Sheriff's deputy not indicted
Grand jury clears Schmit of criminal wrongdoing
A skeptical grand jury that convened in December to investigate the February 2022 shooting death of an Alvo man at the hands of a Cass County Sheriff's deputy ultimately voted not to indict the deputy, clearing him of criminal wrongdoing in Andrew Stratton's death.
The grand jury — which spent much of two days in a Plattsmouth courtroom reviewing bodycam footage and hearing witness testimony in Stratton's Feb. 13, 2022, killing — voted 14-2 not to indict Deputy Elliot Schmit, who shot Stratton seven times with his personally owned semiautomatic rifle, according to the grand jury transcript filed last month.
Though they ultimately absolved Schmit of criminal misconduct, jurors were skeptical of the decisions deputies made in the lead-up to Stratton's shooting, according to a Journal Star review of the 515-page transcript of the grand jury's investigation.
Jurors also raised their eyebrows at Schmit's brief-but-checkered history as a law enforcement agent and at the deputy's claim that Stratton was preparing to shoot a bow and arrow at him when Schmit shot the 34-year old in the darkened basement of Stratton's father's home that night, according to the transcript.
The jury questioned why deputies didn't call a mental health professional to help subdue Stratton, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and had previously barricaded himself from law enforcement, prompting an armed standoff with the Nebraska State Patrol that Schmit acknowledged came to "a more peaceful resolution" than the 2022 incident.
Jurors spent more than an hour watching and rewatching clips of bodycam footage from Schmit and other law enforcement agents on scene in an effort to determine whether Stratton had actually pointed at Schmit the compact bow found near his body.
And the jury, at times, seemed dubious of Schmit himself.
The deputy had been back on patrol for the Cass County Sheriff's Office for less than a month at the time of Stratton's shooting following a yearlong deployment to the Middle East, where he had been sent to help set up law enforcement operations in Jordan, according to his own grand jury testimony.
Before his February 2021 deployment there, Schmit had been with the sheriff's office for approximately seven months. He started in Cass County in July 2020 — four months after he was fired from the State Patrol for a pursuit policy violation less than a year removed from his graduation from the patrol's academy.
Still, it was Schmit's own testimony, which he gave voluntarily, that seemed to help convince jurors not to indict him — and then recommend several policy and procedure changes to the sheriff's office in an effort to prevent another such shooting, according to the transcript.
"I never shot anybody before. That was one of the most traumatic things I've ever done," Schmit told the jury, after indicating that equipment like a ballistic shield, pepper ball launchers or other "less-lethal" projectiles might have led to a different outcome if such equipment would have been available.
"If I could've done it any other way, I would've," he said. "I had no intent of doing it this way. If — if (Stratton) would've come and talked to us, he would still be alive. He ultimately chose it. It was a very unfortunate thing. I wish it had never happened."
What led up to the shooting
Two Cass County deputies, Schmit and Sgt. Karl Boehm, responded to Stratton's grandma's house in Greenwood at around 9:30 p.m. that night after the 34-year-old's dad, Gregg Stratton, called them there, according to the transcript.
Gregg Stratton told Schmit and Boehm that his son had struck him in the head during an altercation that transpired earlier that evening at 23418 Alvo Road, where the two men lived.
The elder Stratton warned the deputies of his son's diagnosis, that he hadn't been taking his medication and that he might have access to a bow and arrow.
"Andrew needed some kind of help was, basically, his position on the events of that night, whether that was going to jail first and then getting the help or just getting (placed in emergency protective custody)," Schmit told jurors.
"He felt that Andrew was out of control and needed something."
At 10:15 p.m., the deputies left the house in Greenwood and drove toward Alvo, arriving at the house on Alvo Road at 10:27 p.m.
"Did an attempt (happen) to get any social worker or therapist involved?" an alternate juror asked Cass County Attorney Chris Perrone, who guided the grand jury through its investigation in December.
"Because I heard 'schizophrenia,'" the juror said.
"You won't get any evidence that that night there was any contact with social workers or mental health professionals or anybody like that," Perrone said. "So that could come down to the — it could affect whether or not you decide to charge or not charge."
Upon their arrival at the Strattons' house in Alvo, Schmit and Boehm knocked on the front and back doors without a response before Schmit asked Boehm, his supervisor, if they should call a captain to the scene.
