all right good afternoon everybody GNA uh start out uh talking about uh the shooting incident that happened on two Tuesday uh down on 46th Avenue North and I wanted to give you an update I know we did a press conference down there at the scene that day and have since provided some updates uh but I want to kind of run through the scenario and we have uh some video uh that we're going to release and play for you here of course we'll go through it here and then we'll have copies of it available for you just to kind of recap uh the person who did the shooting on Tuesday is Larry hod is a 65-year-old male that was living at 4809 46 avue North Apartment 1 in lman area which is unincorporated St Petersburg as we know this event occurred on Tuesday October 11th at about 12:50 p.m. so if we go back in time uh regarding hod uh we have records of complaints going back to 1992 that hod was stalking and exposing himself to Young children hod was living elsewhere he wasn't living at the 46 Avenue location and he didn't move into that residence until about 2005 in 1992 hod was arrested for exposure of sexual organs in 1993 reports indicate he was having neighbor disputes and told neighbors he would hurt anyone who continually harassed him in one 1993 incident hod had issues with a neighbor who was walking his dog uh thator heard what he described at the time the sound of a gun being cocked uh hod admitted owning the gun but he Deni denied threatening the neighbor in 1996 hod was arrested for lud and lascivious behavior and he was acquitted at a trial we have no record of any contact with hod between 1996 and 2010 now that doesn't mean anything other than the penel County Sheriff's Office and what we can determine at this point here in p County didn't have any contact with him but remember all the law enforcement agencies in pelis County have different records Management Systems so there may have been contact with other law enforcement agencies but just not with us or those that are on our records management system in 2010 uh hod was living again back here at this 46th Avenue address and we received similar complaints about neighbor disputes and his uh interaction and antagonistic interaction with his neighbors and those complaints were received again in 2010 2011 2012 and 2014 we didn't receive anything in 2015 and we received one complaint again in April of 2016 in a 2014 uh complaint hod actually called us and said that he had a shotgun pointed at him by one of his neighbors uh that allegation was determined to be unfounded uh and hod himself was Baker acted as a result of that incident many neighbors in that 46 Avenue area so we're talking about 46th Avenue uh to the uh north of 46th Avenue uh up to about 47th Avenue and from 47th way to the west and there were many individual residences in that area some duplexes and triplexes but many of those people had complained to the landlord about hod and request Ed that he be evicted but these complaints were for many Petty things um and I think that the landlord and others thought that these were your typical uh neighborhood disputes and they were complaints about things like people not bringing in their trash can not picking up their dogs after they walked them um of that nature and then hod would get back at them by leaving his trash out and letting it pile up those kinds of things that were these neighborhood uh spats then this past June uh hod uh complained that he and Shan Smith and Sean Smith is a victim of the shooting by hod um and they lived in the same Triplex so at that same address you had three apartments one two and three hod lived in one and Sean Smith lived in two and they had a shared garage and hod complained that there was a joint light in the garage that cost a whole whopping uh $18 a year to power up that light but ho didn't like the fact that that light was a shared light and it was costing him money so you complained to the landlord the landlord said that they would cover the cost but that wasn't enough for hod and he decided that he was going to cut the power cord to the light well at that point um that kind of was a breaking point for the landlord and the landlord decided uh based upon all of this even though it was many Petty things for a long time that it was time for hod to go and uh it was after that incident that the landlord told hod that he needed to be out by September 1st uh he didn't leave and the landlord initiated the eviction proceedings and it was a result of those eviction proceedings that a deputy arrived on Tuesday morning at about 9:30 and served hod with the eviction papers as I said uh from the scene the other day it was uneventful uh when the deputy arrived he gave hod the eviction papers told him he had to be out within 24 hours um no reaction out ofo nothing unusual what we would consider to be a normal and uneventful service of the eviction papers getting to the more specifics of the incident we believe that at about 12:45 p.m. on Tuesday hod exited his home carrying a 9mm handgun with a 15 round magazine capacity and he had at least one other Magazine with him with additional bullets what we believe happened is that hod went around to the backside or to the north of this Triplex and describe this to you here um so this is 4809 46 Avenue and you can see that you have Apartment One Apartment 2 and apartment 3 again this is where hod lived and this is where Shan Smith lived that is what I'll call a Courtyard area that would be an entrance into sha Smith's residence so what hod had to do is come out of his residence and come back