tod evans
12-18-2015, 12:45 PM
mrsat_98 asked me to post this;
Missouri trooper charged in death of Brandon Ellingson, who drowned in handcuffs
http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article50468195.html
http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/f6szd2/picture50468170/ALTERNATES/FREE_960/Ellingson%20and%20Piercy
A Missouri Highway Patrol trooper was charged Friday morning in the 2014 death of Brandon Ellingson, who drowned in the Lake of the Ozarks with his hands cuffed behind his back.
Special prosecutor William Camm Seay announced the charge of involuntary manslaughter in the first degree against Trooper Anthony Piercy outside the Morgan County Justice Center. The charge is a Class C felony carrying a punishment of up to seven years in prison, up to a year in the county jail, a $5,000 fine or a combination.
Special prosecutor William Camm Seay Brandon Ellingson Special prosecutor William Camm Seay Brandon Ellingson
1 of 2
Brandon Ellingson File photo
Piercy’s actions that day were reckless, Seay said.
The Highway Patrol said in a statement that it had placed Piercy, 44, on leave without pay. A patrol spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
Piercy is expected to turn himself in today, Seay said.
The charge comes after Ellingson’s parents have spent the past 18 months fighting for the trooper to be held accountable in their 20-year-old son’s death.
A Justice for Brandon Ellingson petition, started by his mother, Sherry Ellingson, calls for federal authorities to step in and has nearly 135,000 signatures. His father, Craig Ellingson, has made repeated trips from Clive, Iowa, to the Lake of the Ozarks and Jefferson City to attend hearings and demand justice for his only son, who would have turned 22 on Dec. 7.
Craig Ellingson said Friday that he was happy that Piercy had been charged.
“But it should have been a lot earlier,” he said. “I think it has been a cover-up from the beginning. They had everything. They knew what Piercy did to my son.”
Within days of Ellingson’s death, The Star began investigating the incident. Over the next year, the newspaper uncovered many discrepancies in Piercy’s story from that day, as well as missteps in a merger of two state patrols that allowed the veteran road trooper to patrol the lake alone with minimal training.
Since then, state legislators have worked with the patrol to improve training of troopers assigned to Missouri waterways.
Ellingson drowned May 31, 2014, while in Piercy’s custody. The college student had been enjoying a long weekend at the lake with friends when the trooper pulled him over for boating while intoxicated. The trooper then, according to Ellingson’s friends who watched the arrest, placed an already buckled life vest over the handcuffed man’s head and didn’t properly secure it.
Piercy pointed his boat toward a patrol zone office about eight miles away. GPS records later indicated he reached speeds of 46 mph. About halfway there, Ellingson went into the water.
His life vest came off a short time later, and though Piercy eventually jumped in, he was unable to save Ellingson. Divers recovered the college student’s body the next day from the lake bottom, about 70 feet below the surface.
Jurors at a coroner’s inquest in September 2014 found the death to be accidental, and special prosecutor Amanda Grellner announced days later that she would not file criminal charges against Piercy.
Since then, calls for justice have grown more intense. Supporters have attended legislative hearings carrying signs and wearing Justice for Brandon shirts.
A patrol sergeant whom Piercy called the night of the drowning spoke out during hearings last year. After his retirement earlier this month, Sgt. Randy Henry has said that a litany of things went wrong from the time Piercy pulled over Ellingson’s boat.
Henry also has contended that patrol officials tried to paper over serious problems revealed by Ellingson’s death, in part to shield Gov. Jay Nixon from criticism for pushing the 2011 merger of the state Water Patrol into the Highway Patrol.
“There’s been a cover-up from the beginning,” Henry recently told The Star. “They wanted to protect the governor and the merger and protect Piercy from criminal charges because criminal charges would be a black eye for the patrol.”
In January, Grellner reopened the investigation after receiving what she described as new information.
Seay took over in March after Grellner, the Osage County prosecutor, stepped aside. Family and friends were waiting for Grellner’s decision on charges when she announced, without giving details, that a conflict had developed and she could no longer stay on the case.
Grellner asked the court to appoint another prosecutor because she thought additional information she had received deserved attention.
May 31, 2014
The mistakes began soon after Piercy took Ellingson onto the patrol boat and arrested him following a failed field sobriety text. A toxicology report would later show that Ellingson’s blood alcohol level was 0.268, more than three times the legal limit.
