JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

I’ve got a pretty good bead on exactly what happened outside the Wyandotte County Court Services building the other day.

A person who is very familiar with Wyandotte County law enforcement laid it out for me.

I can’t vouch for it 100 percent, and it’s a sole-source account, but when you hear it, you’ll see that it smacks of logic and insider knowledge.

First, here’s a screen shot of the overall scene where the action occurred.

We are looking west on Ann Avenue from Seventh Street. At the right is the Wyandotte County Court Services building, formerly the federal courthouse in Kansas City, Kansas.

At left is the north side of the main Wyandotte County Courthouse. Farther down the block, with the narrow, horizontal windows, is the Wyandotte County jail. (Note: Earlier I said the first building on the left was Memorial Hall; that was incorrect.)

The shootings took place in a gated area behind the court services building. Inmate Antoine Fielder had appeared in court and deputies Theresa King and Patrick Rohrer were walking Fielder and another prisoner back to a van, from where they would go back across the street to the jail.

The gated area behind the courts service building, called the courthouse annex, has a raised loading dock. The routine is that the transport vans park below the dock, and the deputies and inmates then walk up several steps to the dock. The lead deputy unlocks the door to the courthouse, and the group goes in single file.

When leaving the building, the procedure is reversed.

Like all prisoners being transported, Fielder and  the other inmate were wearing leg shackles and were handcuffed in front, with the handcuffs attached to a belly chain that goes around the inmates’ midsection. Thus, they cannot run, and they have limited extension of their hands.

Now, my source’s account:

“The front deputy (could have been either King or Rohrer) unlocks the exit door (to the courthouse), opens and holds it while the inmates and other deputy walk out onto the dock…The inmates walk down the steps and are basically between the two deputies. At some point, while the first deputy (my source believes this was Rohrer) is opening the side doors of the van, Fielder makes his move. He is a big man and has maneuvered his belly-chain and cuffs so that he can have more movement. In that moment, while the deputy (again, believed to be Rohrer) is focused on opening the van doors, Fielder makes his move and goes straight for the deputy’s weapon, unsnaps the holster while simultaneously knocking the deputy off balance. Once he has the firearm, Fielder delivers a fatal shot to the deputy’s head.

“In the meantime, the second deputy (King) is walking down the steps, or just getting on ground level. She draws her firearm and the other inmate is running back to the dock to get out of the way. She has to maneuver around the fleeing inmate and begins firing at Fielder as he turns and starts firing at her. She empties her clip, hitting Fielder five times. Fielder also empties his gun, but his last shot hit her in the head. Both fall. The deputy’s wound is fatal, and Fielder lives.

“The whole thing is over within 10 seconds or so.”

A secondary source told me King’s weapon “stove piped” after she shot Fielder — meaning a bullet casing was stuck in the slide after not fully ejecting — and that’s when Fielder shot her.

**

That is a terrifying account. And it’s the kind of spontaneous, horrifying experience that rarely happens but which transport deputies have to be anticipating all the time.

As my source said, “An inmate has 24 hours a day to plan ways to escape, and we try to prepare for every scenario but, as we saw here, sometimes that doesn’t work.”

One of the ironies here is that even after shooting the deputies, Fielder faced more hurdles before he would have gained even temporary freedom…The shootings occurred in a fenced-in area, so he would have had to find and manipulate the key to open the gate to the holding area. He also would have needed the key to his shackles, and, finally, he would have needed a key or remote to start the van.

All in all, according to my main source, Fielder’s gambit amounted to “a totally ignorant, stupid move on his part.”

**

A couple of things about the account came as a surprise:

1. That Fielder ended up paralyzed. Officials have not divulged that information — or any detailed account of what happened.
2. It was Rohrer, not King, whom Fielder overcame. My initial thought was that Fielder would most likely target the female deputy. But the way my source describes it, the seconds of greatest vulnerability are when the lead deputy is opening the van doors, with his (or her) back to the inmates. In those moments, the gender of the lead officer is immaterial, for the most part. It’s just a matter of whether the inmate can move quickly and surely enough to get the officer’s handgun out of the holster.

Fielder, as we know by now, is an extremely violent individual — having probably killed at least two people previously — and he has no regard for human life.

**

Now, how to fix this situation.

My first thought was, “Why have the inmates’ hands handcuffed in front of them? Why not behind, where no one could do what Fielder did with his hands out front?”

My source addressed that question this way:

“The courts have been loathe to allow us to put incarcerated inmates in handcuffs behind their back. The reason is that inmates have to have their hands in front to sign documents and hold their defense materials, not to mention having to sit with their attorneys for long periods of time in a chair in the courtroom.

“Handcuffs leave marks and are extremely painful when you must lean back in a chair. During jury trials, we even have to let them dress in their own clothes and we have to remove any shackles, chains and cuffs when the jury might see them and become prejudiced seeing a ‘chained monster,’ as the attorneys describe it.

“We do handcuff arrestees behind their backs when first arrested on the street and taken to the jail, where they are strip searched for hidden weapons. Once in the jail, the rules are changed for court appearances.”

**

According to my source, after the Wyandotte County Unified Government acquired the former federal courthouse, the sheriff asked for funds to build an elevated, secure walkway over Ann Avenue between the jail and the annex. (A similar walkway links the jail and the main courthouse building, both of which are on the south side of Ann Avenue.)

My source said the Unified Government, rejected the request as too costly, and, as a result, inmates initially were walked across the street to the annex.

“It didn’t take long before an incident or two occurred on this walk,” my source said, “so then it was decided that it was safer to load the inmates into a vehicle and drive across the street.”

**

One of the benefits of a walkway, my source said, is that secured walkways are considered part of the jail and guns are not allowed, “so there is no danger of being disarmed.”

In addition, my source said, “The walkways are monitored by the jail control center and, in the event of a fight breaking out or other trouble…the control center announces it over the radio and a dozen deputies come running from the jail to assist.”

As it is, however, deputies are required to carry their firearms when they go outside, in public spaces, with inmates, in case an inmate attempts to break out of the van or makes a move on a deputy, as Fielder did.

**

Looks to me — and my source and probably every person connected with the Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Department — that it’s time to build a secure walkway over Ann Avenue.

I would think construction of such a walkway would cost less than $1 million.

Is another deputy’s life worth $1 million?

**

Correction: The day I posted this, I quoted my source as saying Antoine Fielder was paralyzed from the shots Deputy Theresa King struck him with. My source sent me an email last night, Thursday, saying Fielder was not permanently paralyzed. A couple of days ago he was moved from a hospital to the Johnson County jail.