Instead, the deputies asked a third colleague, Deputy Mike McKnelly, to pick up Gregg Stratton from his mom's house in Greenwood and drive him to his Alvo property before they entered the home, where they planned to arrest Andrew Stratton on suspicion of misdemeanor third-degree assault.
Back at his house, Gregg Stratton again warned the deputies that his son might have access to the compound bow, according to the transcript.
So the three sheriff's deputies devised a plan to enter and clear the home, according to their grand jury testimony.
Schmit, a 10-year military veteran with hand-to-hand combat experience, would lead the way into the house, armed with his own Colt M4. Boehm would be armed with a Taser. And McKnelly, the third man to enter the house, would carry his service pistol.
After entering the home in a "T" formation, the three deputies cleared the main floor of the house without finding anyone, and as they prepared to descend into the basement, Schmit announced their presence again.
Andrew Stratton called back from downstairs and the two began to negotiate the Alvo man's potential surrender.
"He seemed very, kind of, all over the place," Schmit told the jury. "He was talking about everything from how he was the one that killed Osama bin Laden to he was downstairs strapped to a bomb."
Schmit implored Andrew Stratton to come upstairs and talk things out, to resolve the standoff peacefully, he said.
"Honestly, I thought I was making some headway," he testified. "And then he just went silent and just stopped talking."
When Andrew Stratton went quiet, the deputies initially planned to stay upstairs until reinforcements arrived. At least one trooper with the State Patrol was already on his way, according to the transcript.
But, Schmit said, deputies soon heard a noise that sounded as if Andrew Stratton had fallen over. Fearing he was injured, Schmit and Boehm began a slow walk into the basement, sending McKnelly outside in case Stratton tried to flee from the house through a downstairs door.
The deputies' decision to enter the basement was among the most frequent sources of criticism from grand jurors.
"My thought is: Were they rushing downstairs to just dissolve the situation as fast as possible?" juror No. 5 asked State Patrol Investigator Amanda DeFreece, who led the agency's probe into the shooting as a part of the patrol's Special Investigations Team.
"Where on their list of importance was preservation of life?" the juror asked. "They could've sat upstairs for 10 hours with him in the basement. I mean, you would've been in the same spot you were when you started, but he also wouldn't be dead."
The shooting and the aftermath
The decision to enter the basement already made, Schmit and Boehm inched downstairs into a darkened room and found themselves in what Schmit told jurors was "what is known … as a fatal funnel."
The deputies, holding flashlights, couldn't see Stratton, who was about 10 yards to the north of the staircase's landing and had line of sight to the bookcase that deputies were using for cover.
"It's a very bad place to be," Schmit said.
Perrone, the county attorney, asked him why they didn't retreat from the position they had placed themselves in.
"It's incredibly dangerous to turn around on those stairs like that, and that would mean crossing back across that fatal funnel again, which is also a huge no," Schmit said in part.
As Schmit and Boehm concealed themselves behind the bookcase, Schmit said, he heard a metallic click coming from Stratton's direction — one he believed to be the sounds of "a safety on a weapon of some kind or any number of potential threats," he testified.
So Schmit peered around the corner and caught a glimpse of Stratton, who Schmit said was holding a bow in his left hand and had started to draw back an arrow to fire it toward the deputies.
"He clearly had attempted to draw the string back and it had failed and his arm was — his right arm was now up by his head," Schmit said.
"OK," Perrone said. "And what are you thinking at that time?"
"He's trying to kill me, but I still was trying to not kill him," Schmit said. "At that time I decided to issue commands or at least attempt it."
Schmit ordered Stratton to drop his weapon, he testified.
Instead, he said, Stratton started to draw an arrow back again.
"Then you shoot at him," Perrone said. "Why?"
"Because I know that that arrow, if he gets to shoot it, will go through my armor that I'm currently wearing," Schmit recalled. "The soft armor does not stop arrows, which means whatever he does is going to severely injure me or kill me."
A week after the shooting, Boehm told State Patrol investigators he thought Schmit fired four rounds. But investigators later determined the deputy fired nine times, striking Stratton seven times, including in the back and left arm, according to his death certificate.
Schmit and Boehm stepped toward Stratton before Schmit turned back and ran to his cruiser to retrieve a medical kit to help provide first aid to the man he had just shot.
Stratton died at the scene.
Erin Linde, the pathologist who conducted the Alvo man's autopsy, testified that the shooting caused "extensive injury of all of (Stratton's) organs" that likely killed him in seconds.
