WAITING FOR JUSTICE
As state attorney’s office investigation continues, family of Salaythis Melvin is searching for answers
‘Eight months, 21 days.” Michelin McKee can’t help but count every day since her son was killed by an Orange County deputy sheriff last August — and every day she waits for some sort of justice in his death.
“I can’t even erase his phone number out my phone,” McKee said, pausing to wipe her misty eyes. “I can’t even put his clothes and shoes away yet until I get some closure. … I just can’t put it away.”
She talks around the moment Deputy James Montiel fatally shot her son, Salaythis Melvin, in the back, as the 22-year-old ran away from the plainclothed deputy in the Florida Mall parking lot, still unable to verbalize his violent death.
“His last words to me that day — I did see him before he was taken away, I don’t like to say the other word — that he loves me,” McKee said this week in an interview with the Orlando Senti
nel. “That was my baby . ... It sometimes don’t seem real. I know it’s real, but it’s hard.”
McKee and her family struggle daily with the grief of losing their son, but it’s complicated by their growing frustration that the shooting remains under review almost nine months later, and mixed in with spouts of anger, most recently about Montiel returning to work at the law enforcement agency, when they believe he should be facing criminal charges in the shooting.
“My heart just broke even more, like, they don’t care; no one cares,” McKee said, trailing off.
“Why is he still working?” jumped in Ryan Findley, Melvin’s stepfather. “... This was a guy paid to look after citizens, not kill citizens.”
Melvin’s parents recently met with Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell, whose office is conducting its own investigation into the shooting following the Florida Department of Law Enforcement probe that ended in November. Worrell’s office will determine if Montiel will face any criminal charges in the case, but it’s unclear when that determination may come.
“I’m giving her a chance to see what she’s going to do,” McKee said, agreeing with Findley they don’t want to rush the process. They want to see Montiel, and any other deputy involved, “arrested and charged with murder, and guilty on all charges,” she said.
“I need a separate entity to investigate police shootings. I don’t need a policeman investigating another policeman.”
— Ryan Findley, stepfather of Salaythis Melvin
Aug. 7 shooting
On Aug. 7, deputies in mostly unmarked vehicles confronted a group of four friends leaving the Florida Mall, planning to arrest one of them on a felony warrant for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Melvin was in the group, but he was not wanted in the warrant.
Three of the four friends ran, but two soon stopped and were detained, while Melvin continued to run, according to OCSO records.
An affidavit written by deputies after the shooting alleges that Melvin ran from Montiel when the deputy
stepped out of his unmarked vehicle. Montiel then chased him on foot, firing his weapon after seeing Melvin turn his head while holding a gun in his waistband.
As Melvin sprinted through the parking lot, there was no one within at least 30 feet of him when he was shot, the limited video from the incident showed. Montiel was not equipped with a body-worn camera at the time.
However, in body-worn camera footage recorded by a deputy responding to the shooting, a gun is seen on the ground about 10 feet from Melvin’s body, near what appears to be Melvin’s cell phone.
Melvin hospital.
McKee said she hasn’t been later died at a
able to watch all the video from the shooting — which included deputies surrounding Melvin with guns drawn before they realized he was struggling to stay alive — but watched the initial clip where he fell mid-stride after he was shot in the back.
“That keeps running in my mind, when he fell to the ground,” McKee said. “... I just want them to show me where he was a threat to that officer, I haven’t seen that yet.”
She and Findley question if Melvin really had a gun on him when he was shot, as deputies said, and if he knew the cars and men surrounding them were law enforcement, as many were unmarked and not in uniform. But either way, they said the circumstances of the shooting do not make sense.
“Why do you need to shoot him?” Findley said. “If you go to that mall parking lot, where was he running to? There’s nowhere to go.”
McKee said she followed the recent verdict that convicted former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin of murder in the death of George Floyd and was happy for the Floyd family, and for the officer accountability.
“It brought them some closure. Now I need some,” she said. “It will hurt me so bad if [Montiel] gets away with this . ... The person that serves and protects you, take[s] your child away.”
But regardless of whether Montiel faces charges, Melvin’s parents plan to file a federal lawsuit against him and the sheriff ’s office. They want to do what they can to stop another shooting like the one that took their son, as well as see law enforcement expand the use of body-worn cameras and improve how police shootings are investigated.
“I need a separate entity to investigate police shootings,” Findley said. “I don’t need a policeman investigating another policeman.”
‘Miss him so much’
Melvin’s parents know he wasn’t without flaws. He had recently finished a short prison sentence for charges of resisting an officer with violence, battery on an officer and possession with intent to sell marijuana, after a 2017 traffic stop where Melvin crashed into a deputy’s vehicle, court records show, as well as a separate theft charge. And he had a few other short stints in jail, mostly for theft and drug charges. The month before he died, Melvin had been arrested for having a gun despite prior felony convictions.
But they say Melvin was not the gang member that Orange County Sheriff John Mina has called him, tying Melvin posthumously to the gang feud deputies were working to address around the time when Melvin was killed.
“He wasn’t really a bad child that they put him out to be,” McKee said, disputing that he was a part of a gang. She called him “Peewee,” because he was her youngest, but most people called him “Salay,” and said he was “very known and loved” in their family and community.
McKee said Melvin wanted to become a rapper, and they thought his goal was closer to reality after his good friend, Javarri Walker, known as HOTBOII, landed a major record deal. But in the meantime, Melvin had often helped a family member with his pool cleaning business, and McKee had been pushing him to finish his GED, she said.
He loved expensive clothing — at one time wanting to start a clothing line — and also adored young children, often playing basketball and video games with his nephews and his friends’ children, McKee said. His oldest nephew, who is 8, recently brought home a picture he drew at school, a rainbow with Salaythis’ name.
The family had it framed, McKee said.
“I just miss him; I just miss him so much,” she said. “He never got a chance to have a family, a child, wife, … he was just beginning his life . ... He would have been a good father.”