Deputy wounds man, but incident is disputed

The man is in fair condition, the deputy is placed on leave and the FDLE is investigating.

By THOMAS LAKE, Times Staff Writer
Published October 18, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT Stephen Miholics, 23, was in fair condition Wednesday.

HOLIDAY - There is some dispute over what happened in the preceding milliseconds, but it is apparent now that the man was drunk, holding some kind of knife, and the deputy fired.

"They killed me," the man told his mother as he held the wound in his chest. "They killed me."

The man had not, in fact, been killed - he was listed in fair condition Wednesday at Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg - but the events that led to his shooting are now part of a state investigation.

Sheriff Bob White likes to say that every time a deputy pulls the trigger, the bullet had better be righteous.

Was this bullet righteous?

Here's what we know so far.

Stephen Miholics came home depressed and falling-down drunk Tuesday night to 3450 Devonshire Drive, according to his mother, Dorothy. He punched out a window on the back porch. He kicked the door. His sister called for a deputy.

Miholics is 23. His arrest record includes charges of child abuse, lewd or lascivious battery and aggravated assault with a weapon. His mother says that for reasons she's not sure of, he picked up a butter knife and a metal spatula.

He was holding these when the deputies arrived.

One of the deputies was John Ardolino, 33, who made the news in 2003 when a traffic violator he was chasing through Lacoochee crashed into a palm tree and died. The crash worsened racial tension; the following month, Lt. Bo Harrison was shot and killed in an apparent act of misguided revenge.

So there was Miholics, armed or at least semi-armed, and there was Ardolino, and this is what happened next, according to sheriff's spokesman Kevin Doll:

"Initial reports indicate that Miholics was armed with a knife in each hand when he confronted the deputies. Deputy Ardolino ordered him to drop the weapons. Miholics refused, moved toward the deputies, and was shot once in the chest by Deputy Ardolino."

Dorothy Miholics was standing right there, and she disagrees.

She says the deputies approached her son, and he had the butter knife and the spatula in his hands, but his hands stayed down at his sides and he never approached the deputies.

She said she never heard anyone tell her son to drop the weapons.

"He was frozen," she said. "He didn't move. I didn't move, he didn't move."

Agency policies allow deputies to fire upon suspects who are demonstrating aggressive physical resistance, defined in the general order as such:

"The subject makes overt, hostile, attacking movements with or without a weapon with the intent and apparent ability to cause death or great bodily harm to the member or others."

Doll, the spokesman, says he believes Miholics' behavior fit that description.

In any case, as is agency policy, Ardolino has been placed on paid administrative leave while the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigates the shooting.

Dorothy Miholics spoke with her son on the phone Wednesday afternoon. He told her something about a bullet and his heart and his liver, and then he had to go, because he was having trouble breathing.

Thomas Lake can be reached at tlake@sptimes.com or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6245.

[Last modified October 17, 2007, 21:34:35]