NEWS

Mom seeks justice for daughter killed by police

Jeff Burlew
Democrat senior writer

For five years, Karen McGehee of Tallahassee knew almost nothing about how her daughter really died.

Police officers in Brunswick, Ga., fired eight times into Caroline McGehee Small's car. Struck twice in the head, she died a week later.

Caroline McGehee Small had been involved in a car chase in June 2010 with police in the small town of Brunswick, Georgia. Local newspaper headlines at the time said officers shot her after she tried to run over them with her sedan.

Caroline McGehee Small.

McGehee, consumed by grief, put the exact manner of her daughter’s death aside.

“Truthfully, I was in a state of shock and grieving,” said McGehee, a retired first-grade teacher. “I didn’t know — might not have wanted to know — exactly what happened. When you lose a child, you’re thinking about so many other things than these details.”

But that changed last summer, when a pair of Atlanta-based investigative journalists rolled out a major expose on Small’s death and a subsequent grand-jury review that cleared the two officers who shot and killed her.

The chase, McGehee learned, happened at low speeds, under 20 mph at times, and ended after officers spun her Buick out on a suburban road. She was alone and unarmed, her car penned in by police vehicles. Officers ordered her out of the car amid blaring sirens. When she didn’t comply immediately, they opened fire on her.

The reporting, by Brad Schrade of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Jodie Fleischer of Channel 2 Action News, found the Glynn County Police Department interfered with a Georgia Bureau of Investigation probe, altered the shooting scene and created evidence to back up officer assertions they fired because they feared for their lives. A retired GBI agent who oversaw the agency's investigation of the shooting said it wasn't justified, calling it, "the worst one I've ever investigated."

McGehee was shocked by what she read.

“I was devastated," she said an interview with the Tallahassee Democrat. "It was like Caroline dying all over again. But it was worse this time because I knew the facts.”

Karen McGehee looks over newspaper clippings, legal filings and her own notes of her daughter Caroline’s death, at her Tallahassee home.

Since then, McGehee and family friends have joined in a crusade to bring light to the case, forming a group called Justice for Caroline Small and Children. They’re pressing state and federal officials to conduct new investigations into the shooting and the subsequent actions of police and prosecutors.

“This was a brutal, completely unnecessary killing of a young woman who had no weapon, who posed no threat to any police officer or anyone else,” said Bob Apgar, a Tallahassee attorney who along with his wife Drin helped organize the group. “An injustice was done in this case, and it’s been swept under the rug. And it’s time to face the truth about what happened.”

Small struggled but helped others

Small grew up in Tallahassee, spending time playing with her younger brother and friends and going on outings through Faith Presbyterian Church. She loved books, teaching herself to read at an early age, her mom recalled.

“She was very artistic, very caring, always had a lot of ideas,” she said. “Caroline took dancing, piano and art classes growing up. She was a good student, loved to read. As a child she checked out so many books from the library it was embarrassing.”

Caroline McGehee Small, taking part in a piano recital as a child.

Her behavior began to change, however, in middle school, and she struggled in high school, entering a program called Turn About to help students with issues including addiction. She completed the program at 16. She later moved to Brunswick, married and had two daughters.

As a young adult, she battled addiction, joining self-help groups and becoming active in Narcotics Anonymous. During her recovery, she worked in an outreach program at a Brunswick treatment facility and an inpatient program, leading discussion groups and helping people individually, McGehee said.

At one point in her recovery, she was doing so well she worked with other addicts at a Brunswick treatment facility. A halfway house in the town just west of Saint Simons Island was later named the Caroline House in her honor.

“So many people there in the community told me how much she had helped them in their addiction, their struggles,” McGehee said. “That meant a lot to me. She struggled, but she was also able to help other people.”

Karen McGehee holds old photos of her daughter Caroline at her home in Tallahassee.

Her marriage ended in divorce, finalized just weeks before her death. At some point before her fatal encounter with police, she apparently relapsed.

911 call leads to police chase

On the morning of June 18, 2010, employees of a Brunswick hotel noticed a woman sitting in her car in the parking lot, with the engine running and the air-conditioning on.

