My focus were those kids.
I could feel it through the phone line.
They were absolutely terrified.
It could be a matter of life and death.
Sheriff's Office, come outside!
An off-duty state trooper has just called 911,
saying a distressed woman has seen a dead body in a house
and claims another woman is still trapped inside.
Deputy Jeff Fentress is nearby.
We respond to everything as it's real.
That's our job.
But going to a run like that is--
is something you don't think is ever gonna happen
in your hometown.
So you tense up,
and you get ready to go to work.
Also on scene is Officer Edward Kitzinger.
The atmosphere of the officers at this time was
to make sure to get in good positions
and to have somebody watching every angle of the house.
As units surround the suspect's house...
...Detective Oakley arrives at the front
and locates the woman who first alerted the police.
We don't know at that time
if she's involved in this situation.
Just because she's rambling, that could be her body's way
of processing it as a victim or as an offender.
She sat down on what she thought was
a rolled-up rug that she soon found out
was a deceased individual.
It's shocking, and it is like, OK, is she telling the truth?
You know? I mean, it doesn't sound
believable at first,
but she seems like she is in a panic,
but you don't know if it's real or not.
There was a male inside.
We knew who he was,
that he was possibly armed with a weapon,
and that he had already killed one person.
So in my mind, I'm thinking, like,
is there anybody else that's in the house
that we need to be able to get out of this house?
Cynthia said that there was another female that was
in the back room that was crying and asking her
to use the restroom.
She's panicking. She's hyper.
She's almost in disbelief.
I really didn't know what to think at that point.
I know that we had to get her out of the house.
Can you please help me?
As Cynthia is taken away from the scene,
officers spot some movement outside the house.
An officer saw a female next to the house,
in between the house and that minivan.
We didn't know who she was at the time.
After initially hiding from police,
the woman begins to follow instructions.
But officers are suspicious.
Is she a suspect? Is she a victim?
We're treating anybody that's near that house
as a suspect until we know different.
Heidi, when she came over to the area
where I was with Cynthia,
uh, she was very, very emotional,
but we wouldn't allow them to get close to each other.
Uh, one thing we do as police officers is
we separate witnesses so that their stories are not tainted.
I had a very young daughter, and my wife was expecting
our second daughter.
When I heard that there were kids in the home,
I just imagined my kids in a situation like this,
and my focus were those kids.
Carey Hammond is a serial offender
with a rap sheet including drug charges and battery.
He was in prison.
Along with the two children, officers believe there are
three adults also in the house,
Jason Harvey, the children's father,
a woman who is trapped,
and Carey Hammond, the armed suspect.
With children inside, officers can't risk
entering the house.
This has turned into a barricaded gunman situation.
We're gonna take our time and slowly approach this.
You want to find a way to get the kids out of the house,
but you also don't want them coming down the steps.
We started by calling on the intercom system
to have Carey come out of the house.
Come out the door!
A male suddenly exits the front door of the house,
and officers don't know if he is a victim or the suspect.
He went down to his knees and put his hands
on top of his head, and I secured him in handcuffs
and pulled him back
to the rear of the squad car.
Bring your arm back.
I looked at him, and you could see the fear in his eyes,
knowing that...
he just left his kids inside a home...
to where he knew...
absolute horror was inside.
2
With his children locked in the upstairs apartment
and the armed suspect just downstairs,
the father of two snuck out of the house to get help.
He knew that that was his kid's best chance
to make it out alive is for him to come out
and tell us what's going on and where they're at.
The father had told us that he had
teenagers upstairs and that they lived separate
from the suspects downstairs.
Keep going, keep going!
The father hands his phone to Deputy Fentress
to make contact with his children
inside the house.
Dad and female, we took the...
I could hear it, and I could feel it
through the phone line.
They were absolutely terrified.
He trusted me with talking to his kids,
and that's something I'll never forget.
Worst-case scenario is the suspect harms the kids,
they get caught in crossfire
uh, if anything was to happen.
So, it's definitely nerve-wracking knowing
that you have...
them upstairs.
From where I was standing at the adjacent house,
I could see through the front door,
and I saw Carey Hammond walk in front,
uh, near the door, and then he would retreat back
to where I couldn't see him. He did this several times.
One time, I noticed him placing the item down
by the front door.
I'm thinking, "Is this a gun?
"Is he strategically placing weapons
inside the house in case we do come in?"
After more than 20 minutes, the suspect shows
no sign of coming out.
As time is going on, tensions are rising.
It was unusual for me to see him come to the door
and then retreat back.
I didn't know what was going on.
His options are harming the people inside,
he could harm himself, or he could come out
and potentially try to harm officers
or just give himself up.
Carey, come out with your hands up now!
