Radiolab - Shots Fired: Part 2

Episode Date: March 24, 2017

A couple years ago, Ben Montgomery, reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, started emailing every police station in Florida. He was asking for any documents created - from 2009 to 2014 - when an officer discharged his weapon in the line of duty. He ended up with a six foot tall stack of reports, pictures, and press clippings cataloging the death or injury of 828 people by Florida police.  In part 2 of Shots Fired, Jad and Robert talk to Ben about how communication breakdowns too often lead to violence and our reporter Matt Kielty sits with one man who found himself at the center of a police visit gone horribly wrong. Produced and reported by Matt Kielty. For the full presentation of Ben Montgomery's reporting please visit the Tampa Bay Times' 'Why Do Cops Shoot?" We can't recommend it highly enough.  Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.    

Before we get going, just a quick warning. This podcast contains some descriptions of graphic violence and also some strong language. Be warned. Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab.

Radio Lab. From W-N-Y-C. See? See? Look, so it's hard to kill another human being anymore, right? Our fangs have retreated. Our hands are weak. But as we've lost this ability to kill each other, we've gained an ability to read each other's tone of voice and facial expression.

And often what's missing in these interactions is one side of that equation. Whether it's the police not seeing somebody because they're running through an alley with their gun drawn and it's dark or shining a flashlight in someone's face. where that person can't see the officer's expression, there's some mask, there's some breakdown in that equation that makes, handicaps us from a normal human interaction. Hey, I'm Chad I boomrod. I'm Robert Crilwich. This is Radio Lab.

And today we are once again taking a deep dive into Tampa Bay Times reporter, Ben Montgomery's mountain of data about police shootings in Florida. So to refresh your memory from, so we've tried to account for every single police. shooting from January 1st of 2009 to December 31st of 2014. And we just remind you, Ben and his team at the Tampa Bay Times collected data from 828 police shootings. And there's all kinds of stories that you can tell about this data.

Last week, we looked at police training and race and racism. And obviously, there's so much more that can and should be said about all of that. But this week, we're going to go in a very different direction. Maybe, Matt, you just want to set this up for us. Yeah, so we want to tell this story because it actually plays out this idea that Ben just mentioned that there's a sort of communication breakdown that happens. And it does it in a very particular way because when one of these cases comes before a court, the court more often than not will only look at the moment that the cop involved in the shooting

pulled their trigger. You don't consider any other moment. It's only the objective facts on the ground of the moment the officer applies force. So the thing that we found compelling about this story is that in this case, case, you can actually see in kind of a rare instance, you can step in and see all the little moments that lead up to that moment. And you realize how complicated these interactions get. So this particular story, it's a story about a white couple, Andrea and Rick Sheldon. And we're actually going to start the story with Rick. So on one of my trips to Florida, Ben and I drove to the northeast

corner of the state up near Jacksonville to Rick's Place. It's, it's. It's, Sort of like the wilds of Florida. Hey, sir. Hey, how you doing? Matt Kilty. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Like, sort of off the grid wild.

Oh, that's a big bird back there. What all, what all do you have on the property? Pretty much a little bit of everything. He collects rainwater and barrels. He's got potatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes, squash. These organic gardens. Ducks. A lot of animals.

Turkeys. Big turkeys. It's fine. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. A couple dogs in the house. Oh, you are so excited. All right, I'm going to hit stop on this, replace the battery.

Eventually, we all sat down in Rick's living room. Rick sat cross-legged on the couch. Rick, I was just wondering if we could... I pulled up a chair across from him. If we could talk about your case. But even backing up before everything happened, can you just tell me about your wife? I met Andy.

She was down here visiting her mom, and we hid it off. Straight from the get-go. Where'd you guys meet? Trade Winds Lounge, downtown St. Augustine. Is that a bar downtown? Yep, yep. What'd she look like? Oh, knockout.

Ten. Dark, dark hair. How tall? Oh, short little thing. Five foot two. You make the first move? No, we kind of made the same move at the same time. And I can remember telling her, you know, we have a live burn tomorrow.

