Old habits prove too strong for felon

ST. PETERSBURG -- This time, Michael Frenette was going to get clean when he came home.

For years, the 38-year-old St. Petersburg man battled a crack addiction. He spent the better part of two decades in and out of jail. After his release from prison in November, he promised his parents he'd quit doing drugs.

"He told me he would never go back to prison alive," said his mother, Eva Elder.

That promise proved true Thursday when Frenette was shot to death by a St. Petersburg police officer.

About 2:30 p.m. Thursday, police officers Allyn Stone and Philip Postle approached Frenette in a parking lot near Sixth Avenue S and 12th St. S to question him about a stolen 1994 Nissan Pathfinder.

The car was reported stolen by Frenette's friend, Judith Everidge, 55, on Dec. 14. Everidge, who met Frenette shortly after he was released from prison last month, said the former convict was living in her apartment on 58th Street N periodically.

When Frenette failed to pick her up, as planned, from a doctor's appointment two weeks ago, she called police. Everidge said Frenette called her two days later and said he had been hospitalized for pneumonia.

"He said he was going to turn himself in to the police," Everidge said. "He could have resolved the whole issue but he didn't." Instead, Everidge said, Frenette began visiting his old crack house haunts again and disappeared with her car.

Police caught up with Frenette on Thursday. Two officers patroling the Campbell Park Recreation area saw him near the car Everidge reported stolen.

They put him in the back seat of a police cruiser while they waited for dispatchers to confirm that the car had been stolen, said St. Petersburg Police Department spokesman Bill Doniel.

About 4:30 p.m., the officers got confirmation and decided they had enough evidence to arrest Frenette. When they got Frenette out of the car to handcuff him and take him to jail, Frenette tried to grab Postle's gun from the holster.

"He was struggling with the officer and they were wrestling around," Doniel said.

Stone used pepper spray on Frenette but he would not release the gun, police said. Stone then shot Frenette twice in the upper body. He was transported to Bayfront Medical Center, where he died within an hour.

His mother, Elder, said she was heartbroken but not surprised when police told her Frenette had died.

Frenette spent most of the past five years at the Walton Work Camp, a corrections facility in the Florida Panhandle. He got out of prison last month after serving time for carjacking, auto theft, grand theft, burglary and fleeing from police, according to state corrections records.

Under the terms of his probation, Frenette was supposed to live with his mother and stepfather in their northeast St. Petersburg home. He even went to church with an old friend for the first time in many years. But he disappeared after only a few days and began roaming around crack dens on the city's south side, Elder said. Dec. 15 was the last time she saw her son alive.

"We had a feeling something was going to happen," she said.

Doniel said the officers in the shooting followed standard police procedure when they put Frenette in the cruiser without handcuffs.

"(Frenette) was not under arrest at the time. When you are just interviewing you don't have to put a suspect in handcuffs," Doniel said. It is not unusual for officers to seat suspects in a police cruiser during questioning, he said. Police and the State Attorney's Office are investigating the shooting, as a matter of routine.

It was the first time Stone, a 13-year veteran of the force, used deadly force during an arrest.

Since joining the police department in 1996, Postle used his gun once when he drew it on a carjacking suspect in 2001, but he did not fire, according to public records.

Both officers received praise from their superiors in performance evaluations earlier this year.

Frenette's parents said they feel sorry for the officers involved in the shooting and know it won't be easy for them to live with their son's death.

"We don't hold the officers responsible for what happened," Elder said.

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