Accused shooter tells police: I came to ‘get what was mine’
Allen Cashe said he didn’t set out to kill his girlfriend and her 8-year-old son when he went to her home; he just wanted to get his guns and work clothes.
“All I wanted was what was mine,” he told Sanford police Detective Jason Bowen in the hourlong video interview released this week by the State Attorney’s Office. “I gave her what was hers; I didn’t get what was mine. And that’s the truth. I ain’t never wanna go that far.”
But charging documents say Cashe, 31, stormed into Latina Herring’s Hays Drive home on March 27 with an AK-47, firing 24 times, killing her and her 8-year-old son Branden Christian and injuring her father and other son.
While he could explain he wanted his property and that he was upset with Latina Herring in the recording, he had no answer to another question.
“Why the kids, though?” Bowen asked. “Did you just see something move and you just fired? Or did you just go up to them execution style and just say ‘bang’? The kids had nothing to do with this whatsoever, did they? It was between you and your girl.”
Cashe eventually mumbled that he dropped the gun on the floor and it went off — a theory disproved by the physical evidence that stated he was standing over the victims, police say.
He is also accused of shooting four other people: her father, Bertis “Bert” Herring, 61, and her 7-year-old son, Brendon Christian, along with two other people nearby.
His attorney, Seminole County Public Defender Jeff Dowdy, said this week that Cashe is remorseful.
“It was a domestic issue that escalated,” Dowdy said.
Cashe said he thought Bertis Herring could be coming after him.
“I didn’t know what they could have on them,” Cashe told Bowen. “I had other firearms in there. It was dark. I didn’t know what was going on in there. To be honest, I never even seen him, like physically. I heard a noise.”
Bertis Herring and Brendon are recovering.
Cashe refused to tell Bowen if he intended to shoot Latina Herring.
“It shot where it shot,” he said.
He became emotional when Bowen asked if Cashe believed in God.
“How am I supposed to pray about this, man?”
The dispute between Cashe and Herring started earlier in the morning on March 27 when she was “drunk” and “out of control,” Cashe said, according to the tape.
Cashe called police when she took his car key out of the ignition and ran away, and a friend of Herring’s later called dispatchers to say Cashe had a gun.
That upset Cashe because he thought she was trying to put him in jail for no reason, he told the detective.
“There’s certain things you just don’t do,” he said.
When police arrived, they didn’t find a gun, so they made Cashe go somewhere else and left.
Cashe said if he would have been able to get his stuff, none of this would ever have happened.
“This would have been a good night if she would have just said, ‘Give me my keys,’ [and I could have said] ‘I’m going to get your keys, you’re going to get my stuff, and I’m going to go on my merry way,’” Cashe said.
Cashe was moved this month to the Orange County Jail for his safety, where he is being held without bail, his attorney said. Because Sanford is a tight-knit community, jail authorities thought Cashe would be safer in Orange County, Dowdy said.
He has a court date scheduled for next month.