After Piercy place Ellingson in handcuffs, he didn’t grab an available Type I flotation device to put on the Iowa man. Troopers are trained to use that type of life jacket on a handcuffed passenger because it has straps that wrap around the torso and allow for the handcuffs.
Instead, Piercy went for a Type III life vest with arm holes — one that was impossible to secure on a man whose hands were already cuffed.
Piercy said he wasn’t taught which flotation device to use during an arrest.
“There’s no training on ‘use this one, use that one,’ ” Piercy said at the inquest. “It’s just one of the vests on our boat.”
Hours after Ellingson drowned, Henry said, Piercy told him key details that differed from accounts the trooper subsequently gave to Highway Patrol investigators and jurors at the coroner’s inquest.
According to Henry, Piercy said he was “in a hurry” when he put a life vest on Ellingson. Piercy also told the sergeant that the Ellingson was on his feet, leaning against the boat seat, before he went into the water. That corresponds with what two witnesses saw when the patrol boat passed them moments before Ellingson went into the lake.
However, Piercy told investigators that Ellingson was sitting in the boat and then stood, turned to the water and went in.
An investigator asked Piercy, “Did he jump over? Or did he fall over?”
“I don’t know,” Piercy said. “I’ve, believe me, played this scenario through my mind a million times, and I don’t know. All I know is he’s beside me, and then he’s not.”
At the inquest, Piercy said he saw Ellingson stand, turn toward the water and step to the right side of the boat. As he told the story to jurors, Piercy began to choke back tears: “I reached for him and wasn’t able to grab ahold of him.”
GPS data, which was not provided to the jurors, showed Piercy’s boat was traveling between 39.1 and 43.7 mph in the moments before Ellingson hit the water.
Piercy also told Henry the night of the drowning that once he jumped in to help Ellingson — which witnesses have said took several minutes — the trooper waited for his own fanny-pack flotation device to deploy automatically. It didn’t.
Henry told Piercy that his device required him to pull a ripcord. A witness who came upon the scene that day, and helped get Piercy out of the water, also told The Star that the trooper complained that his device didn’t deploy in the water.
But at the inquest, three months after that conversation, Piercy described the fanny pack as one that deploys when the ripcord is pulled. He told jurors that when he was under water, trying to grab Ellingson, he didn’t want to pull the ripcord to inflate his fanny pack. If he had, he said, he would have risen to the surface without the Iowa man.
Many have questioned why Piercy, knowing Ellingson was in handcuffs, didn’t jump into the water sooner. One witness, Larry Moreau, told The Star that he and his wife saw the trooper standing on the boat and talking to Ellingson as he bobbed in the lake. Piercy showed no urgency, Moreau and wife Paulette said.
The couple had no idea that beneath the surface Ellingson’s hands were cuffed behind his back. They left the area before Piercy jumped in, thinking the trooper had everything under control.
Henry also has questioned Piercy’s delay in jumping into the water.
“I think his failure to jump in immediately was cowardice,” Henry told The Star recently. “If I threw somebody out and he was handcuffed and I see the life vest come off, you jump in now. You go in immediately.”
Henry spoke out at two legislative hearings after Ellingson’s death. He was the officer who signed off on Piercy, saying he knew the lake well enough to navigate it. But road troopers were never intended to solely patrol on the water without more training.
Henry also was interviewed by Highway Patrol investigators. When he started to question whether Ellingson received “the highest degree of care,” quoting Missouri boating law, one investigator rushed to have the recording shut off . During that interview, Henry told The Star, he told investigators: “To me, it rises to the level of manslaughter.”
Henry was disciplined by the patrol for actions related to the case after Grellner filed a complaint against him.
After nearly 30 years patrolling the Lake of the Ozarks, he was transferred to Truman Lake and demoted to corporal. He appealed.
Grellner dismissed her complaint against Henry in October and he filed papers to retire.
“Brandon shouldn’t have died,” Henry said. “It’s something I’m going to have to live with the rest of my life. There’s no turning the page back. Piercy shouldn’t have been out there.
“In the history of the Water Patrol, we have never killed somebody in custody.”
Changes for patrol
Since Ellingson’s death, the patrol’s marine operations — especially along Missouri’s most popular waterways —have been under scrutiny. A special House committee met for several months last year and in January released a report calling on the state to correct flaws created by the 2011 merger of the Water Patrol into the Highway Patrol.
Combining the two units was supposed to cut costs and improve coverage on Missouri waterways. The merger ended up costing more money, and business owners and lake residents told legislators that they saw fewer troopers on lakes and streams.
