GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The Alachua County grand jury issued a no true bill Thursday in connection with the March 20 shooting death of Robert Dentmond by Gainesville police.
Dentmond, 16, was shot and killed in the parking lot of the Majestic Oaks Apartments after he called 911 about 10 p.m. to say he was suicidal and had a high-powered rifle. Deputies and police said they had no choice but to shoot the boy, who was brandishing a weapon and threatening to kill himself.
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Police learned the next day that the gun was a realistic replica -- not a real gun.
The grand jury found that Dentmond’s death was a result of the lawful use of deadly force and constituted justifiable homicide, the State Attorney’s Office said.
In a news release, the State Attorney’s Office said the no true bill was returned to the court after business hours on Wednesday, and the grand jury advised the court to reconvene at a later to further consider the matter, including addressing the possibility of issuing a report to the community regarding its findings.
Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell released a statement Thursday, saying ACSO will not discuss specifics of the case yet.
"It is important as a community that we move forward and make applicable improvements to ensure individuals who are suffering from mental health related crises receive the support and assistance they need," Darnell said. "Robert Dentmond Jr.'s death is tragic to everyone involved, including our public safety telecommunicators and those members of law enforcement that were forced into this situation by the circumstances which were presented to them that night."
The shooting
Investigators said the incident began when Dentmond called dispatchers to say that he wanted to shoot himself, then hung up.
Patrol units confirmed Dentmond appeared to have an AR-15-style rifle, and they called for backup from the Sheriff's Office and Gainesville police.
Deputies and officers talked to Dentmond, who at one point dropped his weapon. But officials said he would not move away from it. After several minutes, Dentmond picked up the weapon, then began walking toward an occupied apartment building, investigators said.
UNCUT: Bystander video leading up to Dentmond's death
The police report said deputies and officers from both agencies began to give a series of loud verbal commands telling Dentmond to drop the weapon. Detectives said Dentmond did not respond to the directions and continued to walk toward the building.
On a witness' video, police can be heard yelling, “Drop it now, or you will be shot! Drop it now! One more step, (and) we're going to shoot you. Drop it now! You cannot get to a building where you're going to hurt someone.”
Deputies and officers opened fire, wounding Dentmond, who fell to the ground. He died later at a hospital.
Deputies, officer who fired on leave on desk duty
The Alachua County Sheriff's Office said Sgt. Christopher Sims and deputies Robert Campbell, Jason Hulst, Kyle Reedy and Christopher Dasher all fired shots. All had spent at least 2.5 years in the department and three of them were part of the Sheriff's Office's Crisis Intervention Team, having 40 hours of training identifying people suffering from mental illness, individuals in crisis and in de-escalation techniques.
Gainesville police said Cpl. Robert Kennedy and officers Brendon McCarthy, Matthew Quinn and Casey Kumar also fired on Dentmond. Among them, those officers had between 2 and 13.5 years in the department; none of them were crisis intervention team-certified.
All were placed on administrative leave or desk duty while the shooting was investigated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Anger boils over at community meeting
A meeting between community members, the Alachua County sheriff and the Gainesville police chief about Dentmond’s shooting in March began with a prayer, but ended a half-hour later with shouting as the teenager's mother was addressing the crowd.
As Dentmond's mother took the pulpit at the Power House Family Worship Center, tensions were building. Then a man in the audience began shouting at her.
"What is (she) doing here?" the man called out.
Someone in the crowd responded: "Do not interrupt her. Let her talk."
The mother replied: "You're being real ghetto right now. Is that going to help my baby? Is what you're doing, fixing to bring my baby back?"
When the man parroted her statement back to her, the meeting erupted into shouting, and Dentmond's mother left the pulpit in tears.
The meeting was arranged by the Sheriff's Office, Gainesville police and the State Attorney's Office, along with the NAACP, the Gainesville Ministerial Alliance, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives and representatives of the Alachua County Black on Black Crime Task Force.
Alachua County Lt. Brandon Kutner said the purpose of the meeting was to bring everyone together and allow law enforcement to be transparent about what happened.
"We want to give the community an opportunity to ask their questions, have them answered, and also for them to understand from a law enforcement perspective why we did what we did and what precipitated those actions," Kutner said.
Darnell spoke at the beginning of the meeting, but after the meeting abruptly ended, some said they felt frustrated and that their concerns were not heard.
Some people News4Jax spoke with after the meeting said they weren't surprised by how it turned out.
“There's a lot of emotion here, and the community is justified in their concern because it could be anybody's son or daughter, you know?” Claude Burley said. “How we handle it and respond to these kinds of things, you're going to have these kinds of reactions. This is normal. And matter of fact, I thought it was quite contained under the circumstances."
"The key is that we wanted to keep it civil, and it was getting to be a shouting match in the way that just changed the whole tone,” Gainesville City Commissioner Helen Warren said.
Moving Forward
Darnell announced Thursday after the grand jury decision that she was committed to building upon mental health awareness training for all ACSO personnel already in place through the following:
- Emergency Mental Health Dispatch protocol implementation with public safety telecommunicators assigned to the Combined Communications Center. The communications center will be the first in Florida to implement this protocol once the certification process is completed and ACSO is working toward being first in the nation to implement the LifeBridges DirectShare program, which enables direct flow of 911 data and call audio records from a law enforcement agency to involved emergency mental health providers.
- Continue to try to reach 100% of sworn and communications center staff in crisis intervention. Roughly 70% of all personnel at ACSO are currently trained.
- Continue legislative discussions to ban the sale of replica weapons in Florida.
- Continue to address suicide prevention in Youth Dialog and School Resource Deputy settings to include age appropriate suicide prevention awareness in conjunction with school officials.
"I am confident that our community will band together to ensure that the safety net of our countywide mental health services are adequately staffed, appropriately funded and easily accessible to all of our residents moving forward," said Darnell.