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Without doubt, Casey felt love

The dog belonged to a homeless man and died after biting an officer who was arresting her owner and his friends. Police say they were justified in shooting the dog. Some disagree.

By THERESA BLACKWELL
Published April 22, 2006

CLEARWATER - Mention Frank Fisher to other homeless people and eyebrows go up. Even his friends have taken a punch from him when he's been drinking.

When sober, Fisher, 42, works hard and will readily share a few dollars or a cigarette. He doesn't have much - his clothes, a guitar and, until recently, his dog, Casey.

"Do you love your daddy?" he would say, and she would jump into his arms and lick his face. "Best dog in the whole, wide world."

But when Fisher drinks, his ideas on proper decorum loom larger than his ability to restrain himself. That's when he will lecture, argue, fight.

One night last month, Fisher started drinking and the police got involved. He went to jail, and Casey bit an officer.

Police shot her three times, killing her.

Though other street people see Fisher as flawed, they loved Casey. Many said they watched her while Fisher took a shower, got a meal or was in jail. They will tell you she was smart, well-trained, even did tricks.

"Nice dog, very polite," said Tammie Kealey at a recent Monday night dinner for the homeless. "Never took food off anybody's plate."

Casey was one of them, and they hate what happened to her.

Casey's mother was a pit bullterrier mix, her father a Labrador retriever and Rhodesian Ridgeback mix. She was born four years ago near Fort Knox, Ky., where Fisher grew up, a golden brown female with pit bullterrier ears.

"I'll take that runty dog," said Fisher, who stands 5 feet 7 inches.

When he went to pick her up, the dog's owner said the little dog had trampled his garden and he had nearly beaten her to death.

"I wanted to knock his head off," Fisher said.

Luckily, he had not been drinking.

"That's why she was a little skittish," Fisher said. "She didn't like arguing and fussing and fighting."

Casey went with him to work on construction jobs and when he tended bar. She could sit, lie, stay, sit on a chair or a bar stool, stand up on her hind legs, dance around in circles, jump 5 or 6 feet to catch a flying disc.

"She was a rocket on four legs, an athlete," he said.

In December 2004, Fisher got the chance to do roofing work in Clearwater, so he came south with Casey.

Things went well at first. He had good work in construction remodeling. Then he discovered crack cocaine, lost his job and ended up on the street. He said he quit crack about four months ago, but he admitted that when he picks up a beer, one leads to another.

He has three arrests on his record in Florida and Kentucky - two related to having an open container of alcohol in public and a third regarding missing a court date after being cited on a charge of resisting arrest without violence. And he faces another arrest, accused of failing to appear for an arraignment on one of the open container charges, court records show.

Fisher usually sleeps with a group of friends, including Keith "Miracle" Scarbrough, 40, who has clear blue eyes, a dark tan and a long string of alcohol-related arrests.

At night, Fisher and Scarbrough would spread out their blankets, and Casey would curl up in a ball between them. When she heard anything, she would sit up, pricking up her ears.

The evening of March 20, Fisher, Scarbrough and friends Paul Lowes, 56, and Gary Weaver, 53, headed toward the weekly THORN Ministries meal for the homeless on a vacant lot near downtown Clearwater.

After dinner, Fisher and Scarbrough picked up trash and then sat down next to the dog with Weaver, Lowes and Thomas Keough, a homeless man who usually stayed in St. Petersburg.

Weaver passed Natural Ice beers around, and everyone but Lowes started drinking.

It was a foolish mistake. Just across East Avenue, a few dozen yards away, was the Clearwater police headquarters. They couldn't have picked a spot more likely to draw the attention of officers.

"Right there, right on the curb, literally right there," said Clearwater police spokesman Wayne Shelor, jabbing his index finger at the East Avenue spot where the men drank.

Within minutes, a half-dozen officers were on scene: Lt. James Steffens, Sgts. Sean Allaster and Thomas Donnelly, and Officers James McBride, John Bennett and Rodney Johnson. All "vehemently" declined to be interviewed for this story, Shelor said, but several wrote reports on what happened.

The homeless men first tried to hide their beers, then apologized.

McBride took primary responsibility for the case, decided to arrest the drinkers on open container charges and got a van to take them to jail.

While the officers checked IDs, Casey barked and lunged at an officer, Steffens said in a report, and Fisher got the dog under control. When Fisher was arrested, he asked Lowes to take care of Casey. The dog was on a long leash, lying down beside Lowes until Bennett prepared to walk one of the arrested men to the van.

