Judge blasts Sheriff ’s Office

Shooting inquiry called ‘a disgrace’

In a surprising mid-trial rebuke, Senior U.S. District Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley lambasted the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office for its investigation of the fatal shooting of Seth Adams, calling deficiencies in the inquiry “simply shocking.”

“The investigation from beginning to end has been slipshod and shoddy,” Hurley said Wednesday. “It’s a disgrace.”

The Sheriff ’s Office and Sgt. Michael Custer face an excessive force and wrongful death lawsuit over Custer's shooting of Adams in a Loxahatchee Groves nursery in 2012.

The deficiencies Hurley mentioned included investigators failing to measure the distance between Custer’s SUV and Adams’ truck and failing to determine whether it was beer or an iced tea mixture found in a mug left in Adams’ truck. Also, Custer’s boots weren’t taken into evidence that night and in a videotaped interview after the shooting, Custer

wasn’t asked to show how he held the gun when he fired.

Those unknowns have become big issues in the civil trial nearly five years later. Jurors were not in the courtroom during Hurley’s criticism.

“There is one thing after another that was not done,” Hurley said. “It’s just amazing that they were not done.”

Before the trial recessed for the day Wednesday, Hurley warned jurors that the case is getting increased media attention and that they should continue to avoid television news, newspapers and Internet surfing that could expose them to reports about the trial.

Custer, 47, testified Wednesday, telling jurors that his late-night encounter with Adams was contentious from the start.

“The first words out of his mouth, he was screaming at me, ‘Who the f--- are you? What the f--- are you doing here?’” Custer said. “It was alarming to say the least.”

Custer, who was leading an undercover patrol, was parked in an unmarked SUV when Adams arrived about 11:40 p.m. at the nursery where Adams worked and lived.

Custer, who was wearing plain clothes, said he identified himself as an officer and tried to calm Adams. Custer said after both of them got out of their vehicles, Adams grabbed him by the neck.

“I never saw it coming,” Custer said.

Custer said he was able to break Adams’ grip and, after a struggle, he backed away, pointed his gun and repeatedly ordered Adams to get on the ground.

“I’m yelling, ‘Get on the ground! Get on the ground! Sheriff’s Office! ... I will shoot you!’” Custer said, yelling in the courtroom as he described the encounter.

Custer said he kept his gun raised as he backed Seth Adams’ parents, Lydia and Richard Adams, are in court seeking millions for what they say was an unjustified shooting. away, reached into his SUV for a radio and called for back up. Custer said Adams continued to refuse to get on the ground and then ran to his truck “after having [been] told not to do so.”

Custer said he kicked Adams’ open driver’s side door, but Adams got there before the door closed. Custer said Adams was rummaging around in the cab of the truck for something that Custer feared could be a weapon.

Custer said he used his right arm to try to pull Adams from the cab of the truck while keeping the gun aimed at Adams with his left. Custer said seconds later, Adams spun toward him and that’s when Custer fired four shots.

“I was thoroughly convinced he had grabbed a weapon,” Custer told jurors. “I was beyond scared. I was terrified.”

Custer said the point where Adams grabbed his throat made it an incident that warranted using deadly force, but that it was a culmination of the events ending with Adams reaching into the cab of the truck that ultimately prompted him to shoot.

“I wasn’t certain what he had grabbed,” Custer said. “I didn’t want to find out what it was.”

After the shooting, Adams staggered off into the darkened nursery with bullet wounds to his right arm and chest. He died two hours later. No weapon was found in the truck’s cab or on Adams.

Adams parents, Lydia and Richard Adams, are in court seeking millions for what they say was an unjustified shooting.

The Adams family attorneys have argued the evidence such as the blood trail left by Adams contradict Custer’s account of the shooting. They say the evidence shows Adams was shot near the rear of the truck and couldn’t have been reaching into the cab as Custer described.

They have questioned whether Adams grabbed the officer’s neck; and why Custer, a one-time training officer for the Sheriff ’s Office, didn’t use non-lethal options to subdue Adams.

Custer testified Wednesday that he wasn’t wearing his duty belt with non-lethal weapons such as a baton and pepper spray because it couldn’t be concealed under his shirt when he was undercover.

Custer also said he didn’t just drive away when Adams arrived because he thought Adams might have been part of the group of ATM thieves his undercover team was tracking that night.

“It just doesn’t go with what we are doing,” Custer said. “We are not just going to drive away.”

Custer said it was too dark to see the no parking signs posted in the nursery parking lot. And Custer said he didn’t consider himself a trespasser, even though he didn’t have permission to park at the nursery, which was owned by Seth Adams’ brother and sister-in-law.

Custer also said he didn’t recognize Adams as being an employee of the nursery, even though jurors learned earlier in the trial that Custer had bought flowers from Adams at the nursery about five months before the shooting.

“He never said who he was,” Custer said about the night of the shooting.

Custer’s testimony continues Thursday.