Before we get going, just quick warning, this podcast contains some descriptions of graphic violence and also some strong language. Be warned. Wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC. Look, it's hard to kill another human being anymore, right?
We are fangs have retreated, our hands are weak, but as with loss of 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 or there's some breakdown in that equation that makes handicaps us from a normal human interaction. Hey, I'm Jada Boenrod.
I'm Robert Goldich. 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 that. But this week, we're going to go in a very different direction.
Maybe 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 this 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, we'll 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, 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 of your Jacksonville to Rick's place. It's sort of like the wilds of Florida. Hey, how are you doing?
Mac guilty. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you. Like sort of the great wild. That's a big bird back there. What all the oven property?
Pretty much a little bit of everything. He clicks rain water in barrels. He's got potatoes, tomatoes, squash. He's organic gardens.
Ducks, goats. A lot of animals, turkeys. Big turkeys. Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh. This was wondering if we could, I pulled up a chair across from him. 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 hit it off. Straight from the get go.
Where'd you guys meet? Trade wins lounge. Downtown, saying obviously. Is that a bar downtown?
Yep. Yep. What'd you look like? Knock out.
Dark hair. Not tall. Oh, short little thing. Five foot two.
You make the first move? No, we can't make the same move at the same time. And I can remember, Donna, you know, we have a live burn tomorrow. That was in train to be a firefighter.
At the Academy, I went over to last events. And then I called her whenever I got done. And we'd go to 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. And I showed up. I didn't pass out. So that was date number one.
Yep. Pretty much so. Rick says they just, you know, sort of connected. And so the data for about a year.
She moved down here. And then. Two of them got married. They became a hospice nurse.
Rick, eventually became a firefighter. For Jackson Fire Rescue. If we were to jump out of the night in question, can you just like back up to like the beginning of the day and just kind of walk me through. Yeah.
We woke up extra early. What day is this? April the 15th. 2012.
Yeah. Okay. See, you woke up. Yeah.
We were in our cabin in Georgia and getting it ready, getting it all set up and whatnot. And it was going to be our retirement place. Anyway, packed up. Came home.
Long drive. Long, hot drive. We got home. You know, started unpacking the car a little bit.
Started doing a little bit of the setting out there. Doing a little bit of chatting. Talking about dinner. Whatnot.
What happened after that? No, 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 don't want to make a statement about that right now. Just about the conversations you guys were having.
I don't 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 fell himself. Shortness of breath.
Chest pain. Starting to kind of unravel. Lost a concentration. Inability to think.
Rick says he's had problems with PTSD for quite a while. He 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 was like, okay, I'm just going to go fishing. Dropped down the dirt road for about five miles. I went to the big pond down there. But right over by the pond.
I was stuck. His truck gets stuck in the mud. I was excellent. So he opens up his bottle of tequila.
He starts drinking. He keeps drinking. Eventually pops and pills. Sleeping pills.
The next thing I remember was, you know, I remember having problems. I remember being upset. I remember having my PTSD. It sucks.
I remember calling my boss going, I need some help. I asked for help. I asked for employee assistance program help. 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? I'm just trying to please.
Stop digging. Stop digging. You don't want to look in his head. He gets that bad?
Yeah. Did he say anything to you? I don't remember the conversation. Okay.
What happened after that? The next thing I know I've got the cops calling me going, where are you? This is recording that phone call. This has been helpful, sure.
Hi there. How you doing? We're talking about hearing healthy. We're talking about 11-15 at night.
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 got into a fight with his wife. Where are you at? Rick tells the deputy that he got in his truck, dribble his way. Until I got stabbed open right in the left side, and I've been enjoying myself.
Can you? Did he ask, well, can I get a phone or do you like any contact with her? We don't make sure, but he's safe. We have deputies out here.
It's dark. We don't want her to think that we want her to know it. We're safe. How's the best way we can make contact with her?
Two, three. Rick gives the deputy his home phone number. Do you like it now? 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. Two of them talk for about another minute. You're not playing all harm yourself or anything, are you? No, man.
No. No. No. No.
No. No. No. No.
No. No. No. No.
No. No. No. No.
No. No. No. No.
No. No. No. No.
Oh. I don't have to say. No, no. No.
No. No. No. No.
Yeah, no. No. No. No.
No. No. No. No.
No. Oh. Oh. Oh.
