Missing The Obvious
So the Local Puppy Trainer reports on an actual successful conclusion to a criminal matter: Eglin shooting: ‘You don’t know what the potential was’
The manhunt for Willard began after a 3 a.m. car chase and shooting in Fort Walton Beach – where Nicholson said Willard took off in pursuit of a 29-year-old man, Jason Ward, who dropped off Willard’s wife near the family’s home.
Willard came out and chased away Ward in his car – then shot him as the chase reached the Northwest Florida Fairgrounds.
…There was little information on what may have set off Willard.
“We’re still trying to investigate what sparked his violent outburst,” Nicholson said. Investigators did know Ward was listed as an employee at Bridgeway Center – the same place Willard’s wife Michaela works.
Nicholson said Willard was not immediately charged but that he would be arrested “the instant he’s released from the hospital.” If he were arrested during treatment, she said Okaloosa County could be responsible for his hospital bill. Charges in addition to attempted murder were pending.
Nicholson is Michelle Nicholson who is a former TV new reporter and current media person for the Sheriff’s Department.
Let’s see, the victim and the suspect’s wife work together, and the incident started when the victim dropped off the suspect’s wife “near” her home at “3AM”, and the investigators don’t know what sparked this incident. [I could give them a hint, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise.]
Having taught the laws of arrest, I hate to break it to the Sheriff’s Department but the last I knew the Supreme Court has ruled that as soon as freedom of movement is curtailed, i.e. you take the suspect into custody, it is an arrest. The formal charges and arraignment can come later, but if the suspect isn’t free to leave, you have to read them their rights and all of the other Law & Order boilerplate. If you wait too long, a good lawyer can make prosecution a pain by hauling in “speedy trial” issues. This move to avoid paying the hospital is not going to make the hospital interested in cooperating with you.
6 comments
Yep! Agree with that. 🙂 Stupid… That law is pretty much the same here BTW (regarding what constitutes ‘arrest’.) I had to learn all that to get my security license. Only the police can question (interrogate) a suspect or caution them and that is supposed to happen as soon as a suspect has been taken into custody (which is basically as soon as a security person or police touches a suspect, normally on the arm, and they are supposed to then tell them they are under arrest.) This is so there is no ambiguity later about who was actually arrested. I could see that case being thrown out on a technicality, it happens often when a LEO tries to get cute with the Law, Justices tend not to have a sense of humor about things like that, unless they are a ‘hanging Judge’ of course. 😉
The local courts will let it pass, but it will get lost on appeal. Without the paperwork, the hospital can’t hold him without his consent, and if there is a guard there, he’s in detention.
In addition, the hospital can sue the county for reimbursement, regardless. They aren’t in this county, and don’t have to get along with us.
Well, there might be an innocent explanation for being dropped off at 3AM. Such as, say, Bridgeway Center is some sort of facility where people get off work at that time of the morning and the wife caught a ride with a co-worker because her car wouldn’t start or something. But as you say, absent that, this one looks pretty obvious :-).
Badtux´s last blog post..God Hates Figs
There might be an innocent explanation for what she did [yeah, right], but little doubt as to why Mr. Macho went all Rambo.
The AC-130s were on the range last night, the Security Police should have called in a fire mission and the county would have been saved a lot more money.
Ermmmm… That would have been a tad extreme doncha think? 😉 LOL Whole new meaning to ‘collateral damage’. 😉 I don’t think it woulda saved money… woulda cost a bundle I betcha! LOL
That assumes of course that the pilot’s and gunners actually get pointed to the correct address, etc… 😉
They were lighting off the ordnance anyway, the birds were already airborne, it was in the Army’s Ranger training area on the base, and with the new sighting system in a rural setting that had been rained on for two days, it would have been fire safe.
The county would have saved all the court and incarceration costs. A few sponges for the suspect and a flat bed for the vehicle would have been about it.
The SPs use GPS on the base because the backroads tend to be “informal” and not necessarily what you see on the maps, especially around the training area. So sighting would not have been a problem.
Of course, if they had the guy boxed in they could have made a full scale training mission and have a forward air controller parachute in to direct fire. They also train in the base.