The prosecutor investigating the confrontation with Coweta County deputies that led to a Destin man's death in November said he's also reviewing the actions of an EMT on the scene.
In the video that captured the final, harrowing minutes of Chase Sherman’s life, first responder Daniel Elliot can be seen pinning Sherman in the back of an SUV. The vehicle, parked against the median wall on I-85 South, had been rented by Sherman’s parents for the family’s trip home to Florida.
“Got all the weight of the world on him now,” Elliot says after pinning Sherman.
There is an anguished cry and then Sherman says, “I’m dead. I’m dead.”
Sherman had been shocked with Tasers 15 times, according to his family; the deputies have said they shocked him five times. The video then shows Elliot searching for a pulse but finding none. Paramedics administered CPR after pulling Sherman out of the car, but by then it was too late.
Elliot declined comment. Coweta Circuit District Attorney Pete Skandalakis said he’s looking at the EMT’s actions, but he noted that he’s reviewing the actions of everyone who responded to the scene.
The manner of Sherman’s death also has been somewhat unclear.
On Tuesday, however, GBI Chief Medical Examiner Jonathan Eisenstat said Sherman died from a combination of factors.
“You have him in an excited state. His blood pressure goes up, heart rate goes up,” Eisenstat told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Then the Taser is deployed, which causes more excitation. He’s not taking in enough oxygen.
“Laying prone, face down, is not the best position to be in,” the medical examiner said, adding the pressure put on Sherman’s back by another person caused Sherman’s breathing to become more labored.
“We don’t know if the heart stopped first or he stopped breathing first,” Eisenstat said. “One failed, then the other failed.”
Coweta Sheriff Mike Yeager said deputies Samuel Smith and Joshua Sepanski asked for assistance and Elliot answered.
“They were looking for all the help they could get,” the sheriff said.
The two deputies had responded to a desperate 911 call from Chase's mother, Mary Ann Sherman.
“He’s hallucinating; we need help,” Mary Ann Sherman pleaded with the operator. “He’s going to kill us all if we don’t get help.”
Yeager said that information influenced the aggressive response by Sepanski, first to arrive on the scene, and Smith, who followed soon after.
Their conduct, however, has come under fire from some law enforcement watchdogs who say the response served only to escalate the situation.
Gary Cordner, an expert in problem-oriented policing, acknowledged Sherman’s initial belligerence in what he termed “a chaotic situation” but adds there appeared to be no effort to de-escalate tensions.
“I didn’t see any attempts to calm (Sherman) down,” said Cordner, a professor emeritus at Kutztown University. “In these type of situations officers are taught to to speak calmly, to ask him to do something instead of telling him. I didn’t see anything (Sherman) was doing that suggested to me he was threatening the lives of anyone in the car.”
Cordner said not enough officers are properly trained to deal with substance abusers or the mentally ill.
Sepanski, according to records provided by the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council, has received no such instruction since joining the Coweta sheriff’s department in 2011, first as a jailer and then, in 2014, as a deputy. Smith, however, received 40 hours of crisis intervention training in May 2013 while still with the Peachtree City Police Department. He resigned in lieu of termination less than a year later after being accused of violating the department’s policies regarding emergency vehicle operations and reckless driving.
Sherman, according to his mother, told her he had used Spice, or synthetic marijuana, a few days before traveling to the Dominican Republic for his brother’s wedding. Mary Ann Sherman said her son began acting erratically while there and became even more irrational while on layover in Atlanta, refusing to board the plane back to Florida. The family decided to rent a car and drive back to Florida.
In her 911 call Mary Ann Sherman tells the operator her son is acting “crazy, out on some kind of drugs.”
Eisenstat said there were no traces of narcotics in Sherman’s body, only caffeine. Designer drugs such as Spice are often undetectable in the blood, he said.
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