the last 30 years, often at the expense of dead cops and victims. Those who are old, like me, remember "Officer Down, Code 3" - and how few of those lessons are really well engrained.

Changing pistols/calibers is simply clownshoes. The difference in performance between good ammo in any common service (pistol) caliber is too small to measure. All pistol rounds suck and are inadequate. A pistol is what one carries when there is no reason to expect to use lethal force. In a case like this, where there certainly a reason to believe it might be necessary, the correct tool is a rifle, and the failure to have at least one deployed is a serious safety issue that mandates improved training.

[model70hunter]

Originally Posted by perrazi

that is really to bad. hard to believe the hospital wouldn't treat someone that was violent, even if he did refuse. at the very least they should have called the sheriff to deal with him at that time.

Herein lies the problem. To protect folks rights an individual can refuse treatment, most families hope or wish it will not recur and allow the person to walk out.

It is never talked about nor even encouraged but hard love needs to be part of ones thinking. Telling the person or authorities that someone is out of control and must be locked up would be the right thing to do.

There was a quadruple homicide last month 1/2 block from our house. The person had been threatening a different girl friend and discussing the need to cause someones demise on a internet popular book thing. He was taken to a hospital, was released and a couple of days later was killing a popular working mother and her kids 8, 5 & 3.

As a LEO, as a friend to some folks and in my family I have had to practice hard love. It is in everyone's best interest.

Think back on how many mass killings in the past several years had someone who had been treated or was suspect by even their own family.

What to do, what to do? It is simple, secure the area, protect all in the area and do the right thing.