Rick was in training to be a firefighter. At the academy, one of our last events. And then I'd call her whenever I got done. and we'd go have dinner. She's like, no, you're not going to call me. You're just going to come over. I'm like, I'm going to be stinky. She's like, no, because I know that if you go back to your place,

you're going to pass out tired, and I'll never see you again. So you're just going to come over here and take a shower. I showed up, I ate dinner and passed out. So that was date number one? Yep, pretty much so. Rick says they just, you know, sort of connected. And so they dated for about a year. She moved down here, and then...

Two of them got married. She went to nursing school. Later became a hospice nurse. Rick eventually became a firefighter for Jackson Fire Rescue. If we were to jump ahead to the night in question, could you just back up to the beginning of the day and just kind of walk me through? Yeah, we woke up extra early. What day is this? April of 15th. 2012?

Yeah. Okay, so you woke up. Yeah. We were at our cabin in Georgia, getting it ready, getting it all set up and whatnot. It was going to be our retirement place. Anyway, packed up, came home, long drive, long hot drive. And we got home, you know, started unpacking a car a little bit, started doing a little bit of this, something other, doing a little bit of chatting,

talking about dinner, having a couple of drinks, whatnot. What happened after that? Eh, I don't know. We just kind of started getting grumpy at each other and getting grumpy. Now, we talked about this for a while. I'm just wondering if you can remember just kind of any detail. of what you guys were talking about. And Rick didn't want to get into it.

I'd rather not make a statement about that right now. Just about the conversations you guys were having? I'd rather not make a statement about that right now. Okay. All we can say, according to the police report, is that Rick and Andy got into this screaming match. And Rick says that he felt himself. Shortness of breath, chest pain.

Starting to kind of unravel. Loss of concentration, inability to think. Rick says he's had problems with PTSD. For quite a while. It goes back to his former job as a paramedic. I'm like, I can't take this. I need to walk away. Grabbed a bottle out of the refrigerator, and I got in my truck, and I went, I was like, okay, I'm just going to go fishing.

Drove down this dirt road for about five miles. I went to the big pond down there. But right over by the pond, his truck gets stuck in the mud. I was axle deep. So you opens up this bottle of tequila. He starts drinking. He keeps drinking. Eventually he pops and pills.

Sleeping pills. Next thing I remember was, you know, I'm, you know, I'm. I remember having problems. I remember being upset. I remember having my, you know, it's PTSD. It sucks. I remember calling my boss going, hey, I need some help. And asked for help.

Asked for employee assistance program help. You know, the suicide hotline. Oh, you thought you were suicidal in that moment? No, I just thought I was losing it. In what way? Is it just like, I'm just trying to... Stop digging. Yeah.

Stop digging. You don't want to look in his head. It gets that bad? Yeah. Did he say anything to you? I don't remember the conversation. Okay. What happened after that?

Next thing I know I've got... The cops calling me going, where are you? Hello. Richard. This is recording that phone call. This is Deputy Hall of the sheriff's office. Hi, Ben. How are you doing?

Hey, we're trying to come out here and help you. It's about 11.15 at night, and the deputy tells Rick that he and a few other deputies are walking down this dirt road to Rick's place because they got in a call that Rick was possibly suicidal, that he'd gotten into a fight with his wife. Where are you at? I have no idea, Bill. Rick tells the deputy that he got in his truck, drove away away. Until I got stuck. I opened that a little flash, and I've been enjoying myself. Your wife at the house? Yeah. Is she okay? Everything all right at there at the house? Okay. The house.

Just okay. Okay. With a domestic dispute. Can you? Can you? Can you? Can I get her phone number because we like to make contact with her. Because we want to make sure everybody's safe.

Because, you know, we got deputies out here and it's dark, you know, and we don't want her to think that we're somebody prowling and stuff. So when we want her to know what we're saying. So how can, how the best way we can make contact with her? A2.3. Rick gives the deputy's home phone number. You write the phone number? All right. Okay.

