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Officer cleared in shooting
By CARRIE JOHNSON, Times Staff Writer INVERNESS -- When Yukio Allen strode toward the sheriff's deputies with a pistol in each hand, he looked like a man who planned to kill. But if Allen had squeezed the triggers, one gun would have sprayed BBs and the other wouldn't have fired at all. They were both fake, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigator said Thursday. However, because the weapons were so realistic in appearance, the State Attorney's Office ruled that Cpl. Steve Smolensky had been justified in fatally shooting Allen during a standoff the night of June 10. "The investigation clearly demonstrates that law enforcement was within their legal right and justified in its use of force," Assistant State Attorney Don Scaglione wrote in a letter. "It is unquestionable that . . . Smolensky felt that his life or the lives of others were in peril." Allen, 21, died of a single gunshot wound to the chest, a medical examiner's report showed. FDLE special agent supervisor Ray Velboom said Allen and had been less than 20 feet from Smolensky when the deputy fired three rounds at him. The FDLE was called in by the Citrus County Sheriff's Office to investigate the shooting. The department's findings were made public during a news conference Thursday afternoon. The FDLE report paints a picture of a young man intent on taking his own life. Allen left a 26-page suicide note filled with expletives and vitriol directed at his girlfriend, Laura Bordner, and her mother, Stacy Hall. Bordner had left Allen a few days before the standoff. The couple had been together for four years and had a 14-month old daughter, Jasmine. In the handwritten note, he accused Bordner of cheating on him and apologized to his parents for leaving them. "I (sic) sorry Mom and Dad. I don't mean to (unintelligible) you, but I can't live like this," Allen wrote. Velboom said investigators interviewed eight sheriff's deputies, 10 firefighters and four bystanders. "We found no discrepancies," Velboom said. "Everyone said they were real guns. If there was anyone who had said these weren't real, functioning firearms, we may have gone in a different direction." But Dock Blanchard, a lawyer hired by Bordner and Allen's father, Jerry Allen, said police had reason to doubt the authenticity of the guns. Inverness police were called to Allen's home on May 15. Allen was apparently upset because Bordner had left him -- although she later came back -- and his father called police, who had him committed under the state's Baker Act. The Baker Act empowers police to take to hospitals for mental evaluation people who appear likely to harm themselves or others because of mental illness. During that visit, Allen told the Inverness officers he owned two fake guns, Blanchard said. Inverness police were the first to respond to the standoff, and the information about the guns could have been communicated to sheriff's deputies. "I think there was a real breakdown in communication," Blanchard said. Velboom said none of the witnesses interviewed during the FDLE investigation knew that the guns were fake. According to the FDLE report: Allen entered the Shell Station on State Road 44 about 4 p.m. the afternoon of June 10 and bought a case of beer. He returned to the store three more times, growing increasingly agitated with each visit. His final trip was about 8 p.m. Allen made copies of his suicide note and told the clerk to send them to the newspapers. He also instructed her to call the police. Then he flashed a silver pistol tucked into the waistband of his pants. "I'm not playing," Allen told the clerk. He then left the store and went home. An Inverness officer arrived at Allen's house, which is directly behind the Shell Station, and contacted the Sheriff's Office for backup. Over the next 45 minutes, Allen went in and out of his house several times. Smolensky tried to calm Allen, but the young man veered between cooperation and desperation. Allen told police during the standoff that he had doused himself in gasoline and turned on the gas in his house, and he threatened to blow up everything. "Mr. Allen at one point took one of the weapons, pulled the slide to the rear and pointed it at his own head," the report stated. Smolensky had taken cover behind a parked patrol car when Allen began walking briskly toward him. The deputy yelled at him to drop his pistols but Allen did not comply. "As Mr. Allen got within 10 to 15 feet of the police vehicle . . . (He) began raising his right arm with a weapon in it," the report said. Allen was taken to Citrus Memorial Hospital after he was shot, where he was pronounced dead. Smolensky, who was on paid leave during the investigation, was cleared to return to work Thursday, according to Sheriff Jeff Dawsy. Dawsy said all the law enforcement officers acted properly during the situation. "I think they showed remarkable restraint," he said.
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