A paramedic told a jury in U.S. District Court Friday that his crew was in no way impeded by two sheriff’s deputies after they mortally wounded a Cabell Heights man who had confronted them in his driveway with a semi-automatic rifle.
As the defense of Cpl. Gregory Kade and his partner at the time, former Deputy John Hajash, opened, two neighbors described Robert Webb as abusive, and one of them testified he harbored contempt for law enforcement and once imparted an implied threat to hurt her.
Chief defense attorney Chip Williams told federal Judge Irene Berger he had one last witness to offer Monday, after which each side agreed they needed an hour apiece for closing arguments in Mary Webb’s case against the two officers and the Raleigh County Commission.
Before the jury returned for the day, Berger denied a defense motion for a directed verdict, saying a number of issues the attorneys raised needed to be decided by the jury.
In her lawsuit, Mary, the shooting victim’s widow maintains that Hajash, now working for a coal firm, and Kade sought to delay immediate medical treatment of her dying husband as he lay in a large pool of blood in their driveway so that photographs could be taken of the crime scene.
But the paramedic in charge of the medical team in the early hours of July 4, 2006, Michael Jenkins, said the official arrival time of the Jan-Care Ambulance Co. crew of 1:21 a.m. was the same as when Webb was examined.
“When I arrived at the scene, I arrived at the patient,” the Princeton resident said.
A heart monitoring device was attached immediately, absent any interference from the police, Jenkins said, adding he detected no blood pressure, no pulse — in short, no signs of life.
Five minutes after he arrived, Jenkins said he put in a call to the regional command in keeping with protocol, and a doctor advised him, “do not resuscitate.”
Had someone attempted to deny him access to Webb, the paramedic said, he would have reported the matter, explaining, “It’s actually a crime.”
Amy Smith, a registered nurse who lived in Webb’s neighborhood, told the jury she had had some run-ins with him, initially over him backing a truck into her yard, and their relationship worsened after she contacted the sheriff’s department regarding a trespassing incident.
Afterward, Webb confronted her in a surly manner, she said, saying, “I have a 9mm gun. I’ll be your worst nightmare.”
Moreover, he once vented against law enforcement and society in general, Smith said, quoting him as saying, “I hate the law. I hate society. I drink. I smoke dope. I don’t want the law up here. I’ll have them leaving with their tails between their legs.”
When cross-examined by Travis Griffith, one of the plaintiff’s attorneys, Smith acknowledged that Webb never actually pointed a weapon at her.
Even so, Smith said she was “constantly harassed” by Webb and took his remarks as a threat.
“You didn’t like Rob Webb, did you?” Griffith asked.
“I didn’t like his behavior,” Smith replied. “It’s fair to say he didn’t like me.”
Around 11:30 p.m. the night of July 3, Smith recalled hearing blaring music coming from Webb’s driveway and then the staccato sounds of a firearm.
“It didn’t sound like any gun I had ever heard,” she told Williams, as the attorney questioned her about the events of that night.
At that point, she called the administrative line of the sheriff’s department and was switched over to the 911 center, telling a dispatcher that she heard gunshots being fired by Webb toward his house. The two lawmen have testified they rushed to the scene, leaving their cars 1/4 of a mile away, because they feared Webb was firing shots into his residence, with his wife and daughters inside, and wanted to enter the area unseen.
Sharon Coffey, a 14-year dispatcher for 911, told Griffith under cross-examination that the deputies never checked on the welfare of anyone inside Webb’s house. The deputies, however, testified earlier there was no need to do so, since Mrs. Webb rushed outside her home immediately after her husband was gunned down.
Once Webb was shot with Kade’s tactical shotgun, and a Glock Model 23 handgun by Kade, she said, the officers immediately summoned a medical team.
“The only way I could characterize it was a sense of urgency,” she said, adding that Kade stayed in communication with the EMS team to direct them to the home as quickly as possible.
Then-Raleigh County Sheriff Danny Moore has testified the department had no actual drug-and-alcohol testing policy for deputies involved in motor vehicle accidents with serious injury or death, or the discharge of a firearm, but only a “suggestion” he inherited from a former sheriff as to how one should be devised.
Moore told Williams he turned over all the information gathered by a review board to the prosecuting attorney, and the prosecutor found no reason to pursue the incident further.
Griffith hammered away at the post-shooting review board, telling Moore he understood the department policy called for one consisting of him, the chief deputy and an officer with at least the rank of sergeant from an outside agency, or the West Virginia State Police, but the board looking into Webb’s death contained none of those three elements.
“What we did was what the West Virginia Code states,” Moore said.
Another neighbor, Martha Blevins, portrayed Webb as a bad neighbor who was often abusive and threatening, and made obscene gestures when he and a friend gathered in the street, forcing her to drive around them.
“I got everything from the finger to yelling at me,” she said. “It was sometimes every day.”
On one occasion, she said, Webb rode an all-terrain vehicle into her yard, with a weapon on the top, and called out to her, “Come out, I have a present for you.”
Just when the six-member jury will begin deliberating is uncertain, but the case follows the normal procedure of summations by the two sides, and instructions to jurors before they can begin.
Williams indicated he would need about an hour Monday to present his sixth and final witness on behalf of Kade and Hajash.
By Mannix Porterfield E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com