PAIN RELIEF

Year After Deputy's Shooting, Scott County Struggles for Answers, Healing

HUNTSVILLE, Tenn. - A panicked voice shatters the silence of this frigid
November night. "You need to get an ambulance out here to Williams Creek
right now," Scott County Sheriff's Department Deputy Donnie Phillips shouts
into his radio.

"What ya got, Donnie?" a dispatcher asks. Where, why, who, she prods. A
deputy phones, "What ya got?" "I have no idea," the dispatcher responds.
"What's Donnie got?" Sheriff Jim Carson wants to know. "I don't know,
sheriff," the dispatcher answers. "We need help down here right now!"
Phillips screams. "We need help now. Step the ambulance up." And then he
says it - two words that will reduce this dispatcher to tears before the
night is over, send this close-knit mountain community into a tailspin
before the week is over and put this sheriff and his son at the center of a
firestorm before the year is over. "Officer down!" Phillips yells. "Officer
down!" A path to death It was Phillips' twin brother, Oneida Police Officer
Ronnie Phillips, who would put Scott County lawmen on the path to Williams
Creek Road on that fateful night, Nov. 28, 2003. Days before, a clerk at
the Country Store in Oneida told Officer Phillips a man had bought an
unusually big stash of matches.

The clerk, recently schooled in telltale purchasing habits of
methamphetamine makers, didn't know the man but jotted down his license
plate number. The plate was registered to Ryan Clark, a ne'er-do-well who
lived in a tree-shrouded, ramshackle trailer on Williams Creek. Officer
Phillips passed along the information to Scott County deputies. It was
Deputy Marty Carson's job to check out the tip. Son of the sheriff, Marty
Carson was not just a deputy.

He wore the patch of a "drug officer," a bit of a status symbol, locals
say, in an agency where a starting deputy's salary is less than $18,000 a
year. Marty Carson was at a pivotal point in his nine-year law enforcement
career. He was on the verge of being promoted to chief deputy.

There was talk he would run for his dad's job in 2006. Before heading out
to Williams Creek, Marty Carson called on Sgt. Hubert Dean "John John"
Yancey, a seven-year veteran, who was also said to be pondering a run at
the sheriff's slot. His dad had made a run at the job in 1994 but lost to
Marty Carson's father. Around 8 p.m. on Nov. 28, Marty Carson and Yancey
arrived together at Clark's trailer.

Donnie Phillips and Deputy Carl Newport met them there. They planned a
"knock-and-talk," police code for trying to talk your way into a house
without a search warrant. No one else in the agency, it seemed, knew they
were there.

Dispatchers would later report that they were never told where the four
deputies were or why. Clark arrived at his trailer on a four-wheeler to
discover the deputies. Yancey greeted him, and Marty Carson headed to the
front door, where Clark's girlfriend, Nicole Windle, let him in. What
happened in the next five to 10 minutes has since proven fodder for debate,
conspiracy theories and even murder allegations. The only thing anyone
knows for sure is that Marty Carson went into the trailer alone, followed
minutes later by Yancey. A single gunshot cracked the air. Marty Carson ran
out of the trailer.

Yancey did not. The 35-year-old married father of three lay bleeding on the
floor of the trailer hallway. Chaos followed. "I don't know what's going
on," a dispatcher would say minutes later. "I heard them say we've got an
officer down." Clark said he took off the moment he heard the gunshot,
running into the woods behind his trailer.

Two people who had been staying with him - Mark Rector and Pennie Campbell
- - slipped out of the trailer and into the woods soon after Marty Carson
fled. Windle remained inside with Yancey. "I know she did everything in her
power to console him," her attorney, Philip Kazee, said in an interview
last week. It's not clear from records or radio transmissions exactly where
Marty Carson was. But he was the first on the scene to offer a clue about
what happened. "We've got one with a shotgun in the woods," Carson says on
the radio. By now, an ambulance was speeding toward the trailer, with
Phillips continuing his feverish pitch on the radio for the medical crew to
hurry. Yancey, records would later show, was losing blood at an alarming
rate. His left lung was collapsing. The ambulance arrived at 8:26 p.m., 11
minutes after it was summoned. Despite Phillips' plea for a speedy arrival,
the ambulance crew was barred from going into the trailer for three minutes
because someone had deemed it "unsafe," according to a Scott County
Ambulance Service report. Once cleared to treat Yancey, the ambulance crew
was told the sergeant had been shot "possibly" by a "shotgun slug to the
upper torso," the report stated. The crew was not allowed to render aid to
Yancey inside the trailer, once again being told it was "unsafe," the
report stated.