Then Casey ran about 10 feet, latched onto the back of Bennett's right knee and thrashed as if trying to bite through his pants, police said. Allaster fired one shot, hitting Casey in the rear.

"The shot effectively ended the attack but left the dog still alive and seriously wounded," Steffens wrote in his report. "I determined that the dog would need to be terminated immediately as it was thrashing about, was still very aggressive and was seriously wounded."

He authorized Bennett to shoot, and Bennett fired two shots.

Fisher and the other homeless men did not contest much of the police's account but said shooting Casey was unnecessary at best, cruel at worst.

The group of homeless men and one other witness said the 35-pound dog was tied to a 60-pound duffel bag at all times. All the officers had to do was stay out of the range of her 7-foot leash.

They said the officers took it personally that the men were drinking so close to the station, that it was chaos when the men were being handcuffed and taken to the van, with officers yelling and cursing into the faces of the men they were arresting.

When Casey bit Bennett, Lowes said, the officer shook off the dog easily and continued walking. The dog retreated closer to the tree next to Lowes, where police shot her the first time. Lowes said he dove to the side, scraping his arm, to get away from more gunfire. He said officers told him to stay put or he could be shot next.

"I tell you, it was cold-blooded," said Cathy Ashenfelter, a homeless woman who offered to take Casey after the first shot. "She was sitting there by herself tied to a backpack."

Homeless in life, Casey is now buried in the yard of a million-dollar waterfront home.

The day after Casey died, a friend of Fisher's, Steve Gillespie, retrieved her body from Pinellas County Animal Services.

Gillespie, 62, is not homeless. He is a former Air Force lieutenant colonel who recently retired from a civilian job with Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. His wife, Juliet, 49, is a Montessori teacher with a doctorate in education.

The Gillespies met Fisher while he worked on their home in Clearwater's ritzy Island Estates, but they lost contact with him until about two months ago, when he and a homeless woman rang their doorbell.

"How are you doing, Frank?" said Mrs. Gillespie, the daughter of a social worker who welcomed the homeless into her big house in Holland at all hours.

"Not too good," he said.

She fed them and gave the woman warm clothes and Fisher $120 on the condition that he would come back to do some work.

Fisher returned to do carpentry and yard work for the Gillespies and later for other neighbors. When he did, he would tie Casey to a tree in the Gillespies' front yard.

"Dogs aren't supposed to like us mailmen, but Casey didn't seem to mind," said mail carrier Wayne Owen. "She'd give me a wag of the tail, and I'd give her a little pat on the head and move on."

After the shooting, when the arrested men got out of jail, they had a funeral and buried Casey in the Gillespies' front yard. Neighbor Ann Berger said she is making Casey a headstone. For now, the dog's collar and leash, apparently stained by blood, are draped next to the grave.

Like the homeless, the Gillespies and their Island Estate friends said Casey's death and the attitudes of police toward the incident make little sense.

"The total insensitivity to the fact that you're killing a family member," Steve Gillespie said. "The dog has never been a nuisance. I just don't get it."

A supervisory review found that the shooting complied with Police Department regulations on the use of force.

Asked whether officers had options other than shooting Casey, Shelor said evidently not.

"I'm sure the officers did what they thought was necessary," he said. "I don't know the details of the situation."

Shelor said Casey's death has had no effect on police relations with the homeless.

But the homeless said it has bred mistrust and fear.

"I feel like she took a bullet for us," Fisher said. "All that aggression they were feeling, they took it out on her instead of on us."

But Fisher said he is not blameless.

"I take full responsibility for my actions," he said. "I shouldn't have been drinking a beer."

If he hadn't, Casey wouldn't have died. So he promised his pup that he would stop drinking. He kept the promise until April 1, when he faltered and got into three fights. And court records show that on April 12, he was again cited on an allegation of having an open container of alcohol in public and faces arrest again because officials said he failed to appear for arraignment on that citation. Fisher, who admitted to other charges, denied these latest allegations.

Moreover, Fisher said, with the help of Steve Gillespie, he has been going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, sometimes twice a day.

Staying sober poses a serious challenge for Fisher. He talks candidly about struggling with addiction. Never married, he once said his family has a history of bipolar disorder and acknowledged that he has had trouble his whole life with anything long term.

But if Casey could motivate Fisher to truly stop drinking, then maybe she was the best dog in the whole, wide world.

[Last modified April 22, 2006, 19:04:11]