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Father faults deputy in shooting of son
By ROBERT FARLEY and RICHARD DANIELSON As he prepared to bury his son today, David Dean questioned why a Pinellas County sheriff's deputy shot and killed his son Tuesday night. Dean has hired a lawyer to look into the shooting. "He's dead over something that could have been prevented," David Dean said of his son, Dustin, 21, of New Port Richey. Deputy Kenneth Kubler shot Dustin Dean, a drug suspect, after Dean lunged at Kubler and his tracking dog in a small patch of swampy woods in Palm Harbor, sheriff's officials say. Dean was unarmed, and his family and friends said shooting him was unnecessary. "He didn't come out fighting with a gun in his face," said Jeanie Stevenson, 25, of Tampa, who had dated Dustin Dean for several months. The Sheriff's Office and Pasco-Pinellas State Attorney's Office were still investigating the shooting Friday. Although placed on paid administrative leave immediately after the shooting, Kubler was declared fit for duty and was scheduled to return to work Friday night. Meanwhile, Dean has hired Tampa attorney Michael Connell to investigate the shooting. "I think, rightly so, that when you're talking about an unarmed person, I think it needs to be looked at very thoroughly," Connell said Friday. Tuesday night's incident began about 9:30 p.m. when undercover sheriff's detectives arranged to buy cocaine from Dean and at least one other man, 19-year-old Jonathan A. Whitlatch of Palm Harbor, in the parking lot at Strokers Billiards on U.S. 19 north of Curlew, sheriff's officials said. When awaiting deputies were signaled to close in, Dean and Whitlatch ran. Whitlatch was apprehended in the median of U.S. 19. Dean ran the other way, into a small wooded area behind Sweet Tomatoes. Sheriff's spokeswoman Marianne Pasha said deputies and detectives set up a perimeter around the woods. They knew he was in there, because they could hear him snapping twigs and sloshing around in the swampy water. They told him repeatedly to come out and warned him that canine units and the sheriff's helicopter were on their way. Following a trail into the patch of woods, Kubler and his dog Brawn came upon Dean on a sloping piece of ground. With Kubler standing on the higher ground, he told Dean over and over to show his hands, Pasha said. Dean raised his left hand where Kubler, who was holding a flashlight mounted on his gun, could see it, but did not raise the right hand. "The deputy never saw the right hand," Pasha said. Dean then lunged and Kubler, a 20-year veteran, shot him once in the upper chest, she said. The men were about 10 feet apart when the shot was fired. Although Dean was unarmed, investigators found an unloaded Tech 9 9mm handgun inside a knapsack in some woods behind Strokers. Investigators are still trying to determine if that gun is connected to the case. Deputies also found about 2 ounces of cocaine along the path that Dean took when he ran from undercover detectives, Pasha said. Stevenson said she was with Dean at Strokers Tuesday night. "He panicked," she said. "He got scared and he ran." The wooded area is small, she said, and he was quickly surrounded. He wasn't armed, she said. "The only thing he had on him was a wallet full of money and a cell phone." It makes no sense, she said, that Dean, unarmed, would have lunged at an armed deputy with a police dog. "He got into a bad situation and got busted," David Dean said. So maybe he should have been arrested and sent to jail, he said, but not shot. "Not when that man's got a dog," he said. On Wednesday, sheriff's officials said Kubler could not let the dog loose without taking his flashlight beam off Dean. While sheriff's officials noted that Dean had been arrested 20 times since 1998, family and friends say that sounds worse than it was. In 2000, for example, Pasco sheriff's deputies charged Dean with felony possession of cocaine and felony possession of marijuana. Both charges were dropped, according to court records. Dean's record in Pasco does include misdemeanor convictions on at least two counts of DUI, as well as driving with a suspended or restricted license, possession of alcohol by a person under 21 and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He was last released from jail on a probation violation charge on May 6. In Pinellas County, Dean's record includes a two-day jail sentence for possession of alcohol by a minor, a six-month jail sentence for violating his probation for possession of marijuana with intent to sell, possession of the prescription antianxiety drug alprazolam and possession of drug paraphernalia and a 20-day jail sentence for violating probation for driving with a suspended or restricted license. Dean may have sold drugs, but "he wasn't a drug dealer," Stevenson said. "That's what he was doing to make some money. It's not who he was; it's what he did." "He wasn't out selling drugs to kids," she said. "He was just out trying to make a little money, one adult to another adult." "My son was a good, loving person," David Dean said. He was a part-time student at the University of South Florida, studying business, his father said. He planned to become an accountant. "He was trying to straighten his life out," Dean said. "He was trying to better himself." "He had a lot of things going for him," Dean said. "He got caught up at the wrong time at the wrong place." Sean Lane, 24, of New Port Richey considered Dean, known as Dusty, as a good friend but said he had a "crazy" streak -- especially behind the wheel. "If you go in a car with him, you put your seat belt on," Lane said. Lane said he knew that Dean sold cocaine, but he said he and others did not consider him to be capable of violence. "We couldn't understand it with Dusty at all," Lane said. "What happened to him, I think, was wrong," said friend Eric Carpani, 21, of Oldsmar. "He was young and made some bad choices, but by no means did he deserve to die." Funeral services for Dean will be held today from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at Thomas B. Dobies Funeral Homes, Congress Street Chapel, New Port Richey.
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