Yancey was loaded into the ambulance and whisked away to the Scott County
Hospital, where his wife works as a nurse. Meanwhile, calls were pouring
into the Scott County dispatch office.

Some callers were curious.

Others offered help, including police as close as Oneida and as far away as
Kentucky. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation was summoned. Initially,
dispatchers were not told who had been shot. Yancey's wife was among the
worried relatives who phoned in search of information. "Hey, this is Lori,"
she says to a dispatcher. "That's not John John, was it?" The dispatcher
responds, "We don't know which one it was." Tennessee Highway Patrol Lt.
Ray Fletcher was the next person to call. He requested a "rundown" of the
situation, including any suspect information. He had three troopers headed
to the area, ready for a manhunt. "Fletcher, I got an officer down," Chief
Deputy Ted Carson responds. "I don't even know who it is." Fletcher asks,
"What kind of perimeter do we need to set up?" "I don't know if they've
caught the guy or not," Ted Carson answers. Word soon spread that it was
Yancey who had been shot. Chief of Detectives Robby Carson, a relative of
the sheriff, headed to the hospital.

Yancey's wife also had been sent there. Back at the trailer, the area was
teeming with officers in search of clues to whoever shot Yancey. Before
long, two names surfaced: Clark and a man named Mark Shane New. "If the
jailers can, see if we have a file on a Mark New, and if we do, pull it up,
print a few copies of his picture there and hold it for us and (do the same
for) Ryan Clark," a deputy tells the dispatcher. News of New's possible
involvement spread like wildfire.

Why is not clear.

A state trooper who was at the hospital inquiring about possible suspects
asked a dispatcher, "Is it Mark New?" He then rattled off a litany of
information about New, including details on where New might be headed. The
Kentucky State Police also phoned, offering to set up a roadblock at the
state line to stop New, who they figured might flee to his brother's home
in McCreary County, Ky. A dispatcher tried to radio the sheriff, who
reports having cell phone problems. She tells him about all the offers for
law enforcement help in tracking their suspects.

Does he need any, she asks. "Not right now," the sheriff responds. "Tell
them no." TBI Agent Steve Vinsant had arrived at the trailer.

By 10 p.m., Yancey was dead. Dr. Maxwell Huff is Scott County's medical
examiner.

Records indicate he examined Yancey's body at the hospital and took x-rays
that showed a bullet lodged in Yancey's spine. His examination prompted him
to demand that Vinsant come to the hospital, 911 transmissions show. Lori
Yancey, meanwhile, had a demand of her own: She and her relatives wanted to
talk to Marty Carson. "Marty's tied up right now," an unknown deputy
responds on the radio. "Lori wants him up here," a deputy at the hospital
says. "She's wanting to talk to him." A second request for Vinsant to go to
the hospital was then made. "Tell (Vinsant that) Dr. Huffman has requested
him to be up here," a deputy at the hospital says. At the same time, a
dispatcher was again asked to round up Marty Carson at Lori Yancey's
request. "He's out of radio range," she responds. As Vinsant headed to the
hospital, a dispatcher radioed a deputy at the trailer with news that
photographs of suspects Clark and New had been found. "I got them pictures
ready for you," she says. The deputy answers, "Just hold onto them." As it
turned out, authorities did not need those pictures to find Yancey's
killer. He was right there among them, wearing a Scott County uniform.

A killer among us Exactly when the TBI determined that Marty Carson - not a
shotgun-armed meth maker - had killed Yancey has never been publicly disclosed.

State law has set the TBI apart from most governmental bodies that are
required to follow Tennessee's Public Records Law. That agency, which is
almost always summoned to offer an independent investigation of
police-involved incidents, is shielded by state law from ever having to
open its files to the public. The Scott County Sheriff's Department -
through county attorney John Beaty - insists that agency filed no reports
on the shooting and does not have an internal affairs division.