Footage from Schmit's bodycam was hindered by the lack of light in the basement and the angle the deputy had when he shot Stratton, leaving one of the grand jury's most consistent subjects of questioning — whether Stratton had pointed the bow and arrow toward Schmit before the shooting — without a definitive answer.
Still, the State Patrol's Special Investigative Team concluded Stratton, who was wearing an arrow grip on his right hand, was pointing the crossbow toward deputies at the time of his shooting, Investigator Pedram Nabegh told jurors.
Nabegh said the team came to that conclusion by analyzing the bodycam video, Stratton's autopsy bullet trajectories and the bow itself, which had "a bullet defect on the front of the bow, which told me that it was, most likely, in a raised position" when he was shot.
DeFreece, who led the State Patrol's investigation into the shooting, said the team concluded Schmit's use of force in the incident was justified, pointing to the "deadly force" Stratton seemed prepared to use against deputies.
Skeptical of that assessment, jurors pressed DeFreece on the need for deputies to enter the basement at all.
"So do you think that making the decision to go downstairs immediately was the correct one or do think that there should have been some type of further de-escalation done to prevent loss of life?" juror No. 5 asked.
"I'd say that's a great question for Deputy Schmit," DeFreece said, later adding: "There was, I guess, no concern that we had at the appropriateness of them going ahead and going down and trying to contact him."
Schmit told jurors that deputies had entered the house with the intent to arrest Stratton, accused of a misdemeanor crime.
Schmit, who was reassigned to work at the county jail for nine months while the State Patrol investigated the shooting, returned to road patrol in December after the grand jury cleared him of criminal wrongdoing, the county attorney said.
What the jury had to say
"I mean, you've watched the video and (you've had) ten months to bank on this thing, and given all the training you've had and everything else, is there anything you'd do differently?" juror No. 6 asked Schmit at the tail end of his December testimony.
His response — "No, not with the resources available," he said — seemed to inform the recommendations the jury emerged from deliberations with.
Schmit told jurors that additional non-lethal weapons at his disposal — such as a pepper ball gun, 40-millimeter less-lethal launchers or a ballistic shield — "would've made a difference" that night.
The grand jury, which cleared Schmit of criminal wrongdoing after less than an hour of deliberating, unanimously recommended three policy and procedure changes for the Cass County Sheriff's Office.
The jury recommended the agency expand its de-escalation and use of force training, particularly for incidents that involve subjects with mental health issues, and implored deputies to utilize "in-county resources," such as K9 units or infrared technology to help navigate standoffs.
Jurors also implored Cass County to explore options to provide the sheriff's office with "more lessthan-lethal equipment" — like the kind Schmit said might have saved Stratton's life in Alvo that night.
In the months since the jury convened, the sheriff's office has began to invest in new equipment and is reexamining their training practices — but not on the advice of jurors, said Matt Watson, the office's chief deputy sheriff.
Watson and Sheriff Bob Sorensen took office in January and, Watson said, weren't made aware of the jury's recommendations until the Journal Star inquired about their response last week.
"Have there been changes? Yes," Watson said Friday afternoon. "Are there more changes coming? Yes. Have they been a direct result of that grand jury investigation? No."
Watson said he and Sorensen — both of whom started their careers at the sheriff's office but later moved to the Plattsmouth Police Department before returning after Sorensen won the seat last year following former Sheriff William Brueggemann's retirement — have ordered an independent audit into the county jail's practices and plan to request another audit for the office's road patrol unit to address "everything you can think of."
Even without the jury's recommendations in hand, he said, the sheriff's office is rebuilding its K9 unit, has started training with infrared equipment, is exploring new de-escalation training opportunities and has purchased the agency's first batch of ballistic shields.
"The ballistic shields, again, I mean it's something we recognized right away that it's just almost unheard of for a law enforcement agency, especially of this size — it's in an area designated as metro, we are part of the Omaha metro — where we don't have shields," Watson said. "We didn't have a single one."
Watson said he and Sorensen are trying to rebuild their sheriff's office from the ground up — an undertaking he described as "chaos."
"We're new, and we're trying to make connections that have been strained over the years with other law enforcement (agencies) and build partnerships to get us more resources, more tools.
"And then just share knowledge and admit, like, publicly, 'Hey, we need help and we'll take it,'" he said. "We don't have egos over here."
Reach the writer at 402-473-7223 or awegley@journalstar.com. On Twitter @andrewwegley