Oh. Oh. I don't speak without. have to white knuckle your way through when life feels overwhelming therapy can help better help makes it easy it says by matching you with one of their over 30,000 licensed professionals tailored to your needs and if it's not a perfect fit you can switch it anytime and look a therapist can't fix your money problems but they can help you address shame guilt avoidance get matched with a qualified professional on better help you can sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com keeping up with this economy matters and in a world full of hot takes and noise market place does things differently I'm Kyle Risdale the host of market place a daily podcast that delivers independent award-winning journalism dedicated to making you smarter about this economy you can listen to market place on Spotify I'm Jad Abun Rod 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 deputy 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 say did they identify them so I read the police okay so actually so Ben and I were able to get 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 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 they're gonna fight at the house that Rick had some guns with him in his truck because a Rick and he 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 sheriff dispatcher and what happens is all three dispatchers get on the line trying to figure out what's going on there's white but eventually the sheriff dispatcher this is special number three he's just like I'll call the fire chief back trying to figure this out now right around the time the dispatcher number three is making that call somehow another sheriff dispatcher or dispatcher decides to put out a call for a welfare check before his last couple of weeks house to make sure he's okay which is true Rick says he had one in the back of the truck but he says it wasn't loaded then things start to get more complicated because when dispatcher number three gets ahold of Rick's boss fire chief the fire chief says when Rick called him I said chief I'm out here hiding in the woods my wife's taking me with a gun just didn't take it anymore and then he hung up now recognize anything like that to his boss and his boss as well here it does seem to walk some of the back but all right thank you yeah things are kind of already said emotions then supposedly dispatcher number four relays chief story to the deputies and root the wife had a signal zero handgun but it's chasing the male who took medication on her if he's hallucinating what's going on but then that seemed dispatcher dispatcher for calls Rick's boss fire chief okay now his wife is chasing him and he's like well chasing the information that he told me is why I got 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 they didn't take anything like that clarification male had his hiding from his wife who signaled zero with a handgun in fear of her for trying to get more 1043 40 and this is what then's talking 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 now she has a shotgun inside the house hey what you got she's chased him off into the woods what's that address he's also armed maybe hallucinating so the deputies a game dark out here we're blacked out walking pull up in a blackout just be careful I mean they turn up the police lights they got other cars they don't turn on their flashlights and they start walking down this road to Rick's place and one of these even puts on these night vision goggles because they think this woman is chaser husband in the woods supposedly he's in a woods by his house so just wasn't out to and it's a deputy start walking down this dirt road towards Rick's place situation is like the neighbor's dog is starting to freak out but eventually okay we're here we're the six deputies get to the edge of Rick's driveway it's actually right around here about 40 minutes after Rick made that first call to his boss the Rick is that call from the deputy this is definitely helpful it's your fault I'm there how you doing so you know the two of them talk for a while the deputies trying to figure out where Rick is eventually asks you're wife's like your wife's not a guy no I said I was with me except for she's got 12 days okay it's okay everything all right and Rick's like yeah we're fine okay no reason to be worried but as that deputy is talking to Rick for the deputy start walking up Rick's driveway the one check on Andy so they get up to the house two of them walk up onto the porch one of them looks through the bedroom window where Andy is and she has no reason to leave the police or 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 identify themselves they were screaming at her to drop the gun they say that Andy took a step forward level the shotgun against her shoulder and then they opened fire in fact 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 the radio for an ambulance impairment showed up and pronounced Andy dead at the scene at this point do you have any idea what's happening now I realize that I need to snap out wake up get my ass and 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-drive pickup truck and took me to headquarters they got him at the car brought him to 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 truck I remember them uh 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 check on Andy and she had come to the door and there was an altercation and they shot and killed her that was the phrase in the news pretty much yeah an altercation yes when you hear something like that I mean I can't even fathom how you respond to somebody who's like that I still can't fathom responding to it did you say anything to him am I under arrest get these fucking cops off me I wanted to take him to uncuff you I don't worry were you saying anything to him while you were still cut from that moment on I pretty much just look what do you say whenever somebody looks at you and says your wife is dead we shot and killed her that 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 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 twenty fifty times a day asking myself what are you talking about we mean she can be dead what are you talking about now did you see her at all after the shoot yes it's about two weeks afterwards where was that at the funeral home went over to the funeral home and um sorry my feet are going to sleep yeah um I reached down the kisser and felt the edge of what I thought was a casket move and was that time I realized that she was on cardboard box I just had for a long it to make it look pretty did you say anything to her oh yeah I am I told her that we really need 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 yeah no of course um I put the microphone down Rick got up in one over the kitchen pour himself a pretty glass of vodka we kind of just walked around the property for a while we kept talking eventually rickled out this computer bag that keeps buried in his closet the idea of all the shooters involved it's this bag full of shots fire mm-hmm all the police reports that were made about that night medical examers 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 sir previous surgeries really she just had a 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 Debbie 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 whenever a six foot tall person is standing at it you really telling me that you will made eye contact rick also has all the recordings of the police dispatch how many times have you listened to those recordings countless nonstop 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 and said rick went back inside came back out with this map that is lawyers to turn up make this map position yourself in the positions where the shooters were at instead of me and Ben walk through the shooting of his wife kind of like going and placing herself 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 outside that tank you watch us over close to the porch one of the officers was you can see some of the bullet holes in the house yeah there there that's it so bullet went through here tore up tore up the uh yep plastic then we were off the front porch over in the front yard where three the deputies were so they they see her come out and they start moving across like this shooting eight almost naked woman on her front porch in the middle of night in the middle of the swamp fuck them rick then walked inside and left us standing in the 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 conducted investigation in the shooting saying that there'd 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 state of Andrea Sheldon the complaint alleges each officer involved in the shooting violated civil rights used excessive force didn't follow training policy and procedure and intentionally inflicted emotional distress on rick when we reached out to St.
John's County Sheriff's office they said they could not comment on the case pending litigation big thanks to our producer Matt Keelty and Tampa Bay Times reporter Ben Montgomery definitely keep an eye on our website radiolab.org 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 Jad Abumrod I'm Robert Croweich thanks for listening hi this is Desta Rousa calling from Long Island City in New York radiolab is produced by Jad Abumrod Dylan Keef is our director of sound design Soren Wheeler is senior editor Jamie York is our senior producer our staff includes Simon Atler, Brenna Farrell, David Gabel, Matt Keelty, Robert Croweich, Annie McEwen, Lassif Nasr, Melissa O'Donnell, Ariane Wack, and Molly Webster with help from Tracy Hunt, Valentina Bohenini, Nagar Fattali, Phoebe Wang, and Katie Ferguson. Our fact checker is Michelle Harris.