Beaty referred a request for 911 recordings to a separate entity.

Recordings obtained by the News Sentinel appear incomplete and abruptly end
mid-sentence some two hours after the shooting. But there are some details
available in court records and media reports. Twelve hours after Yancey was
shot, his body was in the morgue at the University of Tennessee Medical
Center. Dr. Darinka Mileusnic, an assistant to Knox County Medical Examiner
Dr. Sandra Elkins, started an autopsy at 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 29, 2003. She
quickly dispelled the notion that Yancey had been struck by a shotgun
blast. According to her report, Yancey was struck in the left front
shoulder. The wound was small, just three-tenths of an inch in diameter.

The bullet traveled from left to right at a "slightly downward" angle,
pierced his chest, broke his third rib, struck his lungs and lodged in his
spine. Yancey had on a bulletproof vest, but the bullet hit his shoulder in
that small section not covered by the life-saving armor. Mileusnic noted
that the wound itself showed no signs of "close-range firing," but she
could not determine how close Yancey's killer was when the bullet was fired
because his clothing was not sent along with the body. She recovered from
Yancey's spine a "deformed medium caliber copper-jacketed bullet." She gave
it to Jim Smith, a Scott County deputy sent to attend the autopsy. At the
same time she was performing an autopsy, Agent Vinsant was requesting a
search warrant for Clark's trailer.

In his affidavit, Vinsant relied on Marty Carson's account of what happened
in the trailer. According to the affidavit, Marty Carson said he "heard
movement behind a door" at the bedroom at the rear of the trailer.

He also said he "heard a shotgun being loaded," the affidavit stated. "The
(bedroom) door partially opened," Vinsant wrote. "Deputy Carson saw a
shadow and what looked to be a shotgun being held chest-high pointed at the
door. Deputy Carson took cover (in a bathroom some five feet from the
bedroom). Deputy Carson then saw the barrel of a gun, and he fired a shot.
"Deputy Carson left the bathroom and found Deputy Yancey in the hallway,
wounded," the agent wrote. "Deputy Carson yelled for the other officers to
take cover because the occupant had a gun. Deputy Carson heard a loud noise
in the woods and limbs cracking." Vinsant did not ask to search the trailer
for a shotgun, however.

He wanted to look for "a Glock semi-automatic pistol" or "any other weapons
or instrumentalities relevant to the investigation of criminal homicide."
The agent wrote that he believed the Glock was "possessed" by Clark. The
affidavit offers no explanation for why Vinsant believed a Glock, the type
of weapon used by Marty Carson and other deputies, was involved in Yancey's
death or why he believed it might still be in Clark's trailer. Missing from
the court file is the search warrant "return," a document that would have
listed what items were found at the trailer.

But authorities have conceded that none of the four meth users in the
trailer had any weapons that night. It's not clear where Yancey's Glock was
found or where it is now. It's also not clear from court records whether
Yancey had drawn his gun when he went into the trailer.

Windle has said in at least one of her statements that she saw a handgun in
the bathroom sometime after Yancey had been shot. On the same day that
Vinsant went in search of a Glock at the trailer, Robby Carson told the
News Sentinel that a "pistol" had been used to shoot Yancey and authorities
knew who the shooter was. He did not elaborate. Legal documents allege that
no one told Yancey's relatives - or the public - that Marty Carson had shot
Yancey. Marty Carson would serve as a pallbearer at Yancey's funeral.

Yancey's wife contends in legal records that Marty Carson lied to her about
what happened that night. Like most Scott Countians, the Yanceys believed
the foursome of meth users in the trailer were responsible for Yancey's
death. All four had been located.

Windle was in the trailer when authorities arrived to investigate the shooting.

Rector and Carpenter, both barefoot and dressed in underwear, had spent the
freezing night in the woods and, the following morning, walked up to
deputies searching for them and surrendered. Clark surrendered to Sheriff
Carson at Clark's father's house around the same time. Attorney Kazee said
the community was so up in arms over Yancey's death, a jail cell likely was
a better alternative for the suspects than freedom. "The danger to these
people was very real," he said. It would be four days and just hours before
Yancey's funeral was set to begin before his family was finally informed
that the bullet that felled Yancey was fired from Marty Carson's gun. At a
press conference five days after Yancey's death, District Attorney General
Paul Phillips and Sheriff Carson appeared together to reveal that Marty
Carson had killed Yancey. They called it a "tragic accident," the result of
confusion, chaos and darkness inside the trailer.

