How Many Suspects? Shooting of Sheriff's SWAT Deputy Leaves Press Perplexed; 'Sixth Suspect' Arrested; 4 Deputies Mired In Strip Club Case

UPDATE

SUSPECT ARRESTED IN 10th STREET WEST SHOOTING

Here is the latest news on a man who may be be a sixth suspect still at large in the shooting Wednesday morning of a Sheriff's Dept. SWAT officer on 27th St W (click link for map). The sixth suspect in the case was thought to be holed up in a home in the popular Village of the Arts (click link for map) near downtown Bradenton that a Bradenton Police Dept. SWAT team raided shortly before 5pm, only to find it empty.(7:04pm EST).


The Bradenton Herald, which earlier referred to the man they sought as a "sixth suspect," turned out to be someone unrelated to the earlier crime, although it did not say so:

Police arrest suspect in Village of the Arts shooting

SYLVIA LIM
Herald Staff Writer

BRADENTON - Police arrested a 19-year-old man this evening, accusing him of firing shots at a passing vehicle outside a home in the Village of the Arts.

Benjamin Gillyard was charged with attempted murder after a woman said she saw him fire eight shots at her vehicle while she drove by, according to a Bradenton Police news release.

Initially, police feared that he might have been hiding in the home in the 1400 block of 10th Street East, a place police said he frequented, the release stated.

Police, including a SWAT team, staked out the house for more than three hours, until they received a warrant to raid it. No one was in the house when the SWAT team stormed it a little after 4 p.m. etectives later found Gillyard in the Oneco area at about 6:15 p.m., the release said.

They also found a semi-automatic handgun and crack cocaine in the house, according to the release.

This was not the first time police had seized firearms and drugs from the home.

On June 15, officers raided the home and recovered crack cocaine and three guns.

Local media earlier reported that there were four suspects and that the fourth had escaped and was being sought; later, NewsManatee was reported that the fourth suspect was the brother of one of the original four and had been captured outside the house. Then, the Bradenton Herald reported that there was a fifth suspect, Anthony Warrick, who also was captured outside the house, apparently without a gun, after Sheriff Charlie Wells described him as "armed and extremely dangerous."

At that point, it appeared that there was a sixth suspect, too, after a man fired shots at a car in the Village of the Arts in central Bradenton and authorities thought the shooter might be linked to the first shooting.

But as late 11:39pm Wednesday night, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune's Website was still reporting in a story written shortly after noon that an "armed and extremely dangerous" suspect was still on the loose. By then, the Herald had reported that an apparently unarmed fifth suspect, Anthony Warrick, had been arrested outside the house.

Here is the Sarasota Herald-Tribune's early, confusing account:

July 26. 2006 12:31PM
Deputies search for shooting suspect

By ANTHONY CORMIER
anthony.cormier@heraldtribune.com

BRADENTON -- The Manatee County SWAT member shot twice today while serving a search warrant at suspected crack house has been identified as Lt. Todd Shear.

Shear was shot once in the hand and once in the torso this morning as he searched a duplex in the 4600 block of 27th Street West. The injuries are not life-threatening, Sheriff Charlie Wells said.

Sheriff’s spokesman Dave Bristow described Shear as a “veteran deputy who is very, very well liked.”

Four men were arrested in the home, including Arnell Elrod, 22, who was shot by deputies returning fire. Elrod was shot once in the leg and is expected to survive.

Also arrested were Tylani Cooper, 25, and brothers Trinidad Hamilton, 24, and Maurice Hamilton, 26. Authorities say Maurice Hamilton was standing outside the duplex when police arrived.

Police are searching for a fifth suspect, who fled the duplex. He is described as a black man who is about 6-feet 1 inches tall and weighs about 165 pounds. He was last seen wearing baggy blue jeans worn low, exposing his white underwear.

Wells said the man is armed and extremely dangerous.

Here is the earlier Herald story:

Five people arrested in officer shooting, manhunt underway for sixth suspect.

FARA MONROE
Herald Staff Writer

MANATEE - Officials identified the Manatee County Sheriff's Office SWAT officer wounded this morning in a shooting at a duplex on 27th Street West. A total of five people have been arrested, with a manhunt continuing for a sixth suspect.

The officer is Lt. Todd Shear, who suffered injuries to the hand and upper torso, near the neck. He was taken to Manatee Memorial Hospital. Manatee County Sheriff Charlie Wells was at the hospital with him.

The man who allegedly shot Shear also was injured in the incident. Authorities identified him as Arnell Elrod, who suffered a gun shot wound to the leg and was taken to Manatee Memorial Hospital.

The incident took place about 10 .m. in the 4600 block of 27th Street West about mid-morning.

According to Manatee County Sheriff's Office spokesman Dave Bristow, officers were executing a search warrant at a home. They found four people inside, all of them apparently armed. When officers entered the residence, two suspects dropped their weapons, a third began shooting and a fourth escaped during return shooting.

Arrested in the home were Elrod, Tylani Cooper and Trinidad Hamilton. Two other people, Maurice Hamilton and Anthony Warrick, were arrested outside the residence.

At noon authorities continued to search for the suspect who escaped; he was not identified.

But the Sarasota Herald-Tribune perpetuated the confusion, too, saying on its Website as late as 11:30pm that police still sought a fifth suspect:

July 26, 2006 12:31PM

Deputies search for shooting suspect

By ANTHONY CORMIER
anthony.cormier@heraldtribune.com


BRADENTON -- The Manatee County SWAT member shot twice today while serving a search warrant at suspected crack house has been identified as Lt. Todd Shear.

