Posted on 10/01/2002 7:16:59 AM PDT by Phantom Lord
Dozens protest Preble County police shooting
Slain man’s roommates say he was unarmed
EATON | Preble County law-enforcement officials declined to talk publicly Monday as they turned information about Friday's fatal shooting by a police officer of a 23-year-old man over to detectives from the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office.
Montgomery County investigators, called in by Preble County Sheriff Tom Hayes, also said they would not talk about their review of the shooting by a member of a Preble County's emergency services group — officers from a number of police departments who are trained to handle drownings and hostage and other situations.
However, it was anything but quiet outside the Preble County Courthouse, where dozens of friends and relatives picketed and said that police were covering up what happened to Clayton Jacob Helriggle, 23, of 1282 Ohio 503 South.
The protesters disputed police claims that Helriggle had a gun when he descended a stairwell and was shot by a Lewisburg police officer, whose identity has not been released. Friends and relatives on Monday carried blue plastic cups similar to the one they said Helriggle had in his hand Friday night.
Among the protesters were four of Helriggle's roommates, three of whom said they were inside the brick farmhouse when police stormed the house to serve a warrant to search for narcotics.
Maj. Wayne Simpson of the Preble County Sheriff's Office declined to discuss information about what happened Friday night and said a report on the shooting of the Preble County man had not been completed. Preble County Prosecutor Rebecca Ferguson said she sealed the search warrant after the shooting, and had no comment regarding the investigation.
"They're a professional group of officers, that's what their job is, and I'm not going to second-guess them. Whatever (Montgomery County officials) come up with, they come up with," Ferguson said.
Friends called Helriggle "peaceful and nonviolent," but police said the 1997 Twin Valley South High School graduate held a 9 mm handgun, not a blue cup, in his right hand when he descended the dimly lighted stairs. Roommates said Helriggle owned a 9 mm gun, but that it was upstairs when police entered their house.
"It's like we were armed, hardened criminals waiting inside to take them on," said Wes Bradley, 26, who lived in the bottom of the six-bedroom farmhouse with his girlfriend, 22-year-old Tasha Webster.
Bradley said he and Webster were near the kitchen next to the stairs, when officers "broke through the back door with battering rams and started throwing in flash grenades three at a time, to blind us."
The officers wore full body armor and carried shields, he said.
Another roommate, Ian Albert, said he had returned home from the grocery store with Chris Elmore, 24, who remained outside while Albert ran into the house.
"We saw at least two paddy wagon-type vehicles, like a SWAT bus," Elmore said. "About 30 officers stormed out of the woods" surrounding the farmhouse. "They'd cut the barbed wire, and you could see a staging area, like where 25 to 30 uniformed cops had been lying down and slithered along the grass."
Officers ordered Elmore to get on the ground, and he said he heard three pops, which he said could have been the flash grenades and gunshot.
"I yelled 'Nobody's armed,' and they told me, 'Shut up, shut up.' ”
Elmore described the action "like a movie, in slow motion."
Inside, Albert said, the police threw him against the staircase, "with my head on the second step up. I wanted to yell at Clay, but I looked up and saw him, rounding the stairway, and he had this look on his face, like, 'What's going on?' and the cops yelled, 'Get down' and then 'boom.' ”
Albert, who completed four months of Navy Seal training, said he reached up for Helriggle, "and I tried to apply pressure," he said, placing his left palm on his right chest, where Helriggle was struck by the gunshot.
"He died in my arms," he said. "It took about two minutes."
Albert said he was placed in a sheriff's car, and Helriggle's parents arrived.
"They saw me, drenched in Clay's blood, and they ask me, 'Is he all right?' and I just shook my head. The cops are smoking and joking, high-fiving each other. Wow, I think, they took down a farm of unarmed hippies.
"If they would have come to the door and said, 'Give us your dope, hippies,' we'd have gotten about a $100 ticket."
Police said they confiscated a small amount of marijuana, pills, drug paraphernalia and quantities of packaging items used in the distribution of marijuana.
The four roommates said they smoke marijuana from time to time and that they had marijuana pipes in the house. Bradley said he had a prescription for Fiorocet, a codeinelike painkiller, for a bad knee. They said the packaging police referred to was a box of plastic sandwich bags.