One of them went to the car to check on her, greeting her with a “hi there.” Small responded with a “hi.” The employee believed she was using drugs and called 911, telling police she “looked spaced out.”

A Glynn County police officer responded. He noticed the car was in gear, with Small’s foot on the brake. The officer suspected she was under the influence but saw no drugs, let alone weapons.

He ordered her to put the car in park and stop the engine. But Small ignored his commands, took her foot off the brake and drove away slowly, hitting a curb and deflating her right front tire along the way. Other officers, including a Georgia state trooper, joined in the pursuit, which was captured on police dash-cam video.

After following her for nearly 15 minutes around a nearby mall and into a subdivision, officers deployed stop sticks that flattened her other three tires. A few minutes later, the state trooper, Jonathan Malone, bumped her car in a maneuver designed to bring it to a stop.

Small’s car spun out, ending up boxed in by two squad cars in front of her, one off the passenger side, a utility pole behind her and a ditch on the driver’s side.

The ensuing encounter with police happened quickly. In less than 17 seconds, Small would be slumped over in her car, bleeding from gunshot wounds.

‘If she moves ... I’m going to shoot’

Small tried to lunge her car forward, but her flat tires spun on their rims without traction. She backed up, hitting the pole behind her.

Three officers got out of their cars, drawing their weapons and screaming for her to get out of the car. Malone ran toward her, telling the officers, “Let me get out there and get her out.”

Police officers in Brunswick, Ga., fired eight times into Caroline McGehee Small's car. Struck twice in the head, she died a week later.

But one of the officers replied, “If she moves the car, I’m going to shoot her.” The trooper, seeing he was in the line of fire, ran for cover.

Small, through the noise and chaos, began to move forward again. Two of the officers, Sgt. Robert Corey Sasser and Officer Todd Simpson, fired eight rounds through her windshield, striking her twice in the head.

Police never checked to see whether Small was still alive. They talked about their marksmanship and waved off a witness who asked if he should render aid, telling him, “She’s dead. Her head exploded.”

But Small, a 35-year-old mother of two, wasn’t dead. She’d survive another seven days in a coma, holding on until she was taken off life support.

Grand jury ‘failed’

In the aftermath of the shooting, the Glynn County chief of police, Matt Doering, called the GBI in to investigate. But he also defended the actions of the officers, telling reporters they acted appropriately.

According to the AJC, after the shooting, officers moved Simpson’s vehicle across the street and didn’t include it in later diagrams. The department created an animated re-enactment of the scene, showing a large gap between police vehicles with enough room for Small to drive over officers. The video ended with Small’s vehicle striking them.

David Perry, then acting district attorney for the judicial circuit including Glynn County, told media outlets he planned to indict the officers on manslaughter charges. But not long after, he told reporters he would not seek charges.

The prosecutor who replaced him, Jackie Johnson, took the case to a grand jury and prepared a draft indictment. But Johnson, the AJC reported, didn’t present it to grand jurors.

Johnson allowed testimony about Small’s drug use and brushes with the law but didn’t include information about the two officers who killed her, both of whom had a history of disciplinary action against them.

She shared the state’s case with the officers’ attorneys before the grand jury met. And she allowed the officers' attorneys to cross-examine a GBI agent, even though Georgia's Grand Jury Handbook expressly forbids defendants from cross-examining witnesses.

Johnson showed the police department’s re-enactment video to grand jurors, who found the shooting justified in a 12-6 vote. One of the grand jurors later told the AJC and Channel 2 he regretted his vote, saying the grand jury “failed” in its duties.

Officers ‘lost control’

David Peterson, a retired district attorney who was involved in the investigation, spoke out about the shooting and the flawed investigation during a meeting last month of the Glynn County Commission. Peterson said officers should have provided cover as the state trooper tried to extricate Small from her car.

Instead, he said, Sasser “lost control” by shooting her as a first resort. And he said Simpson shouldn’t have been at the scene at all because he was suffering from seizures and assigned to desk duty.

