LIVES FRACTURED BY DEA SHOOTING

The career of a trusted 30-year-old federal agent who only recently was
investigating reports of corruption within the Jacksonville Sheriff's
Office is in limbo.

The Drug Enforcement Administration placed Christopher Sean Martin on
administrative leave Friday as authorities continued to investigate the
Monday shooting death of 24-year-old Curt Ferryman, said Florida DEA
spokeswoman Pam Brown. Martin is the city's first DEA agent involved in a
fatal shooting.

Martin, who police said had great trouble coping with his misfortune last
week, did not answer the door at his upscale St. Johns County home Friday
afternoon.

Key facts in the Westside shooting are still gray, and information from
both Brown and various public records offers only a limited view into the
agent's netherworld of informants, busts and investigations.

But the scant information available does reflect a few definitive lines and
colors. This half-finished painting partly resembles the portraits of
several other DEA agents, who recently faced scrutiny following other
shootings at narcotics stings in Florida and other states.

Martin's DEA career started about four years ago, Brown said. She declined
to say where Martin earned a living before he embarked on about 16 weeks of
initial training at the Basic Agent School in Quantico, Va.

But public records show that he lived in La Jolla, Calif., in the
mid-1990s, when he had a pilot's license that enabled him to fly commercial
aircraft.

Martin married a 26-year-old St. John's County woman in June 1998.

About a year ago, he was assigned to the DEA office in Jacksonville,
joining a close-knit team of about 15 agents working under the supervision
of Robert Starratt, the resident agent in charge.

Starratt was not authorized to answer questions about Martin's case, but he
was willing to discuss the DEA's presence in the community.

The Jacksonville office, which covers about seven counties in Northeast
Florida, seized $2.1 million in assets in 1999. Its staff have tallied 154
arrests this year and seized $1.3 million in assets, a figure that does not
include confiscated narcotics.

Jacksonville's two major highways, its port -- one of the largest in the
country -- and a location in the narcotics gateway of the Southeast makes
it an enticing place for drug traffickers, Starratt said.

Amid these surroundings, Martin worked numerous assignments.

Brown said some of those assignments were cases where he was designated
lead investigator.

At no time during his career has Martin been involved in a shooting, and he
has never been the focus of any "adverse disciplinary action," Brown said.

Most recently, about 90 percent of the agent's time was devoted to working
with the U.S. Attorney's Office on a joint probe into police corruption
within the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, Brown said.

A federal-state task force and a grand jury are investigating reports that
local police tipped off drug dealers and may have been involved in a killing.

But Monday evening, Martin was diverted to a narcotics interdiction
operation being conducted by another task force. It included detectives
from the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, the Florida Department of Law
Enforcment, the FBI, the DEA and U.S. Customs Service.

Police say Martin approached Ferryman to arrest him shortly after an
undercover agent acquired about $50,000 worth of marijuana from Ferryman
during a roadside rendezvous on Imeson Road.

It is unclear why Martin's gun was discharged.

The killing was the first ever by a Jacksonville DEA agent, said Brown.

But the DEA has not been immune from such occurrences, both in Florida and
elsewhere.

In 1997, a DEA agent was charged in the death of a 39-year-old woman in
Pembroke Pines, according to published reports. The same 55-year-old agent
previously was cleared by Philadelphia police for shooting and killing a
man armed with a knife in a Philadelphia barroom in 1978, reports said.

Last year, a state grand jury in Orange County ruled that a 36-year-old DEA
agent was justified when he shot a suspect who appeared to be reaching for
a gun during a drug deal in Orlando.

And earlier this summer in St. Louis, a DEA agent and a police officer shot
an unarmed drug suspect and a passenger in a car the suspect backed into an
undercover police car. A special prosecutor has been assigned to that case.

Assistant State Attorney Laura Starrett, who is with the Duval County
special prosecutions division, said any fatal shooting requires the state
to consider whether the case is a justifiable homicide, excusable homicide,
manslaughter, second-degree murder or first-degree murder.

She declined to make any comments regarding the direction of Martin's case.

Whatever the outcome, the ordeal is any law enforcer's worst nightmare.

"No one wants a gunfight," said Vince Rice, a San Diego DEA agent who was
willing to discuss the general risks associated with making an arrest
during such a sting. "People get hurt. It's a scary thing."

"He was doing the right thing if he was approaching with his gun drawn,"
Rice said. "You better have your gun out because bad guys have guns."