around here and go into that Courtyard area and when hod uh went in into that Courtyard area uh he encountered Smith and we believe Smith had probably just arrived home from work and he uh shot Smith um and struck him in the back the bullet went out into the front and caused just massive injuries to Hod in the abdomen and chest area and Smith also suffered a gunshot wound behind his ear in his neck and head area the landlords employed uh by the name of Allan Cameron is a handyman and he had been working for them there for a period of time and Cameron was painting uh the residents that day at the landlord's Direction so when hod came in he shot sha Smith here Shan Smith drops to the ground and alen Cameron was painting the wall over here facing the wall he heard the gunshots he turned around and when he turned around he saw hod pointing the handgun at him and hod fired at Cameron and he missed the bullet struck the wall and Cameron literally ran for his life and fled Northbound and went out in East exit of the courtyard after Smith's laying on the ground there dying hod left and went over to another neighbor's residence he went to 4813 46 Avenue North which is going to be just to the west and this is the residence of Dave Foreman so again we've got Smith in holds Triplex here and apartment number three was empty so they lived in one and two he leaves the courtyard comes out here and walks around we'll show you some video of that and he goes over here to Dave Foreman's house and again again Dave lives one house to the west of the triplex when hod got to Foreman's house he fired 11 rounds nine rounds into the door one round into the windshield of Foreman's vehicle and another round into a window on the east side Mr Foreman was in his home he was in his office at the time and as you'll see here in the video I'm going to show you thankfully for him his front door was locked because otherwise hod would have gone in and shot him and probably killed him Foreman had installed an extensive video camera system in his home out of concern because of past interactions with hod that hod May tried to harm him Mr Foreman had complained many times about H's actions he had informed other neighbors uh that hod had a criminal history and had accused hod of enticing and photographing neighborhood children so there was a real effort by Foreman for a long time along with other neighbors to get hod out of there again they wanted him evicted they wanted him out they thought that he was uh inappropriate in his actions and his people referred to him as freaky and creepy and that's the way they viewed him and again he was uh antagonistic and was not a Cooperative neighbor so at the Crux of it Foreman had made it clear he wanted to hold out um at one point earlier this year um Foreman had given Smith and his wife some information uh about H's criminal history and the Smiths reached out to the landord and again asked that he be evicted so hod knew that the Smiths that foreman and others were actively trying to get him out and again so that's a background and puts it in context for the eviction papers being served at 9:30 in the morning and what hod did at about 12:45 and began at about 12:45 so what I'm going to do now is Step Aside we'll put the screen down here and I'm going to show you um the video and I'm going to stop it um and hopefully we can do that Spencer we can stop it um after what you're going to see is you're going to see hold is he's leaving the courtyard he's got a gun in his hand he approaches Foreman's house you'll see him shoot into the front door because Forman has a video camera because he's established this elaborate system because he's so concerned about hod that shoots out the front door so you'll see him walk up what you'll see is he tries the door handle the door handle is locked he knocks he steps back and he fires nine rounds he then walks around you don't see this but he fires into the windshield and then you'll see him fire on the east side so after we see him fire on the east side and walk back to the alley stop it at that point okay this is all from Foreman's video system and this is hod walking you can see he's got the gun and Foreman's in the office and hears this and he's walking around to the east side he had already put the round in the windshield and that's when he's firing into the window on the east side and then he comes back out and he walks East in the alley okay so we stop it there so at some point after hod left Foreman's house dumping those 11 rounds into it is is that he acquired a uh 30 out6 rifle uh that had a scope on it and he went to Ed La bounty's home at 4620 47th way which would have been just to the East and to the north from where he was walking where you saw him in the video and Ed is another guy uh Who as a neighbor was fed up and had made it knowing that he wanted hod out of the neighborhood they had had encounters uh again over these what most characterizes Petty neighborhood disputes and he went to Ed's home knocked on the door when he had the rifle in his hand and the 9mm pistol in his hand and asked for Ed he was there to kill Ed and Ed's daughter said he wasn't there uh and uh hod told the daughter stay inside and lock the door at that point hod walked away from the front of Ed's house and walked South and that's when Sergeant Matt mlan was driving north on 47th way from 46th Avenue and encountered hod so when Sergeant mlan is p Northbound on 47th way he saw hod with the rifle his hand and he did not immediately see the handgun hod began to walk to the South and to the west and