Vera Stoker doesn't deny it. "My son was no angel," she said.
The night he had his final confrontation with Pinellas sheriff's deputies, Jonathan Stoker was drunk. It was April 20, 1996, two days after his 24th birthday, when deputies saw an Oldsmobile run a red light at 86th Avenue and 113th Street. Deputies thought the car was stolen.
Twenty minutes later, after deputies chased Stoker into a cul-de-sac and boxed him in, after he rammed a cruiser, struck another deputy and refused to get out of his car, Vera Stoker's son was dead, shot 12 times.
Stoker's family later sued the Sheriff's Office. The names and dates have changed, but the story is the same:
On May 2, sheriff's deputies chased a 17-year-old, Marquell McCullough, south on 34th Street in St. Petersburg after they thought he had done a drug deal. They boxed in his truck with their patrol cars. He rammed one and hit a deputy. Then the shooting started. The deputies got off 15 rounds and killed McCullough.
The names and the dates have changed, but the story is the same:
Last week, a jury said St. Petersburg police Officer James Knight was not negligent for shooting TyRon Lewis when he wouldn't get out of his car during a traffic stop in October 1996, five months after Jonathan Stoker was killed.
The lawsuit revived Vera Stoker's awful memories.
She had the same feelings and thoughts expressed by Lewis' family. "I think most of these police shootings can be stopped," she said, "or if they have to shoot, they don't have to kill."
She went through the same years of anguish trying to get justice for her son. Pinellas County offered her $50,000, Stoker said, but she refused the money. "We weren't in there for the financial gain."
The family wanted the Sheriff's Office to admit wrongdoing and train deputies on different ways to handle suspects in such situations.
The deaths of Lewis and McCullough have been told and retold in a racial context. They were black, their shooters white.
But one detail could affect the way we view these stories: Jonathan Stoker was white.
The issue isn't color but what happens when suspects tempt fate the way Stoker, Lewis and McCullough did. The issue is how police react in these confrontations.
Police will tell you they don't shoot to disarm a suspect; they shoot to stop a threat. There was no doubt Stoker posed a threat, not only to deputies, but to other drivers. Even his mother admits he played a part in his own death.
His blood alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit. Not only did he run a light, but early in the chase, he stopped briefly for deputies, then took off. He forced one patrol car into a median. He rammed another. He drove north in a southbound lane.
Then came the confrontation in the cul-de-sac.
I can see why deputies would feel threatened by Stoker. He didn't need a gun. A 2,000-pound car carries quite the wallop. But I also understand his mother's question about why deputies couldn't defuse the situation.
Episodes like this escalate rapidly. The decision to shoot is made in a blink.
From the time deputies surrounded Stoker to the time they shot him, all of 45 seconds elapsed. Fifty-five seconds elapsed between the time TyRon Lewis was stopped and the time he was shot. For Marquell McCullough it was far less, only 10 seconds.
Stoker's family eventually dropped its lawsuit because their attorney said they had little chance of winning. Police officers are given broad immunity from being prosecuted for their conduct.
Vera Stoker wonders - as I sometimes do - why police put themselves in harm's way and then use it as a justification to shoot. How can they be expected to fairly investigate the conduct of one of their own?
She wrestles with her bottomless grief.
And, like many black residents, this white woman holds in her heart an overwhelming unease about the police.
