Body cams show arrest unfolding
‘I’m gonna die’ — Sanford cops record victim at shooting scene
Dramatic body-camera footage released Monday shows the capture of suspect Allen Cashe moments after a March shooting that left a mother and her young son dead and four others wounded in Sanford.
Sanford police were called about 6 a.m. March 27 to a shooting at a home on Hays Drive.
When shots first rang out, Officer Ivan Ivanov was close enough to hear that something was going on, records show. He put out a call for help and started pursuing Cashe with his police lights and siren off.
Cashe had his Buick’s headlights turned off at first, and one of his tires was flat, Ivanov later wrote. The State Attorney’s Office that covers Brevard and Seminole counties on Monday released body-camera footage and police reports from the investigation.
Ivanov followed Cashe to the Seminole Gardens apartment complex, where he saw Cashe get out of the car with a rifle in hand.
“He’s got a rifle on him, rifle,” Ivanov said into his radio, alerting other officers who were rushing to the area.
Cashe started running north. Ivanov chased him until he lost sight of Cashe and ran into Officer Matthew Thornton. They stood in a stairwell for a moment until they saw someone moving in front of them.
“Come out with your hands up! Let me see your hands! Now!” Thornton said. “I’m not gonna shoot you, but come out! Keep your hands up!”
Cashe yelled back, saying his hands were up. The officers walked to him, guns drawn, still yelling at him to keep his hands up and then get on the ground.
“I need to see your hands at all times,” Ivanov yelled as he was within a few feet of Cashe, his body-camera footage shows. “Do not move.”
“I’m not moving,” Cashe yelled back, getting on the ground with his hands above his head. “I’m not resisting; I take mine like a man.”
Thornton and Officer Justine Hooper handcuffed Cashe and searched him for weapons. He told them he dropped his rifle in the dirt.
As they walked Cashe to Ivanov’s squad car, another police official on the radio said there may be more victims inside the home.
On Hays Drive, the first officers on the scene found Bertis Herring, 61, sitting on the ground in front of a house next door and suffering from bullet wounds in his stomach, his shirt blood-soaked.
“I’m gonna die,” Herring said in agony.
Officer Sean Hill helped prop Herring upright until paramedics arrived.
“Is there anybody else in your house that’s shot?” an official asked him from a few yards away, Hill’s body camera showed. “Yes, yes,” Herring said. “We don’t know,” a person said, talking over him. “There could be.”
“Yeah,” Herring said again, trying to shout.
Paramedics arrived, and Hill left to go into the house. Authorities did not release his body-camera footage from inside the house, citing exemptions in Florida’s public-records laws.
In a bathroom, he found a boy with a chest wound, he later wrote in a report also released Monday. It’s unclear whether the boy was Branden Christian, 8, who later died of his injuries, or his brother Brendon Christian, 7, who was hurt but survived.
Hill went outside and handed the boy to firefighters, he later wrote in a report. Then he went back into the house and found Latina Herring, 35, in a bedroom. She was not breathing.