So we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, We're going to try to make contact with her, and then I'm going to stay on the phone with you. We're going to try to get another deputy to call her so that we can get her to come outside. Okay. Two of them talk for about another minute. You're not planning on harm yourself or anything, are you? No, man. Nah, I just want to leave.

What was the last thing? I just want to leave. So at this point, the deputy is standing at the edge of Rick and, Andy's driveway. Rick is still a few miles away over at his truck when suddenly in the background on the call, you just hear... Shaw's fired. Who the hell? It's firing shots. That's Rick trying to figure out what happened.

Deputy? Deputy. When we come back, we look at what happened during that phone call and the tragic game of telephone that led to it. Stay with us. Hi, this is Albert in State College, Pennsylvania. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.

More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. I'm Chad Abumrad. This is Radio Lab. To get back to our story, Rick Sheldon and a deputy were on the phone, shots were fired in the background, and then the line went dead. We picked back up with our reporter Matt Guilty. So what we know is while the deputy was talking to Rick, the other officers that were with the deputy had gone ahead and gone up to the house. Rick's wife, Andy, heard something, came out of the house with a shotgun. The deputies say that she pointed the shotgun at one of the deputies.

They opened fire, and she was shot and killed there on the front porch. Did they identify themselves? Did they surprise her? Okay, so actually, so Ben and I were able to give. all of the police dispatch recordings from that night. And if you go through these recordings, what you hear is this crazily drawn-out version of what Ben was talking about at the top of the story. The disconnect that happens between the deputies and the dispatchers and what they're thinking,

hearing, and seeing, and what's actually happening. Okay, so if you rewind to about 40 minutes before that shooting, the first thing that happened was Rick called his boss. Now, we don't know exactly what was said in that phone call because it wasn't recorded. But what we do know is that Rick's boss left that conversation believing that Rick might be possibly suicidal, that there had been a fight at the house, that Rick had some guns with him in his truck because Rick and Andy had gone camping and that there was a gun back at the house. But anyways, the first thing that happened after that call is Rick's boss, who's a fire chief, calls fire dispatch who calls a sheriff dispatcher who ropes in another. The same time is going to hear his office.

Sheriff Dispatcher. And what happens is all three dispatchers get on the line. And who's out the woods? Try and figure out what's going on. His wife is. No, that is the wood. Eventually, the sheriff dispatcher, this is dispatcher number three. He's just like...

Okay, who was called the chief judge? I'll call the fire chief back, try and figure this out. I'll take this job, thanks. Now, right around the time the dispatcher number three is making that call, somehow another sheriff's dispatcher, a fourth dispatcher, decides to put out a call for a welfare check. 10-4. Basically, ask a couple of devotees to go to Rick's house to make sure everything's okay.

10-4. I'm advised that he is in the woods and has a handgun. Which is true, Rick says he had one in the back of the truck, but he says it wasn't loaded. 10-4. But then things start to get more complicated because when dispatcher number three gets a hold of Rick's boss, the fire chief. That's right. Can you just start giving me some details? He called him.

What's his issue? What's the deal? The fire chief says when Rick called him. He said, chief, I'm out here hiding in the woods. My wife's chasing me with a gun. Just couldn't take it anymore. Now, Rick denies having said anything like that to his boss, and his boss, as you'll hear, it does seem to walk some of it back.

But... All right. Thank you. Yeah. Things are kind of already set in motion, because then... Supposed... Dispatchee number four relays the chief story to the deputies en route. The wife has a signal zero handgun and is chasing the male who took medication. I don't know if he's hallucinating what's going on.

But then that same dispatcher, dispatcher, dispatcher, calls Rick's boss, the fire chief. Okay. Now, his wife is chasing him? And he's like, well, chasing... The information that he told me, his wife had a gun. Which Rick says he said, but just that there was a gun in the house. That's it. And he was hiding from her in the woods.

Okay. And she's threatened to kill him? He didn't say anything like that. Clarification. Mail half is hiding from his wife, who signal zero with a handgun in fear of her, are trying to get more 1043. 48. 10.4, thank you.

