Family questions police patience

Sheriff says situation changed after shots were fired by soldier

Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2007

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff Photo by Jesse Yeatman Joseph L. Dean looks out the front door of his home where his son was shot and killed by police Dec. 26 after a 14-hour standoff. Family members said the son, James ‘‘Jamie” Dean, was depressed about being called back to military service. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story Click here to enlarge this photo Staff Photo by Jesse Yeatman James ‘‘Jamie” Dean’s aunt, Debbie Gibson, talks to his wife, Muriel Dean, three days after he was shot at a home on the Dean property in Hollywood. Dean’s wife and family members are considering filing suit against law enforcement for the handling of the standoff. Click here to enlarge this photo Two of the holes left in the house after police shot approximately 50 tear gas canisters into the house.

On Friday, as the relatives of James Emerick ‘‘Jamie” Dean prepared for his funeral this week, they also asked how a Christmas night call for police to check on the young man’s safety ended with a trooper’s bullet in his chest.

‘‘They forgot the real reason they were here, to save lives, not kill somebody,” Dean’s neighbor Tony Wheatley said as he visited the house on Dusty Lane riddled with holes.

‘‘We counted 50-some tear gas holes they shot,” Joseph L. Dean said as he stood outside the one-story rambler on the family’s farmland, where his son often sought respite from his ordeals, most recently the prospect of a return to war.

James Dean, who turned 29 last month, and his wife, Muriel, married last August and had their own home in the Hollywood Shores community. He went to his father’s home on Christmas night, after a holiday that his wife said found him wrestling with a host of fears and worries.

Muriel Dean said she and her husband traveled on Christmas Eve to his mother’s home in St. Inigoes, where he stayed on a porch and drank wine. The U.S. Army infantry sergeant, who had served in Afghanistan and received an honorable discharge, was being reactivated from his reserve status, through a letter that his wife said told him ‘‘he was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

‘‘He said, ‘I’ve only got three more weeks and you’ll be rid of me,’” Muriel Dean said.

The couple went to his grandmother’s house on Dusty Lane the next day for Christmas dinner, and he took a nap when they got home. He told her he was going out to get a bottle of wine to drink while watching a football game on television that night, but he was still at a Sandy Bottom bar when she called there. He returned home, where he shattered a mural on a wall in the residence.

‘‘He said he was going to burn it down. I had to get the gas can from him and the lighter,” she said, and he left again a short time later. ‘‘He told me I was the best thing that ever happened to him. He said, ‘The next time you see me I’ll be in a body bag.’ I told myself in a couple of hours he’ll be fine.”

Dean went to Dusty Lane, where Mary Dean, the soldier’s grandmother, said he talked with her at a shed for more than an hour when he first arrived, before he went to his father’s house. ‘‘He talked about Iraq and some family problems he was having,” she said. ‘‘I calmed him down. He said, ‘I’m either going to sleep in my truck or go over to Dad’s.’ I told him, ‘You go over there and behave yourself.’ That’s the last I saw of him.”

Dean’s father was away at a party, and the soldier’s phone conversation with his sister at their mother’s home in St. Inigoes prompted a call to authorities shortly before 10 p.m., asking them to check on his welfare.

The family also reported that Dean had weapons with him, according to St. Mary’s Sheriff Timothy K. Cameron, and a police phone call to the house as law officers responded led to a warning by Dean that he would not step outside and that he intended to commit suicide.

‘‘The plan was to continue negotiations. There had been some contact,” the sheriff said Tuesday, but ‘‘there was no real dialogue. There was no connection. At the same time, you had him firing shots from the house that went on that night, and that [next] day.”

The gunshots fired from the house during the night struck three police cruisers, including one occupied by a law officer, the sheriff said, and the shots continued during the daylight hours.

‘‘The whole thing’s complicated when he starts shooting at police on the perimeter,” Cameron said. ‘‘That changes the complexion of the entire operation. It went from somebody who was despondent to somebody who committed a crime. The intention was to place him under arrest, and see that he got the help he needed.”

Police threw a boxed phone into the house early on during the response, the sheriff said, and announced to Dean through a PA system that they wanted to talk to him. ‘‘While the arrangements were being made, he threw the phone out,” Cameron said. ‘‘He shot the phone.”

Police initially fired tear gas rounds into the front of the house during the night, the sheriff said, but they were not able to deploy an armored vehicle to do the same from the backyard at that time because of concerns that it might get stuck. Dean went out on the back porch, the sheriff said, but not far enough for police to subdue him with a dog or less-lethal projectiles.

The confrontation ended shortly after noon that day when law officers in a pair of armored vehicles approached from both sides of the house, to fire more tear gas into the residence.

‘‘The idea of inducing chemical agents into the house was to force him to come out of the house, so we could take him into custody,” the sheriff said.

As Maryland State Police Special Tactical Assault Team officers in a military-type vehicle fired tear gas canisters into the house, law enforcement commanders said, Dean appeared, carrying either a shotgun or rifle, and began to raise the weapon. The single shot that struck Dean was fired by a state police sergeant who had served 13 years with the tactical team.

On Friday, as Dean’s father walked through the house in an attempt to salvage some of his belongings, his eyes were teary, not just for his son but also because of the gas that still permeated the home.

Dean built the house about 10 years ago, but had lived on the farm with other relatives for the past 30 years. He’s staying up the hill at his mother’s house for now, unsure of what will become of the house where his son, his ‘‘pride and joy,” was shot. ‘‘You can’t come back in here knowing your son was shot right in the front door for nothing,” Dean said.

The soldier’s family said he was taking medication for post-traumatic stress after he got back from his first tour of duty. ‘‘In my opinion, the military didn’t do right, either,” his father said. ‘‘They need to check these boys over thoroughly before they bring them back.”

E-mail John Wharton at jwharton@somdnews.com. E-mail Jesse Yeatman at jyeatman@somdnews.com.