Many complained that the merger made the Lake of the Ozarks, Table Rock Lake and rivers like the Niangua less safe.
And at times, before Ellingson’s death, troopers without proper training — such as Piercy — were put out on the water alone. Records The Star obtained showed that Piercy, who had nearly two decades of road experience, had just two days of field training on the water before he began patrolling alone.
In the committee’s final report, legislators proposed changes that included an overhaul in trooper training for the water and recruiting specialized officers to patrol by boat.
Last month, the committee heard from the patrol that changes in training had occurred. Business owners testified that they were seeing some improvements, though a few residents still worried about the safety at the Lake of the Ozarks.
Training likely will be a key component in Piercy’s trial.
The trooper himself questioned whether he was trained for what he encountered the day he arrested Ellingson. He told jurors at the inquest:
“Evaluating this after the fact, I realize more training is definitely needed. ... Could I be a better marine operations officer? Yes. There are a lot of things I need to learn.”
‘Never give up’
On Ellingson’s birthday nearly two weeks ago, family and friends and strangers who have become part of a group demanding justice left messages on Facebook.
Pictures of the smiling Brandon filled the feed.
“I bet heaven birthdays are the BEST,” one person wrote.
And another posted: “... Happy Birthday Brandon! We’ll never give up fighting for justice.”
Just a week ago, this message: “We won’t stop until Brandon gets justice and Piercy is charged.”
For Craig Ellingson, the past 18 months have been hard. He said this week that he still says “Hi” when he walks by his son’s room every morning. His daughter, Jennifer, graduated from college without her little brother in the crowd.
Holidays and birthdays are especially rough. So are the depositions Ellingson sits through for the civil lawsuit his family has brought against the patrol, key commanders and Piercy.
Friday’s development was a first step, Ellingson said.
“I feel some relief, but I still want to get to the people who have covered this up,” he said.
In the time since his son died, Ellingson has urged state and federal authorities to help hold Piercy accountable. He has routinely called officials and gone to as many hearings as he could. He sat through the coroner’s inquest, which he later called a “joke” and a “hometown decision.”
“I never imagined something like that happening to Brandon. ... I think he felt like he was safe with Piercy, because he’s a cop. But he wasn’t.”
More pics and video at link above....
Missouri trooper charged in death of Brandon Ellingson, who drowned in handcuffs
http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article50468195.html
http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/f6szd2/picture50468170/ALTERNATES/FREE_960/Ellingson%20and%20Piercy
A Missouri Highway Patrol trooper was charged Friday morning in the 2014 death of Brandon Ellingson, who drowned in the Lake of the Ozarks with his hands cuffed behind his back.
Special prosecutor William Camm Seay announced the charge of involuntary manslaughter in the first degree against Trooper Anthony Piercy outside the Morgan County Justice Center. The charge is a Class C felony carrying a punishment of up to seven years in prison, up to a year in the county jail, a $5,000 fine or a combination.
Special prosecutor William Camm Seay Brandon Ellingson Special prosecutor William Camm Seay Brandon Ellingson
1 of 2
Brandon Ellingson File photo
Piercy’s actions that day were reckless, Seay said.
The Highway Patrol said in a statement that it had placed Piercy, 44, on leave without pay. A patrol spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
Piercy is expected to turn himself in today, Seay said.
The charge comes after Ellingson’s parents have spent the past 18 months fighting for the trooper to be held accountable in their 20-year-old son’s death.
A Justice for Brandon Ellingson petition, started by his mother, Sherry Ellingson, calls for federal authorities to step in and has nearly 135,000 signatures. His father, Craig Ellingson, has made repeated trips from Clive, Iowa, to the Lake of the Ozarks and Jefferson City to attend hearings and demand justice for his only son, who would have turned 22 on Dec. 7.
Craig Ellingson said Friday that he was happy that Piercy had been charged.
“But it should have been a lot earlier,” he said. “I think it has been a cover-up from the beginning. They had everything. They knew what Piercy did to my son.”
Within days of Ellingson’s death, The Star began investigating the incident. Over the next year, the newspaper uncovered many discrepancies in Piercy’s story from that day, as well as missteps in a merger of two state patrols that allowed the veteran road trooper to patrol the lake alone with minimal training.
Since then, state legislators have worked with the patrol to improve training of troopers assigned to Missouri waterways.
