PB County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw insisted that his deputy could do no wrong, and the subsequent investigation by Florida Department of Law Enforcement cleared Custer and answered nothing. How could it? There were only two witnesses, and one was left dying on the asphalt of his parking lot for 47 minutes before the deputy would let anyone near him.
According to the official story, Custer was in fear of his life.
Seth Adams noticed the undercover deputy’s car in the parking lot of his family business on his way home from a local watering hole. Custer says he identified himself “verbally” and “visually” and that he “had a radio out.” He claims Adams grabbed him by the throat and that Adams’ “intentions were dangerous."Why? Why would Adams grab a deputy sheriff by his throat? Why, if he knew the man in his parking lot to be a sheriff, would he touch him? Put aside the question of what Custer was doing in a private parking lot, with nothing around it in the middle of nowhere, and assume he had a reason to be there. Put aside the question of whether the police ought to go onto private property without notifying or asking permission of the owners. Even if we give Custer acceptable reasons to be there, it doesn't begin to explain his claims about Adams.
The claim that Adams grabbed Custer by the throat didn't seem to bother Custer too much, as is commonly the case when cops get grabbed by the throat and just brush it off. No, it was Adams' subsequent return to his vehicle that really alarmed Custer.
When Adams returned to his vehicle, Custer said he recognized the maneuver from training videos and thought Adams was going for a gun. He shot him four times in under two seconds, saying “I think I basically tried to push away and just went boom, boom, boom, boom.”
There was no weapon in the car. There was no gun rack in the back window. What Custer calls "the maneuver" is what the rest of society calls going to one's car, the sort of thing most of us do, often when we're leaving a location. This was more than Custer could risk, and so "boom, boom, boom, boom."
Yet there was no call of "suspect down" after four bullets struck Seth Adams' body in the parking lot of his gardening store. From the Palm Beach Post:
His body riddled with bullets fired by an undercover Palm Beach County sheriff's deputy, Seth Adams was clinging to life as he crawled across a darkened parking lot for help, an attorney representing Adams' family said Thursday.
West Palm Beach attorney Valentin Rodriguez told The Palm Beach Post that instead of trying to stop the 24-year-old Loxahatchee Groves man from bleeding to death, deputies tackled his brother, David Adams, who ran out of the family trailer on A Road to rescue him [after Seth called to tell his brother he was “shot by a cop”].Records show that 47 minutes elapsed between the time of the shooting and the time Adams reached the hospital. He was alive when he arrived by helicopter at St. Mary's Medical Center, but not for long. And then there was only one witness to the death of Seth Adams in the parking lot of his gardening store.
As usual, the response to the inexplicable conduct of police is an investigation, and this case was no different. Unlike most, the local media and Adams' family and attorney didn't let it fade to black in the interim, and pursued attention so that public attention wouldn't shift from Adams' death to the new iPhone or Snookie's baby. All eyes were focused on the outcome of the investigation, though Sheriff Bradshaw never had any doubt about its outcome. No doubt at all.
Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, meanwhile, said of the situation: "It was just very bad from the outset with Seth Adams' demeanor towards the deputy." Shortly after the shooting, Bradshaw noted "there's only two witnesses here: the suspect and the deputy. And the suspect was not able to be interviewed. Why he decided to assault the deputy? We may never know that." When the investigation was well underway, Bradshaw claimed it would “verify exactly what I thought from the beginning.”
And indeed, the investigation verified exactly what Bradshaw said it would. What else could it do, there being a story that made no sense, a dead man and a live cop? There were video cameras around the place, but apparently they weren't recording that night. And so, there was only one story to be told after Seth Adams died.
So what if the story doesn't pass the smell test? So what if there was no reason for Adams to choke a cop? So what if there was no gun in the car to strike fear in the heart of Sgt. Custer? So what if he watched at Seth Adams dragged his bullet riddled body across a parking lot and did nothing? So what if Custer tackled David Adams to stop him from trying to save his brother's life? So what? None of this proves Custer a liar, a killer. It's just a bunch of inexplicable acts, questions that will find no answers, and a dead man.
As Sheriff Ric Bradshaw correctly notes, we may never know the answers to any of these questions. And that's the beauty of there being two witness, but one dead. There is nothing left but the Sgt. Michael Custer's story, bad as it may be, and a dead body.
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