Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Shooting scene described
Brother testifies in Adams death trial
After finding his brother collapsed and bleeding from gunshot wounds, David Adams ran toward cars with flashing lights where he thought he could find help.
Instead, a team of undercover agents from the Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office held him at gunpoint and questioned him while his brother, Seth Adams, lay bleeding in the Loxahatchee Groves nursery where the brothers worked and lived.
“I was screaming the whole way up the gate, He’s been shot! Help him! Help him! ... They didn’t seem like they cared. There was no sense of urgency,” David Adams testified in federal court Wednesday.
Seth Adams’ family members and girlfriend on Wednesday started testifying about the night nearly five years ago when the 24-year-old was fatally shot by Sheriff ’s Sgt. Michael Custer.
Adams’ parents, Lydia and Richard Adams, are seeking millions in an excessive-force and wrongful-death lawsuit filed against Custer and the Sheriff’s Office.
Custer maintains that Adams turned violent and attacked him during a late-night encounter May 16, 2012, at the A One Stop Garden Shop nursery at 1950 A Road.
But in a trial that started Feb. 13, the Adams family’s attorneys have argued that forensic evidence disputes Custer’s account and that he wasn’t justified in using deadly force.
Custer had shopped at the nursery before, but he said he didn’t remember the male employee who handled his sale.
On Wednesday, jurors saw a check for $60.42 written to the nursery by Custer. They also saw a handwritten receipt for the transaction that David Adams
said matched his brother’s handwriting.
Seth Adams had moved from Albany, N.Y., to the nursery in September 2011 at the urging of his older brother and sister-in-law.
“He wanted to come back and be with the family,” said David Adams, who had grown up with Seth near Melbourne. “He moved down to help us and run the business.”
The night of the shooting, David Adams and his wife, Raina, were in the home where the they lived with Seth.
Raina Adams said she heard four loud pops she thought were gunshots. As her husband turned on the porch light and looked out the front door to investigate, Raina Adams got a call from Seth Adams.
“He said he needed help ... that he had been shot,” Raina Adams told jurors Wednesday. “I thought he was kidding.”
She said she hung up as her husband went out to look for her brother-in-law, who they thought they could hear outside. Seth Adams called back and told her it was no joke.
“Next thing I know, I hear David screaming that he’s not kidding,” Raina Adams said. “That he’s been shot.”
David Adams said it was Seth Adams’ glowing cell phone that led him to his brother, who was on the ground near a mulch pile in the darkened nursery.
“All I could see was that he was bloody and breathing,” David Adams said. “I just ran for help.”
By then, other officers had responded to Custer’s call for backup. When David Adams got to the parking lot, he was met by officers with guns raised who told him to get on the ground.
Raina Adams said she came running out behind him, passing by Seth Adams, whom she couldn’t see in the darkness, and was also ordered by officers to get on the ground.
The officers peppered them with questions such as “Who are you? Do you live here?” Raina Adams said.
“Dave was telling them his brother had been shot [and] needed help,” she said.
Seth Adams was flown to St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach, where he died about two hours after the shooting.
Attorneys for Custer and the Sheriff ’s Office have emphasized that Seth Adam’s blood-alcohol level that night was above the legal limit for driving. A glass mug partially filled with an amber liquid was left in the cab of his truck the night of the shooting.
David Adams said it was likely one of the mugs that they used to keep non-alcoholic drinks cold while working at the nursery.
David Adams said they would fill frozen mugs with a mix of lemonade and iced tea, a drink called an Arnold Palmer, after the golfer.
The liquid in the mug was not tested by the Sheriff’s Office, according to the Adams family’s attorneys.
Taylor Lindsten, Seth Adams’ girlfriend, said he didn’t sound intoxicated in a voicemail he left her while he drove home that night.
He was calling to say “that he was safe and that he loved me,” a tearful Lindsten testified. “He sounded happy,” she said.
Finding people parked at the nursery parking lot after it was closed and asking them to leave was a common practice for Seth Adams, Raina and David Adams told jurors.
There was a sign posted saying no parking between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. and warning violators that they would be towed. Custer didn’t call a phone number posted on the sign to ask if he could park there, Raina Adams said.
She also said dealing with irate customers was one of Seth Adams’ strengths.
“He was very easygoing. He was pretty funny, always telling jokes and making everyone laugh,” she said.
The trial before Senior U.S. District Judge Daniel T. K. Hurley continues today, with testimony expected from Seth Adams’ parents.
“All I could see was that he was bloody and breathing. I just ran for help.” David Adams, speaking of finding his mortally wounded brother, Seth