HEROIN MADE HIM DO IT, SAYS CARJACKER

He Robbed Bank To Pay His Drug Dealer, Ball Says

WEST BEND -- A man sentenced to 40 years in prison for attacking a
Washington County sheriff's deputy and carjacking a Cadillac while naked
says heroin was his downfall.

"I could go without seeing my girlfriend for four days, but I couldn't go
without heroin for that long," Thomas F. Ball II said in a jail interview.

Ball, 25, said his addiction put him in debt to a drug dealer and he robbed
a Town of Addison bank a year ago to pay off his debts as well as those of
a friend.

After his arrest, Ball was taken to a hospital for treatment of his
addiction. While there, he attacked a deputy and took her handgun. Shots
were fired in the hospital, and he fled after losing his hospital gown. He
stole a Cadillac and led authorities on a high-speed chase through downtown
Cedarburg, which was crowded with Sunday shoppers. Still naked, he ran from
the car and through an assisted-living facility.

Then an Ozaukee County sheriff's deputy shot Ball twice in his bare backside.

"I didn't want to kill anybody," Ball said. "I was going crazy in that
hospital room. I had to get out of there."

Ball was convicted of reckless endangerment, armed carjacking, escape,
battery, disarming a peace officer and being a felon in possession of a
firearm. But he was acquitted of attempting to kill Detective Marie Joers,
whose gun he stole in the hospital.

Joers, a widow with two children, told Washington County Circuit Judge
Annette Ziegler on Friday that the incident "changed my life forever." She
said she sometimes wished she had been shot, because then people would know
that Ball fired the gun at her.

District Attorney Todd Martens said Ball "turned a hospital wing into a war
zone."

Ball learned nothing in a previous prison stay, Martens added. "In fact,
365 days after his release, he was robbing a bank."

Martin Kohler, Ball's lawyer, said his client is a bright man who could
have done or been anything he wanted. He also said: "At some point, this
man will no longer be a threat. The aging process will take care of that, I
think. I don't think it is wrong to give him some hope for a life."

"But for your bad choices, but for your drug addition, you could have had a
very different life," the judge told Ball. "To see you flush your own life
down the toilet, that is what is so difficult here."