behind some trees um sergeant mlan and seeing the rifle and seeing hod uh verbally challenged him and ordered him to drop the rifle at that point as he was verbally challenging him H's reaction to the direction by Sergeant mclan to drop the Firearms was to raise his hand with that pistol and Fir three rounds at Sergeant McLean two of the rounds entered Sergeant McLean's Cruiser so as you can see from here and Sergeant McLean is extremely lucky we are all extremely lucky because where Sergeant mlan was standing was right between the two bullet holes so as sergeant mlan is standing encountering hod and telling him to drop the gun and his gun pointed at him at that point and hod fires one round goes here and one round goes here Sergeant mlan upon being fired on uh returned fire and fired three shots and he struck hod in the upper torso and in the uh arm so what I'm going to show you now the rest of this video um is from a another deputy's car who was responding and this Deputy was going westbound on 47th Avenue approaching 47th way so sergant mlan had come in as I explained to you this way he had come into the west and he turned North here on 47th way and this is La bount's home so after shooting up Foreman's house he from someplace acquired the 306 rifle walked over here went to LA bounty's house encountered Lan's daughter and was walking back south when he encountered Sergeant McLean Deputy Nicole Thompson was driving her Cruiser and she was going westbound on 47th Avenue and came South on 47th way so the video you're going to see here is from the dash camera of deputy Thompson's Cruiser and you'll see where Sergeant mlan was and you'll see as he shoots at hod you don't see hod you don't see him go down but that's what you'll see is Sergeant mlan encountering hod so we'll go ahead and play that we're going to show it to you you'll see it a couple times one we slow it down the other is in real time this is Deputy Thompson going south on 47th that's Sergeant McLean's Cruiser parked right in front of her you this is a slowed down version you can see there he's he's pointed his gun at hod he shoots and then he falls because he didn't have any cover so he was trying to get to cover and he fell backward this is after he shot this is real time okay so by all accounts uh hod fired at least 16 rounds and there was no doubt that he was looking to kill other people um by Sergeant McLean's actions in shooting hod there's no doubt that he saved lives and stopped hod from doing what he was intent on doing and and that is a rampage to kill as many people as he could s uh Deputy Jeff Nelson when he arrived on the scene as you can see from the depiction here again we've got well bounty house we've got Smith in H's apartment we've got foreman and here Deputy Nelson and Deputy Savage arrive and when they get there they walk around and they were the first to come in and find Sean Smith because alen Cameron had run for his life literally is that he was just fleeing trying to get away as fast as he could and so sea Smith was laying there on the ground and he had been shot in the back and when uh the deputies got to him Deputy Nelson Sean Smith was still uh awake and he told Deputy Nelson that hod is the one that shot him he was gushing blood out of the front of his chest because the bullet went into the back and blew out the front of his chest and there was a tremendous amount of blood and other bodily fluids just gushing out and in reaction to that uh Deputy Nelson saved Smith's life at least so far Al he's in extremely critical condition and we don't know that he's going to make it Deputy Nelson took off his uniform shirt took off his bulletproof vest and took off his T-shirt and took his T-shirt and literally stuffed it into um Smith's chest and was able to stop the gushing of the blood and the other bodily fluids that were coming out and because of that uh he did not bleed out at the scene when the paramedics got there they loaded Smith up and took him to Bayfront Medical Center to the trauma center and the doctors there had Deputy Nelson literally keep his hand in Smith's chest with his T-shirt stuffed in there until they took him all the way up to the operating room and it wasn't until the operating room that they told him to take it off and then the doctors were able to take over and it it wasn't for Deputy Nelson doing that and literally stripping down and taking his T-shirt to stuff Smith's chest um by all account Smith wouldn't be alive today so Deputy Nelson did a great job and he's really a hero for uh what he did uh we certainly hope that uh Mr Smith survives but I can tell you that uh he is an extremely critical condition his condition is definitely life-threatening uh he was in surgery again today uh hod is also in Bayfront and remains in a critical condition and has had multiple surgeries a detective served a search warrant on H's apartment and found some rambling writings indicating his blame of and dislike uh for his neighbors so as I said hod was on a rampage to kill as many people as he could on Tuesday uh with his 9mm semi-automatic handgun with that 30 out6 rifle with a scope and he had plenty of extra ammunition and he was actively trying to find as many people as he felt responsible for his eviction so that he could kill him so with that that's the situation and overview and happy to answer any questions that you might have we'll get you all a copy of those videos um and what we played up there uh and anything you want from you know what's here on display and and this this is where the rifle and the pistol