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© St. Petersburg Times, published August 14, 2002
TARPON SPRINGS -- At the start of the second day of his trial Tuesday, former Zephyrhills Correctional Institution guard Daniel Nordmark's attorney asked the judge whether a pretrial offer of 30 days in jail was still on the table.
It was, so Nordmark promptly pleaded no contest to handling a gun while intoxicated early on Sept. 2. The gun went off a few hours later and killed Shawn McMillan.
Tarpon Springs police, and later the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office, determined that McMillan, 26, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound while riding in the back seat of a car. A lengthy report from a State Attorney's investigation concluded McMillan either shot himself in the head accidentally or "in his intoxicated condition the possibility exists that he reverted to depression . . . and decided to take his life."
Regardless, prosecutor Pat Siracusa said that on that night, an intoxicated Nordmark handed his loaded gun to a friend, Bernie Dillman, 24, of Holiday, who shot it off into the air outside the British Pub on Klosterman Road; and that Nordmark later handed that same loaded gun to McMillan.
Prosecutors were barred from admitting into evidence any mention of McMillan's death.
"My job was to convict him, and that's what we did," Siracusa said. "We got him to the point where he realized he needed to plea."
Nordmark, 26, of Tarpon Springs, said he believes there was political pressure put on the State Attorney's Office to put him behind bars so he changed his mind halfway through the trial and decided to plead no contest.
Although Nordmark faced up to 60 days in jail, Pinellas County Judge Amy Williams said she would honor another judge's offer of 30 days in jail and six months of probation, Siracusa said. The agreement also requires Nordmark to complete a gun safety course, refrain from drinking alcohol during probation and forfeit the gun. His sentencing is scheduled for Friday.
"It's a second-degree misdemeanor, and I'm going to jail," Nordmark said from his home Tuesday afternoon. "That doesn't happen in a regular case. That doesn't happen to your average citizen. "It's not something I deserve," he said. "It's something I should not have to go to jail for."
Siracusa said Nordmark, as a law enforcement official, should have known better.
"Shame on him for taking that attitude," Siracusa said. "He is in law enforcement. He better than anyone else knows, as a graduate of the (law enforcement) academy, the dangers of using firearms. He's the last person who should be abusing the right of a firearm."
Nordmark resigned from his job at the correctional facility on Monday.
"Due to circumstances beyond my control, please accept my apologies for the lack of notice with regards to my untimely resignation," Nordmark wrote to the warden. "It has been my pleasure to have been employed by Zephyrhills Correctional Institution for the past six and one half years."
Sterling Ivey, spokesman for the state Department of Corrections, said Nordmark would have been terminated had he not resigned.
Nordmark also faces a wrongful-death lawsuit initiated by McMillan's mother, Michaela Mahoney. She maintains that her son died "because of the actions" of Nordmark and Dillman.
Mahoney attended both days of the criminal trial.
"I thank God for prosecutors Pat Siracusa and Dee Bartilucci," Mahoney said Tuesday afternoon. "They were brilliant and relentless in their pursuit of justice.
"By the second day of the trial, Officer Nordmark realized he had no chance against these fine attorneys," she said.
She declined further comment.
Dillman faces a first-degree misdemeanor charge for firing the gun in public. He is scheduled to go to trial Oct. 8.