» Police and the mentally ill: a volatile mix
Whenever he’d go scuba diving off the coast of Destin, someone had to follow Chase Sherman with a back-up oxygen tank. “Chase would be so excited he’d breathe through an entire tank of air before he’d get to the bottom,” said his younger brother, David Sherman.
The brothers worked in the family business alongside their parents, Kevin and Mary Ann Sherman, leading dolphin-watching expeditions and ferrying parasailers in the waters off the Florida panhandle.
“They had lunch together every day. Every Friday night they’d go to the same Mexican restaurant,” said family friend Ed Rogers. “You never saw one without another.”
When Chase Sherman took his final breath last November, his parents were there. They watched as two Coweta County deputies shocked him repeatedly with Tasers watched as their son stopped breathing, watched as the paramedics administered CPR to little effect. Sherman, 32, had been behaving strangely for a few days. But he seemed to have a full-on psychotic breakdown as he and his parents and his fiancée drove down I-85 in a rented SUV, away from Atlanta's airport and toward home in Destin.
As they drove through Coweta County, Mary Ann Sherman grew so frightened that she called 911 for help.
Help arrived.
Neither deputy has faced disciplinary action for their role in Sherman’s death in November 2015, in spite of the horrific scene recorded by their own body cameras.
But Coweta Sheriff Mike Yeager is staunchly defending his men, saying they had "every right to fear for their safety. This was a violent altercation."
“He’s not the victim,” Yeager said of Sherman. “He’s the perpetrator.
Perpetrator or not, Sherman — white, affluent, no criminal record — is as unlikely a victim of alleged police brutality as you’ll find. Those who knew him best describe Sherman as a free spirit who was always eager to lend a helping hand. They still can’t comprehend the manner of his death.
‘Now it’s like we’re missing an arm’
The video of “Chase being Chase” remains on his phone, and Tyler Searle watches it often. He and his cousin were on a snorkeling excursion when, Chase, captaining the boat, spotted a school of dolphins swimming by.
“He ripped his shirt off, grabbed a snorkel and mask and was in the water in no time,” Searle said. “Of course by then the dolphins were 200 yards away but he was in the water talking about how he’d swam with the dolphins. It still makes me laugh.”
For 15 years, Searle worked for Flipper’s Adventures and Just Chute Me, the Sherman family businesses. But this year, with Chase gone, he couldn’t go back.
“I just couldn’t handle it, being surrounded by those memories of Chase,” said Searle, adding his cousin was more like a brother to him. “I can’t comprehend how (Kevin and Mary Ann Sherman) deal with it.”
Chase, he said, was very much the “glue for the family, so gregarious and excited no matter what.”
“A lot of the fun has been taken out of my life,” Searle said.
The plan was for Chase and David Sherman to take over the family business one day. The brothers were content to live and work in Destin for the rest of their lives. Chase dreamed of living on the ocean and having kids of his own.
Two weeks before Chase’s death, Kevin and Mary Ann surprised their oldest son with a new house they bought for him and his longtime girlfriend, Patti Galloway.
“He and Patti were going to get married, for sure. He was excited to have a family of his own,” Searle said. “We’d talk about our kids growing up together.”
‘It wasn’t like Chase to be scared’
It was a surprise to see David, the younger brother by five years, marry first, his parents said. They decided to hold the ceremony in the Dominican Republic at an all-inclusive resort in the municipality of Punta Cana.
“We did the zip line. Rented dune buggies,” David Sherman said. “It was a great time.”
But something was different about Chase. He was barely eating or sleeping, his mother said, and during their first few days on the island he began exhibiting an uncharacteristic paranoia.
“If we got off the resort, he was afraid he was going to be kidnapped,” she said. “It wasn’t like Chase to be scared of things.”
He confided to his parents that he had taken Spice a few days before they left Destin. The side effects he was experiencing are consistent with symptoms caused by withdrawals from the synthetic drug, according to the Spice Addiction Support website.
Mary Ann Sherman had seen this before. About three years earlier she sought medical attention for Chase after he said he had experimented with the designer cannabinoid. After a few weeks, she said, the symptoms subsided and he was back to normal.