That's the pistol that he used to do the shooting um and that's where it was as we found it there at the scene after he was shot by Sergeant McLean and that's where things were dropped and you can see the one magazine there and he reloaded you can see in the video when he leaves the east side of Foreman's house you can see the slide locked back so he reloaded in there at some point and he again he had plenty of ammunition with him and there was a lot of ammunition found in the house too anybody got anything before we switch gears to another topic anybody have any questions all right all right so we talk about Deputy Steve Smith um he was employed by the penel county Sheriff's Office is a law enforcement Deputy since October of 2012 prior to that he served as a deputy sheriff with the Baker County Sheriff's Office in Northeast Florida uh while here at the penel County Sheriff's Office Smith was a patrol deputy and a Narcotics detective uh he was assigned to narcotics from September of 2013 until April of 2015 while signed to narcotics uh Smith developed some performance issues such as not turning in reports on time not appearing for court low productivity and other performance issues of that nature Smith was put on a performance Improvement plan in early 2015 but his performance did not improve and he was transferred from narcotics back to patrol while in Patrol he continued to have performance issues uh and that resulted in an internal affairs investigation for which he received a suspension um again uh last month Smith was disciplined for not timely servicing his car and he continued to have performance operate uh performance uh issues uh would not turn into reports low low productivity and things along those lines so he was transferred from the night shift out of our North District station to day shift and he was put on the desk during the course of all of this uh during the last couple years really of these performance issues and seeing problems with Smith uh we did what we nor normally do which was to try and find a cause of it uh you know you got a good employee but when when Smith started here from the Baker County Sheriff's Office he was a good Deputy he was a productive Deputy he was doing his job and uh did it well we started seeing the decline and when you start seeing that kind of a decline you want the first thing you want to do is find out why so supervisors began to talk to him and did a intervention of sorts to try and find out is there something in his personal life is there something going on why all of a sudden we're seeing this and supervisors weren't able to detect anything Smith just said that he would improve said there was nothing going on his personal life and there's nothing that they saw uh that was of substance that they could Define as causation for these poor performance and poor performance issues about a week ago uh we received information from Smith's former girlfriend that he was addicted to prescription drugs and that he had stolen drugs that he came across in the course of his work as a deputy sheriff according to the girlfriend Smith had a bottle of Oxycodone in a drawer in the bedroom of his residence Smith told the girlfriend that a citizen brought the unused drugs to the penel county sheriff's office North District station for Destruction because the patient that those drugs the oxycodone were uh prescribed for um had died instead of properly disposing of the oxycodone Smith told his girlfriend friend that he stole the drugs for his own personal consumption the girlfriend provided us with a photograph of the stolen drugs in the pill bottle in Smith's bedroom and that's what we received so it's a bottle of Oxycodone and those are Oxycodone pills that came out of the bottle the girlfriend also provided us with a name that was on that pill bottle so Sheriff's detectives conducted an investigation and determined that on September 24th 2016 at about 6:15 p.m. two citizens in fact arrived at our North District station where Smith was working the front desk and they came to turn in unused medication that belonged to their now deceased sister the citizens provided numerous pill bottles uh to Smith for Destruction but instead of processing um some of these pills including the ones you see here in the picture to my right for Destruction Smith placed them in a food bag and later left the front desk at the North District station and placed this bag in the back of his Sheriff's Office Cruiser the deceased sister For Whom the Oxycodone pills were prescribed is of the same name on the pill bottle that Smith's girlfriend found in his bedroom drawer that he said he stole from a deceased person so the name that was on that pill bottle that was in his bedroom is the name of the sister who had deceased and those folks brought their pills into us so it came from them those were the people that brought it in and gave us her name and that's the pill bottle with her name that's in his bedroom so Smith's actions of placing the pills in the bag and then placing them this Cruiser were captured on videotape surveillance uh as a result of cameras installed at our North District station now the investigation is ongoing uh but I can tell you that he may have taken as many as three of these oxycodone pill bottles and probably over 300 pills uh but we're still trying to determine the exact quantity yesterday afternoon Smith was approached by detectives in question what he told us as a result of that interview is that uh he has a long-term back injury and as a result of that had been prescribed oxycodone and