KEVIN ROBINSON/PENSACOLA NEWS JOURNAL
Roy Howard Middleton, 60, was shot in the leg early Saturday morning by sheriff deputies as he got out of his mother's car in his own driveway.
The two deputies have been placed on paid administrative leave while the shooting is investigated.
BY DAVID KNOWLES / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
MONDAY, JULY 29, 2013
Another day in Florida.
Two Escambia County sheriff deputies have been placed on paid administrative leave after they opened fire early Sunday morning and shot an unarmed black man in his own driveway.
Roy Middleton, 60, had gone to find cigarettes in his mother’s white Lincoln Town Car, which was parked in the driveway of the man’s home in a quiet neighborhood in the town of Warrington.
A neighbor, who apparently didn’t recognize Middleton, called 911 to report a possible robbery, and police arrived at the scene at approximately 2:40 a.m.
Their guns drawn, deputies Jeremiah Meeks and Matthew White told Middleton to put his hands where the officers could see them.
Middleton told the Pensacola News Journal that he initially believed that the voices were from a neighbor who was playing a joke on him. When he got out of the car, however, the deputies began shooting.
PNJ.COM
"He wasn’t resisting or anything and he was at his own house,” Middleton's mother, Ceola Walker, told reporters.
“It was like a firing squad,” Middleton told PNJ from his bed at Baptist Hospital. “Bullets were flying everywhere.”
Middleton’s mother, Ceola Walker, 77, was sleeping inside the home at the time of the incident,
"He was just coming home like he usually does. I don’t understand why they had to use so much force under the situation," Walker told Fox 10 News. "I don’t understand how they could fire so many shots at him. He wasn’t resisting or anything and he was at his own house.”
Walker said she later found 17 shell casings, and her Lincoln peppered with bullet holes.
Neighbors and relatives describe Middleton as mild-mannered and law abiding, and a teenage girl who witnessed the shooting said she did not see the 60-year-old provoke the incident.
“He wasn’t belligerent or anything,” the girl told PNJ.
PNJ.COM
Bullet holes pepper the white Lincoln Town Car that belongs to Middleton's mother, who said she found 17 shell casings in her carport.
Middleton is still trying to figure out why the confrontation happened in the first place.
“Even if they thought the car was stolen, all they had to do was run the license plate,” Middleton said. “They would have seen that that car belonged there.”
Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the shooting, and amid growing criticism, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan held a press conference Monday. According to Morgan, the two deputies said that Middleton “made a lunging motion” out of the car causing them to “fear for their safety.”
Middleton, Morgan said, “had a metallic object in his hand.” That object turned out to be a flashlight attached to Middleton’s key chain.
The bones in Middleton’s leg are shattered and he will require the implantation of a steel rod in order to walk, but is expected to make a full recovery.
Like her son, Middleton’s mother is still struggling to come to terms with what happened.
“He’s my only son and for that to happen was just devastating. We know it wasn’t anyone but God that saved him,” Walker told Fox 10.