Ellingson drowned May 31, 2014, while in Piercy’s custody. The college student had been enjoying a long weekend at the lake with friends when the trooper pulled him over for boating while intoxicated. The trooper then, according to Ellingson’s friends who watched the arrest, placed an already buckled life vest over the handcuffed man’s head and didn’t properly secure it.
Piercy pointed his boat toward a patrol zone office about eight miles away. GPS records later indicated he reached speeds of 46 mph. About halfway there, Ellingson went into the water.
His life vest came off a short time later, and though Piercy eventually jumped in, he was unable to save Ellingson. Divers recovered the college student’s body the next day from the lake bottom, about 70 feet below the surface.
Jurors at a coroner’s inquest in September 2014 found the death to be accidental, and special prosecutor Amanda Grellner announced days later that she would not file criminal charges against Piercy.
Since then, calls for justice have grown more intense. Supporters have attended legislative hearings carrying signs and wearing Justice for Brandon shirts.
A patrol sergeant whom Piercy called the night of the drowning spoke out during hearings last year. After his retirement earlier this month, Sgt. Randy Henry has said that a litany of things went wrong from the time Piercy pulled over Ellingson’s boat.
Henry also has contended that patrol officials tried to paper over serious problems revealed by Ellingson’s death, in part to shield Gov. Jay Nixon from criticism for pushing the 2011 merger of the state Water Patrol into the Highway Patrol.
“There’s been a cover-up from the beginning,” Henry recently told The Star. “They wanted to protect the governor and the merger and protect Piercy from criminal charges because criminal charges would be a black eye for the patrol.”
In January, Grellner reopened the investigation after receiving what she described as new information.
Seay took over in March after Grellner, the Osage County prosecutor, stepped aside. Family and friends were waiting for Grellner’s decision on charges when she announced, without giving details, that a conflict had developed and she could no longer stay on the case.
Grellner asked the court to appoint another prosecutor because she thought additional information she had received deserved attention.
May 31, 2014
The mistakes began soon after Piercy took Ellingson onto the patrol boat and arrested him following a failed field sobriety text. A toxicology report would later show that Ellingson’s blood alcohol level was 0.268, more than three times the legal limit.
After Piercy place Ellingson in handcuffs, he didn’t grab an available Type I flotation device to put on the Iowa man. Troopers are trained to use that type of life jacket on a handcuffed passenger because it has straps that wrap around the torso and allow for the handcuffs.
Instead, Piercy went for a Type III life vest with arm holes — one that was impossible to secure on a man whose hands were already cuffed.
Piercy said he wasn’t taught which flotation device to use during an arrest.
“There’s no training on ‘use this one, use that one,’ ” Piercy said at the inquest. “It’s just one of the vests on our boat.”
Hours after Ellingson drowned, Henry said, Piercy told him key details that differed from accounts the trooper subsequently gave to Highway Patrol investigators and jurors at the coroner’s inquest.
According to Henry, Piercy said he was “in a hurry” when he put a life vest on Ellingson. Piercy also told the sergeant that the Ellingson was on his feet, leaning against the boat seat, before he went into the water. That corresponds with what two witnesses saw when the patrol boat passed them moments before Ellingson went into the lake.
However, Piercy told investigators that Ellingson was sitting in the boat and then stood, turned to the water and went in.
An investigator asked Piercy, “Did he jump over? Or did he fall over?”
“I don’t know,” Piercy said. “I’ve, believe me, played this scenario through my mind a million times, and I don’t know. All I know is he’s beside me, and then he’s not.”
At the inquest, Piercy said he saw Ellingson stand, turn toward the water and step to the right side of the boat. As he told the story to jurors, Piercy began to choke back tears: “I reached for him and wasn’t able to grab ahold of him.”
GPS data, which was not provided to the jurors, showed Piercy’s boat was traveling between 39.1 and 43.7 mph in the moments before Ellingson hit the water.
Piercy also told Henry the night of the drowning that once he jumped in to help Ellingson — which witnesses have said took several minutes — the trooper waited for his own fanny-pack flotation device to deploy automatically. It didn’t.
Henry told Piercy that his device required him to pull a ripcord. A witness who came upon the scene that day, and helped get Piercy out of the water, also told The Star that the trooper complained that his device didn’t deploy in the water.
But at the inquest, three months after that conversation, Piercy described the fanny pack as one that deploys when the ripcord is pulled. He told jurors that when he was under water, trying to grab Ellingson, he didn’t want to pull the ripcord to inflate his fanny pack. If he had, he said, he would have risen to the surface without the Iowa man.