morphine by his own doctor and as a result has become addicted to painkillers the amount of oxycotton that Smith's doctor prescribes to him is not enough for him due to his addiction and he takes more than the doctor has prescribed and Smith admitted to us that he has a drug problem so in the process of terminating Smith's employment he was asked to return all of his equipment which included uh an agency issued Glock model 30 handgun which he had been issued he couldn't produce the weapon and when asked why he couldn't give us the weapon to turn it back in he told us that he had pawned his agency issued done at a pawn shop in Pasco County uh we were able to verify uh that he had in fact pawned it and it was at a pawn shop pawn shop up on State Road 54 so Smith's employment uh has been terminated here at the penel County Sheriff's Office he was arrested last night on charges of Grand Theft for stealing the gun uh because it happened in Pascal County with the pawn we can't charge that but that'll be referred to the state attorney's office for charges of dealing and stolen property and false verification of ownership which is also a felony because that occurred in Pasco we also charged him with Grand Theft for stealing the drugs and for possession of the oxycodone that he was not authorized to possess he didn't have a prescription for it he was booked into the pelis county jail last night and bonded out early today you know this is a situation unfortunately uh that is caused by drug addiction and one we see uh far too often as it ruins lives and careers it also reaffirms what we know too well and have seen too many times uh with this prescription drug abuse epidemic that we still have in our community that this type of addiction Knows No Boundaries it crosses all socioeconomic lines and affects everyone from Street addicts to professionals it also shows that cops like everyone else are vulnerable to addiction and despite that vulnerability they are going to be and are held accountable just like everyone else this is caused by addiction uh he's got tremendous amount of relationship issues with Ex-Wives girlfriends really doesn't even have a place to live uh was staying with somebody he was paying 150 bucks a week to because he didn't have a room he has no money uh you got a guy that has been destroyed because of his addiction to oxy Cota and again we've seen this and you all reported on it so many times and this happens to every Walk of Life unfortunately because it is a very serious addiction problem and it's professionals from doctors and lawyers to en accountants to Media people to Street addicts and this is just a a terrible situation because it's somebody who when he came to us from the Baker County Sheriff's Office was a good Deputy was a good cop and just deteriorated over time and you frankly I wish that in our conversations with him and our discussions and the interactions he had with our supervisors that they they were able to figure this out we're able to get them help uh but you can't help somebody that won't admit they have a problem and if you can't detect what the problem is then there's not much you can do about it and as it continues to spiral sometimes it has to spiral too far uh and this spiral too far to the point where um now he's facing some very serious felony charges and he's lost his job over it as he should and as I said this is an addiction problem uh but law enforcement officers and Deputy sheriffs here in pelis County are going to be held of the same standard as anybody else and he needs to face the consequences for his actions and we hope he gets the help he needs and that the system holds him accountable for what he did and stealing the drugs and uh try to steal the gun so anybody got any questions on that I was it not notic May sooner that gun missing so he had two okay is that he he had two and this was a secondary gun is it standard for deputies to have two some do yeah it's not put it this way it's not uncommon and some have multiple um and so it just depends upon their assignments and where they've been so I would say yeah it is common um so it's not it's not unusual can you characterize this demeanor when he told you that his service again you know because this is a guy now you know he's he's broken and you know he uh said that he just didn't have any money needed to pay bills and you know was his way of dealing with uh being backed into a corner uh he had nothing and we could tell just by his Cruiser quite honestly uh it was a mess uh he might even been living in that for a little while I mean this guy was on a complete spiral um and and but again Peter this is nothing when we look at when the people we come across and this person happens to be a cop happens to be a deputy sheriff and it does make it worse in many respects but we see this you know time and time again you see people in all of life that just the bottom falls out and they got some real serious problems and their life is is destroyed because of the addiction and they've got nothing you see people who are thriving uh and highly successful that are homeless and on the street because of oxy Cott were you able to determine if the back injury that he claim was that a legitimate well as far as we know it is because the doctor he was going to was he wasn't from what you know we don't have any information he was going to a pill Mill or you know anybody and he did have legitimate back issues and again that's another really sad part of this that we see way too often and that's why I say that this problem this issue is in