Webster said there was nothing in the house "that a good divorce lawyer couldn't have gotten us out on a misdemeanor," and said an old shotgun and a .22-caliber rifle found there were used for hunting.
"We target-practiced outside all the time, shot at bales of hay, jugs, that sort of thing," Webster said.
Bradley and Webster said Helriggle took a nap around 5 p.m. and had made plans to meet his girlfriend later.
"I'm not sure if he woke up from the bashing on the door or what," Bradley said.
All four said they were not read their rights or told what charges were filed against them. They were released from the Preble County Jail around 1:30 a.m. Saturday. No criminal charges have been filed.
Nancy Fahrenholz, the daughter of Everett "Bill" Fahrenholz, an attorney and former country prosecutor, hugged Bradley on Monday at the courthouse. Helriggle and five roommates rented the house from the Fahrenholzes.
"I'm so sorry," said Fahrenholz, a Rhode Island resident in the area to finish up the estate of her father, Bill Fahrenholz, who died a month ago.
"(Dad) would have been furious at this," she said. "We're all very distressed."
She said Helriggle "was a really nice guy," and that her family was pleased with the five young people's work on rehabilitating the farmhouse.
Helriggle's 77-year-old grandfather, Donald, a Miamisburg resident and Ohio Bell retiree, said his grandson rented the farmhouse "so they could play their instruments, listen to their music and drink a little beer. . . . They just wanted to be doing what 23-year-olds do."
Why didn't they shoot Dionne Warwick?
Without a refutation.
Endlessly.
False.
And yet you can't provide a single example of the "substantial effects" test being applied to the Commerce Clause prior to 1937.
Someone who has the stones to hang in for one day of SEAL training, let alone four whole months of it, probably has more strength and credibility than you could ever imagine.
What do you want to bet that he's including boot camp in those four months since SEAL bootcamp is different?
BUD/S indoctrination = boot camp = 5 weeks maybe six if he had to wait for a company to form and maybe 7 or 8 or 9 if he didn't pass the BUD/S Physical Screen Test the first time which must be passed to begin training in the First Phase BUD/S. He has four chances (ie weeks) to pass.
First Phase - Basic Seal Conditioning = 8 weeks Advanced physical conditioning (running, swimming, and calisthenics) which grows increasingly difficult. The third week is known as "Hell Week." It's five and a half days of continuous training, with a maximum of four hours sleep for the the entire week. This is the week he likely washed out on. 9 or 10 weeks + 3 weeks probably = "four months" in druggie speak.
Second Phase - Combat SCUBA DIVING = 7 weeks - he didn't make it this far at any rate.
Third Phase - Land Warfare = 9 weeks - nope.
Post-BUD/S SEAL traning =
3 weeks basic parachute training at Army Airborne School.
15 weeks at Naval Special Warfare Center for SQT
Upon completion of SEAL Qualification Training (SQT)qualified personnel are awarded a Naval Special Warfare designation and assigned to a SEAL Team.
Total = 47 weeks minimun = 11 months + (more likely 50-52 weeks) - so Ian Albert, eyewittness and Helriggle's "best friend" didn't get real close to being a Navy SEAL in those "four whole months" imho.
That's an insult to every Navy Seal.It sure is.
ANYONE who's gone through 4 MONTHS of that training is not to be taken lightly. Most people who have to quit at that point had to drop because of a medical condition.
The medical conditions are screened out prior to ANY training. It wasn't a medical condition unless his C.C. beat the hell out of him for being a goldbrick.
Sorry if I got a little hot, but I really take it personally when navy seal training gets disrespected like that.
Me Too! So next time, know what you're talking about, okay?
Bud, have you ever known a SEAL candidate that made it past 1st phase that didn't know the difference between 9 weeks and 16?
Second Phase - Combat SCUBA DIVING = 7 weeks - he didn't make it this far at any rate.
To "wash out" in 4 months, this guy apparently had problems getting past the scuba qualification. It could have been a number of things, from lack of swimming ability to problems with his ears at depth. It does NOT mean that his problems were related to smoking pot. Your agenda won't "wash" here....
Then why do you parrot him?
Begging the question.