Many have questioned why Piercy, knowing Ellingson was in handcuffs, didn’t jump into the water sooner. One witness, Larry Moreau, told The Star that he and his wife saw the trooper standing on the boat and talking to Ellingson as he bobbed in the lake. Piercy showed no urgency, Moreau and wife Paulette said.
The couple had no idea that beneath the surface Ellingson’s hands were cuffed behind his back. They left the area before Piercy jumped in, thinking the trooper had everything under control.
Henry also has questioned Piercy’s delay in jumping into the water.
“I think his failure to jump in immediately was cowardice,” Henry told The Star recently. “If I threw somebody out and he was handcuffed and I see the life vest come off, you jump in now. You go in immediately.”
Henry spoke out at two legislative hearings after Ellingson’s death. He was the officer who signed off on Piercy, saying he knew the lake well enough to navigate it. But road troopers were never intended to solely patrol on the water without more training.
Henry also was interviewed by Highway Patrol investigators. When he started to question whether Ellingson received “the highest degree of care,” quoting Missouri boating law, one investigator rushed to have the recording shut off . During that interview, Henry told The Star, he told investigators: “To me, it rises to the level of manslaughter.”
Henry was disciplined by the patrol for actions related to the case after Grellner filed a complaint against him.
After nearly 30 years patrolling the Lake of the Ozarks, he was transferred to Truman Lake and demoted to corporal. He appealed.
Grellner dismissed her complaint against Henry in October and he filed papers to retire.
“Brandon shouldn’t have died,” Henry said. “It’s something I’m going to have to live with the rest of my life. There’s no turning the page back. Piercy shouldn’t have been out there.
“In the history of the Water Patrol, we have never killed somebody in custody.”
Changes for patrol
Since Ellingson’s death, the patrol’s marine operations — especially along Missouri’s most popular waterways —have been under scrutiny. A special House committee met for several months last year and in January released a report calling on the state to correct flaws created by the 2011 merger of the Water Patrol into the Highway Patrol.
Combining the two units was supposed to cut costs and improve coverage on Missouri waterways. The merger ended up costing more money, and business owners and lake residents told legislators that they saw fewer troopers on lakes and streams.
Many complained that the merger made the Lake of the Ozarks, Table Rock Lake and rivers like the Niangua less safe.
And at times, before Ellingson’s death, troopers without proper training — such as Piercy — were put out on the water alone. Records The Star obtained showed that Piercy, who had nearly two decades of road experience, had just two days of field training on the water before he began patrolling alone.
In the committee’s final report, legislators proposed changes that included an overhaul in trooper training for the water and recruiting specialized officers to patrol by boat.
Last month, the committee heard from the patrol that changes in training had occurred. Business owners testified that they were seeing some improvements, though a few residents still worried about the safety at the Lake of the Ozarks.
Training likely will be a key component in Piercy’s trial.
The trooper himself questioned whether he was trained for what he encountered the day he arrested Ellingson. He told jurors at the inquest:
“Evaluating this after the fact, I realize more training is definitely needed. ... Could I be a better marine operations officer? Yes. There are a lot of things I need to learn.”
‘Never give up’
On Ellingson’s birthday nearly two weeks ago, family and friends and strangers who have become part of a group demanding justice left messages on Facebook.
Pictures of the smiling Brandon filled the feed.
“I bet heaven birthdays are the BEST,” one person wrote.
And another posted: “... Happy Birthday Brandon! We’ll never give up fighting for justice.”
Just a week ago, this message: “We won’t stop until Brandon gets justice and Piercy is charged.”
For Craig Ellingson, the past 18 months have been hard. He said this week that he still says “Hi” when he walks by his son’s room every morning. His daughter, Jennifer, graduated from college without her little brother in the crowd.
Holidays and birthdays are especially rough. So are the depositions Ellingson sits through for the civil lawsuit his family has brought against the patrol, key commanders and Piercy.
Friday’s development was a first step, Ellingson said.
“I feel some relief, but I still want to get to the people who have covered this up,” he said.
In the time since his son died, Ellingson has urged state and federal authorities to help hold Piercy accountable. He has routinely called officials and gone to as many hearings as he could. He sat through the coroner’s inquest, which he later called a “joke” and a “hometown decision.”
“I never imagined something like that happening to Brandon. ... I think he felt like he was safe with Piercy, because he’s a cop. But he wasn’t.”
More pics and video at link above....