Caroline McGehee Small.

“Sasser and Simpson were entitled as police officers to restrain Caroline Small’s liberty, but not to deprive her of her life,” he said. “She deserved to go to jail, but not to die.”

Two years later, Small’s former husband and her father filed a lawsuit against Glynn County police in U.S. District Court in Georgia, alleging officers violated her constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable and excessive use of force.

“An objectively reasonable law enforcement officer in Sasser and Simpson’s positions would have known that Small did not present an imminent threat of bodily harm sitting unarmed and trapped in her car surrounded by multiple law enforcement officers,” attorneys for the family wrote in court documents.

Judge: No constitutional violation

But attorneys for the police department argued that Small during the chase steered her car at officers who were pursuing her and another who was on foot laying down stop sticks.

They noted she’d driven off the road 13 times, went through someone’s yard, ran over a mailbox and frightened a civilian who jumped off a riding lawnmower and ran into his house when he saw her approach.

The officers testified Small was trying to put the car in drive and revved her engine in the moments before she was shot. Simpson said he believed Small was trying to drive through a gap toward him and Sasser. And Sasser said he thought Small was trying to get through the gap and “crush” him.

But the case never went to trial. More than two years after it was filed, Chief U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Wood ruled in favor of the police department, writing that while Small’s death was not necessary, the shooting was not unconstitutional.

Wood, in her ruling, wrote that both Sasser and Simpson had an “objectively reasonable belief” that Small posed a threat of serious harm to the officers and others, that officers had given warning before shooting and that the use of deadly force was necessary to prevent escape. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed her ruling.

Matt Doering, chief of the Glynn County Police Department.

Chief Doering, in an interview with the Democrat, called Small’s death “a tragedy." But he said he wouldn’t second-guess the actions of officers, who had only seconds to make a decision on whether to shoot.

“The officers did not have the benefit to do the exact analysis, the exact measuring, at the time in their decision-making,” he said. “This is rapidly evolving. It’s fluid. It’s very tense. And they had to make split-second decisions.”

Doering denied that police tampered with the scene, saying one of the vehicles was moved to allow access for an ambulance. And he said the animated recreation of the incident was an accurate representation of the officers’ point of view.

Johnson, the district attorney, issued a written statement saying she respects the findings of the grand jury, the district court judge and the appeals court.

‘In it for the long haul’

McGehee’s loved ones, shocked by what they read in the AJC, circled around her in the weeks after the article was published. In August, about 18 of them met at her home to figure out how to proceed.

In the time since, they’ve written letters to Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal and Attorney General Sam Olens. They’ve traveled to Brunswick to meet with local elected officials and speak out before a County Commission meeting. They’ve contacted the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice.

“I have been amazed at how much has been accomplished,” McGehee said. “It’s hard to describe the love and support that’s come from this group of people.”

Members of Justice for Caroline McGehee Small and Children meet at Faith Presbyterian Church.

The group meets regularly at Faith Presbyterian to discuss the latest developments and strategy. Later this month, they’ll host a town hall meeting in Brunswick to bring awareness to the case.

“Really what we’re trying to do is get a full and fair investigation,” said Frank Walper, a retired teacher. “We feel that there was an injustice, and we’re taking it one step at a time. But just because you’re taking a step at a time doesn’t mean you’re not in it for the long haul.”

Wayne McDaniel, a longtime family friend, said the shooting was murder and the subsequent investigation a coverup. He said he wants the officers, who were never disciplined over the shooting, off the street. Sasser is still with the department; Simpson left, joined the sheriff’s department but later left the agency.

“The people of Brunswick, Georgia, do not deserve to have police officers on their street who would shoot citizens with little provocation,” he said. “I know she ran. I know that aggravated the hell out of them. But why shoot her?”

Town hall meeting

Justice for Caroline Small and Children will hold a town hall meeting 4-7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28, at the Old City Hall, 1229 Newcastle St., Brunswick, Georgia. For more information, visit www.justiceforcaroline.com.

Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or follow @JeffBurlew on Twitter.