And this is what Ben's talking about, about these sort of clouds of miscommunication. Because by the time the police show up at this house for what is normally a welfare check. South Radio Weems. Now she has a shotgun inside the house. Can't tell. It's Mike. Hey, what you got? She's chased him off into the woods. What's that address?

He's also armed, maybe even hallucinating. So the deputies... They... There's no damn dark out here. We're blacked out walking. Pull up and a blackout. Just be careful. Oh, we're trying.

Meaning they turn off their police lights. They get out of their cars. They don't even turn on their flashlights. And they start walking down this road. to Rick's place, and one of the deputies even puts on these night vision goggles because they think this woman has chased her husband into the woods. Supposedly, he's in the woods by his house, so just listen out, too. And as the deputies start walking down this dirt road towards Rick's place, somebody got pepper spray?

Situation gets more tense. What, what just happened? Get it out. Get it out. Dolls coming. Because, like, the neighbor's dog is starting to freak out. But eventually, these six deputies get to the edge of Rick's driveway. Chantell, I'll call you back.

Thank you, bye. Be careful. It's actually right around here about 40 minutes after Rick made that first call to his boss, that Rick gets that call from the deputy. This is the deputy hospital, the sheriff's office. Hi, Bell. How are you doing? So you know the two of them talk for a while. The deputy's trying to figure out where Rick is, and eventually he asks. Your wife got a gun?

No, I took all the guns with me, except for the chief's got 12 gauge. Okay. Is she okay, everything all right at there at the house? And Rick's like, yeah? Everything's okay at the house. We're fine. Okay. With a mask of dispute.

No reason to be worried. But as that deputy is talking to Rick, I'm going to stay on the phone with you. For the deputies start walking up Rick's driveway. They want to check on Andy, so they get up to the house. Two of them walk up onto the porch. One of them even looks through the bedroom window where Andy is. And she has no reason to believe the police are anywhere on her property.

She was asleep. And presumably she heard a noise. Grab the shotgun in the house. And came outside. Now, in this moment, all we really have to go on is what the cops said they saw, which is Andy came out through the front door wearing nothing but her underwear, holding the shotgun. The cops say they identified themselves. They were screaming at her to drop the gun.

They say that Andy took a step forward, leveled the shotgun against her shoulder, and then they opened fire. They fired 24 shots. They hit Andy at least eight times. She fell to the porch. some of the police officers rushed to her began performing first aid. Eventually they radioed for an ambulance

and paramedics showed up and pronounced Andy dead at the scene. At this point, do you have any idea what's happening? No. Not a clue. I realized that I needed to snap out, wake up, get my ass in gear, and find out what's going on. But Rick's truck was stuck,

and so it took a few hours, but eventually the cops figured out where he was, sent a crew over to meet him. Yeah, the ground crew came over and picked me up, handcuffed me. and put me in the back of a four-wheel-drive pickup truck and took me into headquarters. They got them out of the car, brought them into headquarters. Put me in a room, typical interrogation type room.

And then I started noticing that they were being very, very friendly. Some people saying something about, you know, my camping equipment in the truck, I remember them authorizing me to have a cigarette in the room. And then we pretty much went through the same questioning that we've gone through so far, and at which time they informed me that they had come out to the house to check on Andy, and she had come to the door, and there was an altercation, and they shot and killed her. That was the phrasing they used. Pretty much, yeah.

An altercation? Yes. When you hear something like that, I mean, I can't even fathom how you respond to some news like that. I still can't fathom responding to it. Did you say anything to him? Am I under arrest? Get these fucking coughs off me. How long did it take him to uncuff you?

I don't remember. Were you saying anything to him while you were still cuffed? From that moment on, I pretty much just, I mean, what do you say whenever somebody looks at you and says, your wife is dead? We shot and killed her. The absolute implosion of your mind. just the searing pain, the explosive feeling, the, the, do I get angry?