Shear was shot once in the hand and once in the torso this morning as he searched a duplex in the 4600 block of 27th Street West. The injuries are not life-threatening, Sheriff Charlie Wells said.

Sheriff’s spokesman Dave Bristow described Shear as a “veteran deputy who is very, very well liked.”

Four men were arrested in the home, including Arnell Elrod, 22, who was shot by deputies returning fire. Elrod was shot once in the leg and is expected to survive.

Also arrested were Tylani Cooper, 25, and brothers Trinidad Hamilton, 24, and Maurice Hamilton, 26. Authorities say Maurice Hamilton was standing outside the duplex when police arrived.

Police are searching for a fifth suspect, who fled the duplex. He is described as a black man who is about 6-feet 1 inches tall and weighs about 165 pounds. He was last seen wearing baggy blue jeans worn low, exposing his white underwear.

Wells said the man is armed and extremely dangerous.

The downtown suspect, Gillyard, was said to have fired at least nine shots at a woman in a passing car, who was not injured in the fusillade. Again, SWAT officers have apparently not determined with certainty that there is a connection between the two shootings.

After evacuating nearby residents, SWAT officers ultimately fired tear gas into the home in the Village of the Arts and entered to search, but the suspect, if he was ever there, was gone.

This earlier story from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune is now dated:

July 26, 2006 3:14P
Suspect holed up in house

STAFF REPORT

BRADENTON -- The police department's SWAT team is evacuating homes in the 1400 block of 10th Street West in preparation to storm a house where they believe a man is holed up.

Police say they received reports of a man firing five or six shots at a passing car before retreating back into the house.

About a dozen SWAT members, carrying high-powered rifles, have surrounded the home.

The home, at 1404 10th St. West, is owned by Omar and Leticia Aratia, according to county records. It's not known whether either of them lives in the home, or is there now.

Here is our updated first report, filed at 11:49am this morning:

A Manatee County SWAT team officer met four armed men holed up in a duplex when deputies entered an apartment 4608B 27th Street West in Bradenton late Tuesday morning to serve a search warrant.

In the gunfire that followed one suspect was shot and the officer, identified as Lt. Todd Shear, was wounded in the hand and "near the neck," a sheriff's spokesman said, but his injuries were not life-threatening.

The shooting came as four sheriff's deputies, two each in Manatee and Sarasota County, face criminal charges in thefts and misconduct complaints that made headlines hours before the shooting.

In the first shooting, it remains unclear why deputies entered an apartment where so many armed suspects were waiting for them. Two of the suspects dropped their guns and a fourth, Maurice Hamilton, 26, escaped but was later captured. The Bradenton Herald obtained the name of a fifth suspect, Anthony Warrick, who like the elder Hamilton was also captured outside the house. Police are still searching for a sixth suspect.

Taken into custody were the suspected shooter, Arnell Elrod,, 22, and alleged accomplices Tylani Cooper, 25, and Trinidad Hamilton, 24, the brother of Maurice. The fourth suspect was not named in earlier stories, but the NewsManatee Website identified him as Hamilton's brother Maurice, 26.

The fifth suspect was named by the Herald later as Anthony Warrick, with no age given.
Lt. Shear is in good condition at Manatee Memorial Hospital and expected to make a full recovery.

Here is the Sarasota Herald-Tribune's report on the charges and resignations in the case of four deputies linked to liquor thefts and other misconduct at a strip club in Palmetto where they worked while off duty:

Manatee County sheriff's Deputy Charles E. Elsenheimer, 34, was charged with 13 counts of dealing in stolen property for reportedly buying caseloads of liquor that he thought was stolen. His cousin and fellow deputy, Gary P. Harrison, 23, was charged with two counts.

Authorities say both men worked off-duty at Cleopatra's strip club, a windowless bar along a fast stretch of U.S. 41 on the northern edge of Palmetto.

Elsenheimer also reportedly leaked confidential law-enforcement information to an undercover detective who posed as a patron of the club.

Harrison and Elsenheimer resigned Tuesday after interviews with internal affairs investigators.

In Sarasota, sheriff's Deputies Alfred B. Ainscoe and Edward P. Falcone also resigned amid allegations connected to the criminal case in Manatee. Neither was immediately charged with a crime, however. It is unknown whether Ainscoe and Falcone also worked at Cleopatra's.

The sheriffs of both counties remained tight-lipped Tuesday, and neither would comment on the ongoing FBI probe.

Here is the Bradenton Herald's first story, from its Website:

Wounded officer, suspects identified

FARA MONROE
Herald Staff Writer

MANATEE - Officials identified the Manatee County Sheriff's Office SWAT officer wounded this morning in a shooting at a duplex on 27th Street West.

The officer is Lt. Todd Shear, who suffered injuries to the hand and upper torso, near the neck. He was taken to Manatee Memorial Hospital. Manatee County Sheriff Charlie Wells was at the hospital with him.

The man who allegedly shot Shear also was injured in the incident. Authorities identified him as Arnell Elrod, who suffered a gun shot wound to the leg and was taken to Manatee Memorial Hospital.

The incident took place in the 4600 block of 27th Street West about mid-morning.

According to Manatee County Sheriff's Office spokesman Dave Bristow, officers were executing a search warrant at a home. They found four people inside, all of them apparently armed. When officers entered the residence, two suspects dropped their weapons, a third began shooting and a fourth escaped during return shooting.

Arrested in the home were Elrod, Tylani Cooper and Trinidad Hamilton. Another person, Maurice Hamilton, was arrested outside the residence.

At noon authorities continued to search for the suspect who escaped; he was not identified.