The real culprit, they said, was not Marty Carson but methamphetamine. "We
must turn this tragedy into a renewed and maximum effort to rid our county
of these filthy drugs," the pair said in a joint press release.

A kettle of trouble "It's so rampant here," Kazee said of methamphetamine.
Kazee is tapped to represent meth suspects in their court woes at least
once a week. He notes the Public Defender's Office handles even more meth
cases. He and Beaty look to the demographics of Scott County and its people
for the reason the drug has taken hold there. "It's called one of the
highest employment rates in the state," Kazee said. "It's easy money.

It's so easy to make. People make it out of their cars. People make it out
of motel rooms.

They have cook-offs." Scott County is sprawling, one of the largest
counties in the state.

But its population is less than 22,000. It is home to Howard H. Baker Jr.,
U.S. ambassador to Japan and a former Tennessee senator, and a portion of
the popular Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area. Coal mining
sustained generations of Scott Countians. But the mining business
eventually dried up, leaving widespread poverty and unemployment in its
wake. Folks here have long depended on each other to make it through the
tough times, Beaty said. "This is still a very close-knit community," he
said. "It seems there are four or five big families, and, so, there's a lot
of kinship back and forth." Its rugged rural nature may breed toughness in
its people, but it also serves up a perfect atmosphere for meth making and
using, Kazee contends. Meth makers need only round up a recipe for the
powerfully addictive dope and head out to a local store for all the
ingredients. Its use has become so popular that few families in this
community have not been touched by it. Yancey himself once arrested his
cousin for having the drug. Clark, Rector and Carpenter would tell
authorities that they had been cooking meth in Clark's trailer for at least
two weeks before Yancey's shooting. Rector was the head chef. He was in the
rear bedroom with Carpenter that night, preparing a batch of meth. Despite
authorities' contention that these meth users and their meth habit were the
real cause of Yancey's death, none of them was ever charged in connection
with it. Clark, Rector and Carpenter were indicted for manufacturing meth.
Rector and Carpenter later admitted attempting to make the drug - none was
found in the trailer that night - and spent a year in jail. Clark's case
has yet to be resolved.

He was allowed to go to a drug treatment center in Mississippi but skipped
out after 10 days. He was arrested but freed days later.

His only duty, court records show, was to hold down a job. He remains free,
and no trial date has been set in his case. A 27-year-old mother of two,
Windle was a meth addict in love with Clark, Kazee said. "She is an
extremely caring person," Kazee said. "It's unfortunate the circumstances
she found herself in." Where she found herself, the attorney insists, was
inside a trailer where she became an eyewitness to Yancey's death. "She
definitely was in the trailer through the whole ordeal," he said. "It has
been very traumatic on her." She was never indicted for making meth and
instead received probation for misdemeanor possession of drug
paraphernalia. Kazee said Windle was trying to get her life together,
completing a drug treatment program in October. But a month later, she
would again find herself in the midst of chaos - a key witness to
allegations of murder. A shadow of doubt Windle's statement to the TBI
belies some of the key claims by Marty Carson about what happened in that
trailer. He said it was dark, especially in that tiny bathroom where he
would take cover. Windle contends there were lights on in the trailer,
enough for her to see both Carson and Yancey. She insists it was a light in
the rear bathroom that caught Carson's attention. Carson has told the TBI
he had no idea Yancey came into the trailer.

In fact, he said he specifically told other deputies to stay out. Windle
puts Carson and Yancey together, heading toward the bedroom.

Rector also said in a statement to the TBI that he heard more than one
deputy's voice before a gunshot was fired. Windle said Carson "hollered at
the officers, 'Boys, he's in here,' " indicating the bedroom. "Marty
hollered for (a suspect) to come out, and no one ever did," Windle told the
TBI. "Then I heard a gunshot.

The gunshot came from the back of the trailer. (Yancey) was still in the
hallway with his back to me, and then he just fell down." Windle's account
was not the only thing that troubled Yancey's widow in the weeks following
her husband's death, legal documents show. She wondered what became of Mark
New, the man labeled a possible suspect in her husband's death.