Do I get sad? Do I break down and cry? Do I fall apart? Do I hold it together long enough to where I can figure out what the hell just happened? You know, what? You did what? You went out to my house in the middle of night and you shot my wife. I mean, how do you respond?

to that. I mean, to this day, I'm still six, seven, 20, 50 times a day asking myself, what are you talking about? What do you mean? She can't be dead. What are you talking about? No. No. Did you see her at all after the shooting? Yes. It's about two weeks afterwards. Where was that? At the funeral home. Um, went over to the funeral home and, um, Sorry, my feet are going to sleep. Yeah, no, it's nice. And reached down the kisser and felt the edge of what I thought was a casket move. And it was that time that I realized that she was in a cardboard box.

That just had frill on it to make it look pretty. Did you say anything to her? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Told her that we really needed to do something about her hair because it was a mess. and the rest of what I said to her is between me and her sure yeah no of course I'll take a break I put the microphone down

Rick got up and went over to the kitchen and poured himself a pretty big glass of vodka we kind of just walked around the property for a while we kept talking eventually Rick pulled out this computer bag that he keeps buried in his closet the diagram of all the shooters involved It's this bag full of

And the shots fire All the police reports that were made about that night Medical Examiner's Autopsy Report Yeah you know how many times I've sat down And just written through All the questions I have You know The autopsy report that said

That there was no previous surgeries Really? She just had her gallbladder taken out These are just questions that Constantly kept going on You know Coward says that he made eye contact with her That's Deputy Thomas coward.

And she with him. Okay, so a guy is standing at the window. You've seen the elevation of the window compared to wherever a six-foot-tall person is standing at it. You're really telling me that you made eye contact? Rick also has all the recordings of the police dispatch. How many times have you listened to those recordings? Countless, nonstop.

Was it like a daily thing? Hourly. He says he just can't stop asking himself, how did this happen? And then eventually... Who's got the map? Rick walked us outside, diagrams back inside. Rick went back inside, came back out with this map that his lawyers had drawn up.

Take this map and position yourself in the positions where the shooters were at. He started having me and Ben walk through the shooting of his wife, kind of like going and placing ourselves where each officer was. This one down here, he's the one that testified that he couldn't see what he was shooting at. He just knew that the other guys were shooting. So he's on the other side of the... On the other side of that tank.

He watches over closer to the... porch where one of the officers was and you can see some of the bullet holes in the house. Yeah. Yeah. There. There. So that's a... So a bullet went through here, tore up...

tore up the plastic. Here. Then we were off the front porch over in the front yard where three the deputies were. So they see it come out and they start moving across like this. Yeah. Shooting a almost naked woman on our front porch in the middle of the middle of the swamp.

Fuck them. Rick then walked inside and left us standing in his yard. About four months after Andrea Sheldon was shot and killed, the state attorney's office

sent a letter to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement that it conducted an investigation in the shooting, saying that there would be no charges brought against the officers, stating that what they did was a, quote,

justifiable use of deadly force. Rick has filed a civil complaint on behalf of the estate of Andrea Sheldon. The complaint, alleges each officer involved in the shooting violator civil rights, used excessive force, didn't follow training policy and procedure, and intentionally inflicted emotional distress on Rick. When we reached out to the St. John's County Sheriff's Office,

they said they could not comment on the case pending litigation. Big thanks to our producer Matt Kielty and Tampa Bay Times reporter Ben Montgomery. Definitely keep an eye on our website, RadioLab. As soon as the Tampa Bay Times big feature is up, we will link you there, and it's definitely worth checking out. RadioLab.org is the address. I'm Chad Abumrod. I'm Robert Krollwich. Thanks for listening.

Hi, this is Desta Rusa calling from Long Island City in New York. Radio Lab is produced by Chad Abumrod. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Sorenn and Wheeler is senior editor. Jamie York is our senior producer. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Brana Farrell, David Geppel, Matt Kilty, Robert Crulwich, Annie McEwen, Latif Nassar, Melissa O'Donnell, Ariane Wack, and Molly Webster, with help from Tracy Hunt, Valentina Bohanini, Nagar Fatali, Phoebe Wang, and Katie Ferguson.

Our fact-checker is Michelle Harris.