USA Today – by Rhema Thompson and Kevin Robinson, Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal
WARRINGTON, Fla. — A man whom deputies shot early Saturday as he tried to retrieve a cigarette from his mother’s car still hasn’t received any answers on why he was barraged with gunfire.
A neighbor saw someone reaching into Ceola Walker’s car at about 2:40 a.m. Saturday and called 911. Escambia County sheriff’s deputies responded as Roy Middleton, 60, was bent over, searching the car’s interior.
“Get your hands where I can see them,” Middleton said he heard someone say. Initially, he thought a neighbor was joking with him, but when he turned his head he saw deputies standing halfway down his driveway.
He then backed out of the vehicle with his hands raised, he said. He later told his mother that he had his car keys in his hand with a metal flashlight attached.
In a press conference Monday afternoon, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said his officers reported that Middleton lunged out of the vehicle and spun toward them.
That’s when they opened fire.
“It was like a firing squad,” Middleton said Saturday from his hospital bed. “Bullets were flying everywhere.” He was shot in the leg, shattering bones in his left thigh, and was listed in good condition Monday.
Walker, 77, said she expects her son home by Wednesday though his injury will require a metal rod to be inserted in his leg.
“I’m just glad they didn’t hit me here or here,” Middleton said, pointing toward his head and chest. “My mother’s car is full of bullet holes though. My wife had to go and get a rental.”
In the driveway Monday of this house in a bay-front community of about 15,000 people between Pensacola Naval Air Station and Pensacola itself, Walker and her relatives still were assessing the damage: Her white Lincoln Town Car sat speckled with bullet holes. Seventeen shell casings were found in the carport, family members said.
“They have some explaining to do,” Walker said of the county officers. “I heard the shots. (The deputies) told me to close the door and not come out. They called an ambulance for him.”
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating, standard procedure when any officer is involved in a shooting. The deputies, Jeremiah Meeks and Matthew White, have been placed on paid administrative leave.
A teenage girl who said she witnessed a portion of the incident said she never saw Middleton provoke the deputies: “He wasn’t belligerent or anything.”
Walker’s son-in-law, Frank Middleton, 66, described Roy Middleton as an easygoing guy.
“I’m not mad, but more disappointed in the system and in the training,” he said, adding that his own son is a member of the Pensacola Police Department. “They need training.”
Middleton, too, said he doesn’t understand how or why the incident escalated so quickly. He also said deputies never offered him an explanation or an apology.
“Even if they thought the car was stolen, all they had to do was run the license plate,” he said. “They would have seen that that car belonged there.”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/29/front-yard-shooting/2597129/
“It was like a firing squad,” Middleton said”
It was. LEO is out of control. The city & county officials are just as guilty.
When a cop is around, chamber a round!
They found 17 shell cassings and only hit him? This sounds like these cops were just out for a good time shooting their guns, or they were drunk on their asses, or they are such bad shots that they should not carry a gun of any kind. No less than attempted murder for both of them pigs and damage to private property. Do these cops get drug tested or even a breathalizer or blood drawn. These f`ers are on paid vacation just as they expected and wanted.
You or I ever pulled this sh!t, we’d be in court defending our lives for who knows how long.
I wonder if Holder will put the full weight of the DOJ behind this one. I doubt it.
This is outrageous, and at least once each week we hear of another gang of cops shooting innocent people. Yesterday it was a 95 year-old man, today it’s another old guy looking for a smoke.
I really think they’re only allowing complete lunatics to serve on police forces, but whatever the case, they’re waging war on the American people, and have obviously adopted a “shoot first, ask questions later” policy.
Combine the ADL and Israeli training they receive with the fact that they only hire idiots for the job and what you have is an occupying army being unleashed on the American people for the purpose of beating them into submission, and shooting anyone they don’t like.
If you hear of cops being shot, or entire police departments being slaughtered, don’t shed a tear for them. Open the champagne because they will have gotten what they deserve. The TV will show you pictures of their “poor fatherless babies” but that’s just too bad. Daddy’s dead because he was a lunatic who ran around shooting innocent people, and the kid wouldn’t have turned out any better.
There are NO GOOD COPS because any decent person wouldn’t be part of this gang of murderers. Cops are the enemy, and they’re out to kill you next. Get used to it. It’s the new “normal,” dictated by their own behavior, NOT my ranting.
they need to go to jail for aggravated assault with deadly weapons, attempted murder and attempted murder under color of authority. a good 10 year sentence for each will suffice.
It stands to reason that real criminals wouldn’t hang around for the cops to come by. 911 is simply a sham designed for disasters like this. The idiot neighbor should have minded his/her/its own business, and future calls to 911 should be met with a dial tone. If you need medical help call directory assistance for a local ambulance, it’s not that hard and nowhere near as dangerous as given mentally-impaired paranoid neighbors the power to rain SWAT teams down upon your head at whim.
Is it time to start killing pigs yet?
The police are an UNCONSTITUTIONAL and ILLEGAL
STANDING ARMY of MURDEROUS THUGS!
You are not safe on your own property from them. They are shot first check latter boy’s and girl’s. This can not be tolerated any longer. And I am sure infernal affairs will find no wrong doing here. As they are so dumb today that they can only be trained to react to certain stimuli in a situation. No thought involved. This only shows how far our police have fell. Leaving us to believe we can replace them with trained rats for better and safer service from them.
I’m glad the militia and oathkeepers are out there protecting us. Where are they, by the way? The oathkeepers weren’t much help during the Boston incident either and they were right there in the city at that same exact time. It was like they were only just running around trying to play politics.
This is insanity. The only way to protect ourselves is to arm up and do it ourselves since no one else has the balls, humanity or moral goodness to help each other anymore. We all need to learn how to become our own army of one if we are to survive these days. It’s just so sad how no one helps each other anymore in this country.
EXACTLY!!! I applaud your common sense, NC.
Got wind from someone who is married to a cop of a couple of brother cops here in Omaha that keep souvenirs of their beating victims. She also said many on the force are the same way. We had a couple throw a guy on the ground, unprovoked of course, then chase a guy into his house to retrieve his memory card knocking over a woman in a wheelchair in the process. The braindead idiots were fired AND CHARGED!!!! This is what happens when these mental midgets watch too much of THE SHIELD.
Seriously, I saw the headline and thought the pigs are on a shooting spree. I then saw the picture, he was guilty of digging through a car while being black. Been happening ever since I can remember. An off duty Carmel Indiana state trooper who was also black was pulled over and threatened by two white Westfield officers. He sued if course. But seriously this is nothing new. Fing pigs are scum, usually racist, regardless of their color.