No one in his family believes he abused Spice or any other drug. He was around them too much to nurse a habit, they say. And, as a licensed captain, he was subject to random drug tests.
Searle, who served as “first mate” on the boats Chase captained, said he would’ve noticed if his cousin was under the influence.
“I would’ve been super upset if he had a problem like that,” he said. “And I would’ve told Kevin and Mary Ann right away.”
As their stay in the Dominican wound down, Chase’s appeared to be back to his normal self. Mary Ann Sherman said he exhibited no erratic behavior on the flight to Atlanta and he passed through customs without incident.
But his paranoia, more intense than before, resurfaced as they were about to board the plane that would take them home to Florida.
“He thought people were watching him,” his mother said.
The family decided to rent a car and drive to Destin, where they planned to have Chase see a doctor.
“We thought we were doing the right thing,” she said.
‘These people are kidnapping me’
As they made the drive down I-85 Chase’s behavior grew increasingly irrational.
“All of the sudden he decided he needed to get out of the car,” said his father, who was sitting in the back seat with Chase. Patti, who was driving, eventually pulled off into the median as Mary Ann Sherman called 911.
She’d be on the phone an agonizing 11 minutes as her husband and Patti did their best to restrain Chase.
“Yes, we’re trying to hold him in the vehicle,” she tells the operator. “He’s biting his girlfriend.”
At one point Mary Ann Sherman can be overheard yelling, “Hit him in the head. Hit him in the head.”
Coweta Sheriff’s Deputy Josha Sepanski was the first to arrive. As he approached the rented SUV, Chase yelled out, “These people are kidnapping me,” according to his mother.
“It’s like he didn’t know who we were,” she said.
Sepanski climbed over Kevin Sherman to get inside the vehicle, where he proceeded to handcuff Chase. A scuffle ensued as Chase resisted arrest for about a minute and a half. At that point a second deputy, Samuel Smith, entered the car and both he and Sepanski attempted to subdue Chase with Tasers. Sepanski’s body camera captures the chaos that unfolds.
“You’re not going to shoot him, you hear me?” Mary Ann Sherman tells one of the deputies from the front seat. She’s ordered out of the car.
“O.K. I’m dead, I’m dead,” Sherman says. He’s prone on the floor board, wedged between the front and back seats after an EMT applied his weight to his body.
The altercation, and Taser strikes — 15 in all, according to the family — caused Sherman's heart rate and blood pressure to rise substantially, GBI Chief Medical Examiner Jonathan Eisenstat said. Meanwhile, because of the position he was in, lying on his stomach, his oxygen intake was inhibited.
“We don’t know if the heart stopped first or he stopped breathing first,” Eisenstat said. “One failed, then the other failed.”
Chase Sherman was pronounced dead on the side of the interstate.
‘You expect to see him on that boat’
It took a lot longer for the Shermans to get ready this year for their busy season, which kicks off this weekend.
“With Chase we could get it done in a couple of weeks,” his brother David said. “This year it took us a couple of months.”
Chase isn’t the only familiar face who’s gone. Searle, his cousin, quit as did his girlfriend of six years Patti Galloway, who was just like a member of the family.
“They were two peas in a pod,” Kevin Sherman said of his eldest son and Patti.
Galloway has moved back to her hometown about an hour north of Destin. She declined to be interviewed for this article.
“She felt like she had to start over,” Mary Ann Sherman said.
That’s not an option for the Shermans, so deeply invested in Destin. They are surrounded by family, which is comforting, yet their presence also magnifies Chase’s absence.
David Sherman notices the toll his brother’s death has taken on his parents.
“They’re worn down and tired,” he said.
His mother said she rarely sleeps but feels compelled to fight for justice for Chase. The GBI, after being alerted by an AJC reporter that the family — the only witnesses besides law enforcement — had not been interviewed, has reopened its investigation. Ultimately, Coweta Circuit District Attorney Pete Skandalakis will decide whether criminal charges are merited against the deputies involved.
The Shermans say they will appeal to the U.S. Justice Department if charges aren’t brought locally.
“The drugs did not kill Chase,” his brother said. "The police did.”
His memory survives. Sometimes it’s reassuring, other times, overwhelming.
“You see that boat down there and you still expect to see him on it,” his mother said.
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