A major portion of the traffic in controlled substances flows through interstate and foreign commerce; the foundations of the CSA are greater than just "substantial effects."
Bud, have you ever known a SEAL candidate that made it past 1st phase that didn't know the difference between 9 weeks and 16?Well "Bud" - I've never hung with wash-outs at anything, but, I have known a few SEAL/UDT guys who would eat this boy for breakfast and still have "more strength and credibility than you could ever imagine." Comparing a SEAL wash-out at 16 weeks to a Naval Sea/Air/Land Special Warfare designate is like comparing a Doctor to a high school drop-out. This guy didn't make it past the first Phase of training in all likelyhood, because the reality is that bootcamp can be extended for any number of reasons (and usually is), including waiting for a company to form (SEAL/UDT's are in "Special Companies" that usually take time to fill up), medical "holds" are common if the docs suspect anything is amiss (I spent an extra week in Navy boot camp waiting for a ruling on the shape of my ankle) and BUD/S candidates don't always pass the PST on the first try.
SEALs also have to qualify and pass a diving test before they can even start their training and that exam sometimes hangs them up for a week as well - but, they are still recruits, drawing a Navy paycheck the whole time and it all counts as time served in the billet.
If he made it into "Hell Week" with it's five and a half days of endless running, swiming, calisthenics and only four hours of sleep in the week, he very likely couldn't tell ten hours from 10 minutes at the end of it (without smoking pot), so yes, I've known SEALs who told me that they lost all sense of time durring phase one training.
To "wash out" in 4 months, this guy apparently had problems getting past the scuba qualification. It could have been a number of things, from lack of swimming ability to problems with his ears at depth. It does NOT mean that his problems were related to smoking pot. Your agenda won't "wash" here....There were no "problems with his ears at depth" or "lack of swimming ability" because as I just mentioned, all SEAL candidates must pass a diving physical examination, completed per Chapter 15, Section IV, Article 15-66 of the Manual of the Medical Department BEFORE reporting to BUD/S training.
I'm really sorry that I'm making you look like you don't know what you are talking about, that's not my "agenda" and I didn't say that he washed-out due to pot smoking. I called him a druggie only because his "best friend" was a druggie and he was evidently so stoned at the time of the raid that he couldn't tell a handgun from a "blue cup" or "a blue glass of water". My agenda was merely to correct some mistaken speculation about SEAL/UDT training from a couple of posters who were passing along moose droppings instead of facts.
One of the articles states that the shooter was a "veteran" police officer. It's very unlikely that he shot an unarmed man for kicks in my experience and mho and it's very likely that he has more "credibility" than the dope-smokers. It's a shame that the guy is dead, but, we can agree to disagree about who to believe. I won't agree that the dead man's best friend and apparently the only civilian eyewittness - is something special because he washed out of the SEAL training in 13 or 16 weeks. BTW, the ones that wash out after "Hell Week" are usually either psycho or too selfish to work with a team, so the longer he hung in there, the more likely it is that he's a nut job. Add drugs to the mix and he's not my idea of the most "credible" reliable wittness, but to each his own.
Whatever happened there, it doesn't justify acting like a lynch mob.
Disagreeing with a law and working to overturn it is one thing, breaking it because your too lazy to fight it is another.
...equally sad at those who are too lazy to use the american system to fight for change.
Actually the American system was designed to include the option of fighting any law you believe to be unjust by deliberately breaking it, having your day in court, and arguing for jury nullification of that law.
A jury is supposed to judge both the facts of the case and stand in judgment of the law itself. If the jury feels the law is unjust, they have the right to acquit even if the defendant clearly broke the law in question. That's one of the ways that our American system of a "trial by a jury of our peers" was meant to work.
Begging the question. Ignorantly.
Looks like they have been trying that for years ;)
Big deal. He said he was there for four months, he has no reason to lie about it, and without evidence to the contrary, I believe him for all that such belief is worth. Which isn't much, I suppose, but I'll give the boy the benefit of the doubt. Besides, if you've got the stones to last through one day of SEAL training you've probably got more stones than 99% of the American male population.All your post proves is that you're a fan of the Discovery Channel and you wanted everyone on FR to know it.
False.
"Sourceless, citeless, meritless, endless."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.