a very very unique because you know back in the day when the drug of choice was crack cocaine and some of that's coming back but back in the 90s is that you didn't see this type of drug addiction to this extent in all walks of life you didn't see it cross all those socioeconomic lines because in order to get to that point you had to go on the street and buy the heroin you had to go on the street and buy the crack you had to do it in a clandestine way from drug dealers but not with this stuff because you got everybody who's got these pain issues who goes to these doctors and they take a couple and they get hooked so you see people it's not limited to the lower socio economic areas there's people in Palm Harbor and Tiara verie and Feather Sound and you name it and you see this time and time again and then their life Spirals and it bottoms out and they're destroyed so it's a unique situation uh because you have more and more people um that have become addicted remember at one point in time is pelis County led the State of Florida in prescription drug overdose deaths um and it shows that this problem continues we know it does it's not as bad as it used to be we made great progress with it but we can't make any mistake that this problem still exists it is still here and it's still destroying lives and at the core of it goes back to what all drug problems are all about and that is addiction and uh you know it's it's it's really sad in a feel for him to a degree uh but there was help available but I don't think he was at a point where he could Avail himself of the help and I hope he gets the help he needs Sher it sounds like this Deputy got a lot of chances Union too strong to there was a lot of red flags transfering right lot multiple times for performance issues right why could you that well none of it Rose to the level Josh of really being that serious I mean the things that he was doing like he wasn't turning into reports on time his productivity wasn't there he wouldn't show up for a deposition or he was late for court you know those kinds of things and it it it hadn't boiled to the point it was getting there and this is where uh recently when he was transferred off of knights because this was an ongoing and they thought they put him on the desk for a while and supervisors were getting very frustrated with it because they're trying is they recognize we got an issue but you know like anything you can't solve a problem where you don't know what the problem is so you got to identify it and he wasn't showing up for work Under the Influence doesn't look like he's intoxicated he wasn't and what he was told us he was doing is he purposfully wasn't taking the drugs uh when he came to work and then he home and he doubled down he was to the point where this we found straws on him is that he was pill crushing because his stomach was so messed up from taking so much of this so he's going home and he's actually crushing the pills and snorting them I mean and he's double dipping it you know later on so he was trying to mask it and hide it of course we knew there was a problem and we were trying to identify you know what that problem was and we knew he was having issues with his wife ex-wife Etc so we're trying to figure it out but you know until you can identify it then there's very little you could do about it if we could have identified it as such then you know we would have done everything we could um to get them into treatment as we've done with others uh but you know when people don't want help and they won't identify and you know you got an issue but it was U you know are we at all surprised based upon what we saw that it got to this point uh no because it was spiral and that's why they taken them off the street and put him on the desk but now we took him off the street to put him on the desk to try and identify this further and keep him from getting into trouble Etc but now look what he does when we put him on the desk so you know it it was just one of those things uh that would I guess uh bound to happen because of that addiction problem and that spy role that he was on what are the responsibilities working at the front us the desk deputies to greet citizens when they come in um for making complaints uh when there are calls made to the Communication Center that don't necessitate a deputy going out they'll take reports over the phone um again uh they'll take complaints of crime or a lot of citizens will come in and just ask questions so it's to uh staff the desk to take reports conduct some very minor investigations take reports over the phone um that kind of activity and how often would you say you have people coming in bringing in Daily multiple times a day um here at the sheriff's administration building and at our North District station so we get a lot of it because we encourage people to do it um you know because they should end up in the right hands not the wrong hands and they should be destroyed and that's what happens every day multiple times a day except for this one anomaly uh because of these circumstances can you go over his employment track one more time sure um so he began uh working for us in 2012 12 uh he was in Patrol from 2012 October of 2012 until September of 2013 where he transferred to narcotics and then he remained in Narcotics until April of 2015 uh where he transferred back to patrol until he was terminated yesterday Sil pardon me silver doll P um let me look it's a pawn sh yes silver dollar pwn on State Road 54 yes y all right anybody got anything else thanks everybody appreciate it that work