Legal documents allege that Marty Carson had come to Yancey a few days
before the shooting, seeking his help in finding New, who Carson claimed
was a dangerous fugitive on a "ten most wanted list." It was New, the widow
contends, that her husband and Carson were supposed to be on the hunt for
the night Yancey died. New was at his home, located a few miles from
Clark's trailer, that night. He was not wanted. Then, there were the
autopsy findings, which seemed to Yancey's relatives to call into question
Marty Carson's explanation for the shooting when viewed in light of the
layout of the trailer. The bathroom from which Carson said he fired his gun
was on the right side of the hallway and about five feet closer to the
front of the trailer than the bedroom where Carson said his attention was
focused. Yancey, both sides agree, was walking down the hallway toward the
bedroom. His right shoulder would have been on the same side of the hallway
as the bathroom. He was shot in the left shoulder, the bullet entering from
the left in the front of his shoulder and traveling right and toward the
back at a slightly downward angle, the autopsy showed. The bullet's path
raised questions for Yancey's widow.

Why did Marty Carson fire his gun toward the hall and away from the
bedroom, and how was Yancey struck in the front left shoulder if Carson
fired from the bathroom doorway? Lori Yancey was so disturbed by her
lingering doubts that she hired Knoxville attorney Herbert S. Moncier to
investigate. Just days shy of the one-year anniversary of her husband's
death, Lori Yancey gave Moncier approval to file a $10 million lawsuit
against Scott County, Sheriff Carson, Marty Carson, Robby Carson, Phillips
and Newport. In it, she claimed Marty Carson murdered her husband to
eliminate competition in the upcoming sheriff's race, and the remaining
defendants conspired together to help him cover it up. When news of her
lawsuit hit, New immediately filed his own (seeking $3 million), claiming
Marty Carson intended to use him as a fall guy for the slaying, misleading
authorities into believing New killed Yancey and leading them on a mission
to kill him if he tried to flee.

A sheriff under siege "I've been around politics and in government 20
something years, and nothing surprises me anymore," Scott County Mayor
Dwight Murphy said last week. "This surprised me." He isn't alone.

The lawsuits are all that anyone in this mountain enclave can seem to talk
about. But not everyone is surprised.

As a lady at a local bait shop - afraid to give her name - said, "It's
about time things started coming out." Count her in the camp that believes
Marty Carson has something to hide. Others stand by Carson, even if they
think he mishandled the raid of Clark's trailer. "I think most people felt
like it was an accident," Kazee said. "It was obviously a tragedy that
caused a lot of pain." A few folks here aren't sure one way or the other.
"I really don't know what to think," Fairview Elementary School science
teacher Hoyal Hudson said. "I know (Sheriff Carson) and Marty. They's
always good to me." So far, the TBI stands by its ruling that Marty Carson
accidentally killed Yancey. The case remains open, the agency says, just in
case. For a man whose son and his agency are under fire, Sheriff Carson was
downright cordial to a reporter who showed up on his doorstep asking
questions last week. That's the kind of guy he is, Kazee says. "He treats
everybody the same," Kazee said. "He's as likely to get the votes of
inmates' families as he is from anyone else. He's an amiable guy." But he
is also a man who has borne more burdens in one year than most. First, his
son Marty shot one of his most valuable employees.

Five months later, another son, Deputy Kevin Carson, got drunk and drugged
up, broke into an ex-girlfriend's house and put a gun to her head. He
pleaded guilty, had to leave his job without pay for a year and stay out of
trouble.

Just two months after that, a third son, carpenter James Carson, died when
his house caught fire. Investigators believe he accidentally started it
himself, falling asleep with a lit cigarette. Now he faces two lawsuits and
a community divided over whether he is a sheriff under political attack or
a father trying to cover up his son's heinous crime. He's glad to tell a
visitor about the construction work going on at his department. He doesn't
hide the fact that "the state's on me about" overcrowding at his jail. But
he won't talk about the lawsuits, his son or the sergeant whose body rests
miles away under a shiny, massive black tombstone framed by two glass stars
signifying the deputy's badge he once wore so proudly. The sheriff has work
to do. The garbage cans are full, and he needs to take out the trash.