Victim no stranger to Hernando sheriff

A couple of weeks ago, the 25-year-old asked him about getting a job at the Sheriff's Office.

By JOHN FRANK, Times Staff Writer
Published November 28, 2007

BROOKSVILLE - Sheriff Richard Nugent received the call last week just after 2 p.m. He was painting at his family's place in St. Augustine, where they went for Thanksgiving, when he learned two Hernando deputies were involved in a shooting that left 25-year-old Kyle Gabelman dead.

The name jolted Nugent.

"I said, 'I know him,'" Nugent recalled on Tuesday. "He and my older son, Ryan, were real close childhood friends. You always expect it to be a stranger."

Nugent quickly showered, jumped in the car and steered back to Spring Hill.

Gabelman died Nov. 20 in his parents' Banyan Road driveway. The Sheriff's Office said deputies returned fire after Gabelman shot at them. The incident is still under investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, but witnesses dispute authorities' version of events.

Gabelman, who did lawn maintenance work, and Ryan Nugent, now 26 and serving in the Army in Afghanistan, went to school together. They spent nights at each other's homes. And they played on the same Dixie League baseball team, coached by Nugent. The sheriff's chief deputy, Mike Hensley, went to church with Gabelman's parents.

"His mom and dad are two of the nicest people you could ever meet," Nugent said. "Our hearts just go out to the Gabelmans."

The sheriff spoke for the first time publicly about the shooting during an interview with the St. Petersburg Times.

Nugent said his son and Gabelman split ways in high school. "A group of Kyle's friends started doing bad things and he got caught up with it," he said. "The last time they hung out was maybe eighth grade, maybe a couple times in the first year of high school."

Nugent doesn't remember when Gabelman began homeschooling. He knows a few years after his son lost touch, Gabelman began to do drugs and get in trouble with the law. Court records show a DUI charge in 2004 and one for retail theft in 2007.

But Gabelman said he was turning his life around. He called Nugent about two weeks ago to inquire about a job in law enforcement.

"Kyle said he got better," Nugent said. "I don't think it was true. I think he was in denial."

Nugent gently told Gabelman that his criminal past would prevent him from getting a job at the Sheriff's Office but encouraged him to apply to a smaller agency. "I didn't want to burst his bubble," he said.

Arriving back in Hernando County last week, Nugent first met with the two deputies involved in the shooting - Michael Glatfelter, 45, and Christopher Croft, 33 - and another who had contact with Gabelman in the back yard before events escalated.

"It's not a situation you want to go through. One of the officers, he had 23 years on the job and never fired his weapon," the sheriff said of Glatfelter. "You want to go through your whole career like that.

"But the thing is, your training takes over.

Later, Nugent met with Gabelman's parents, Tom and Debbie, and his grandmother.

"We talked for a while," he said. "We go back a long ways."

Mostly Nugent listened as Tom Gabelman did most the talking. He felt guilty, Nugent said. He wondered if he could have prevented the shooting by helping calm his youngest son.

Gabelman heatedly argued with his parents for hours before the shooting, leaving and returning to their home. The last time he returned with a small black handgun. Once more they argued before Gabelman stepped out the front door and the guns fired, investigators said.

"I told him, I don't think Kyle would hurt you intentionally, but you don't know that and (the officers) didn't know that," Nugent said.

Tom Gabelman asked the sheriff why they had to shoot him dead and not just shoot to knock him down. Witnesses reported that one deputy fired a semiautomatic assault rifle. "I said the adrenaline takes over and you don't have that accuracy," Nugent said.

The sheriff defended his deputies' actions and disputed some witness accounts about whether Gabelman fired at them or into the air. But he couldn't say more because of the ongoing investigation.

"Based upon what I know," he said, "I'm very confident" the deputies will be cleared.

John Frank can be reached at jfrank@sptimes.com or 754-6114.

[Last modified November 27, 2007, 22:31:33]