Officers fired upon Carey.
Multiple bursts, and then silence.
As he come out and he's got his arms
out like he's holding a handgun,
the threat was there, and he was fired upon.
I believe in his mind, he knew that he was caught.
Carey Hammond, is declared dead at the scene.
With the suspect down,
officers move to make entry to the house.
The whole time we're on the perimeter
of this residence,
you're going through your mind,
what's this home like inside?
How can we safely and quickly go search for people
who need help?
Yep.
Kids are upstairs.
Our south, west for them.
We need to go two.
It's a strange feeling to know that someone is
possibly deceased in this room that you're in.
You can't do anything right at that moment
because you still have the rest of the house
to clear and make safe.
Just the washer and dryer.
Need one, need one.
2 Where you at, where you at, where you at?
Her head's bleeding,
there's blood on the sheets,
there's dog feces on the floor.
Um...
And when I looked at her, she was...
so fearful.
She did not want me to get close to her.
She didn't want to see any--
any person.
Before I took her off the bed, I noticed that
her hands were tied
by some type of rope.
But I knew after seeing the wounds on her head
that we had to get her medical treatment
as soon as we could.
If anybody's upstairs, make yourself known now!
Guys, come on.
When I first saw the kids, they were walking.
They're alive. They weren't hurt.
A lot of weight lifted off my shoulders.
But I was just relieved to get the kids out of the house.
What happened?
The female victim, Amanda, is taken to the hospital.
Open it.
The body retrieved is that of Timothy Ivy,
Amanda's boyfriend.
After the house was cleared, a female officer responded
to the scene, and we had the female officer check Heidi.
That's when the female officer
found a gun on Heidi.
The fact that she didn't tell us
she had a gun, made us believe
that she maybe is trying to hide something.
So we have to figure out, is Carey the only suspect
in this, or is Heidi involved?
Detective Steven Toney interviews Heidi
back at the police station.
Mm-hmm.
Amanda had met Heidi. They decided to get together.
They went to Heidi's house, met her there,
spent time together drinking. They did drugs.
They began having sex together.
Carey came into the house while Amanda and Tim and Heidi
are having sex together.
And Carey comes in and becomes just enraged
and picks up a bat and starts beating Tim,
starts beating Amanda.
Detective Toney compares Heidi's story to the one he got
from the victim, Amanda.
Learning from Amanda that night, what happened to her,
she described it very vividly
in terms of the same way as Heidi.
But there was also the big difference
in Heidi's and Amanda's interview.
Amanda said she felt someone grab her
by the back of her hair and yank her to the floor.
And when she looked up, she saw Heidi pointing a gun
in her face, telling her that she's gonna do
"Whatever we tell you to do," is what Heidi told her
in that moment.
By the end of that interview, I knew that Heidi was
telling me a lot of lies.
Heidi was a suspect in this case.
She was not a victim as the way she kind of made herself
out to be when we initially found her,
but she was very much involved
in the crimes that took place in that house.
Amanda was raped multiple times throughout the day.
Heidi was coaching Carey on what he should do to her
and how he should do those things to her.
Heidi never talked about Cynthia in terms
of being involved in what happened in that house.
She basically had invited Cynthia over to help her clean.
If Cynthia hadn't have escaped, I think there's probably
a good chance that Tim, Amanda, and Cynthia
could have all been killed that day.
Heidi Carter is charged with aiding, inducing,
or causing rape and murder.
She is sentenced to the maximum penalty
of 65 years in prison.
One thing that I've always try to do is
we always have to expect the worst.
A couple days later, we met up, we talked about it.
Is anybody struggling with anything?
To see something this brutal and something of this nature,
it's something that sticks in your head,
and it still sticks into my head to this day.
It's not something...
people should have to see.
The call is a boat that's going, it seems to be
out of control, just running in circles in Lake Dias.
So I called Deputy Seltzer and told him, "Hey,
grab one of the boats and I'll meet you there."
Our citizen on patrol who called it in could not see
if anybody was in the boat at the time.
Lake Dias, it's surrounded completely
by trees.
There's gators there, there's logs in the water.
Somebody needs our help,
and we need to do it fast.
2
Once we knew that there was somebody on board
not responding to our helicopter,
now things get amped up a little bit.
Time is now of an essence.
We don't just have a runaway boat going in circles.
Is it somebody that was drunk and passed out?
Is it somebody that had a medical emergency, coma,
heat stroke? Did they have a heart attack?
I don't know what medical conditions
he's suffering from.
It could be a matter of life and death.
They're trying to get on their PA
on the helicopter, calling,
"Hey, if you can hear me, give us a sign.
Tell us something."
There was no sign from that patient on board.
I noticed a lot of emergency vehicles
already on scene, patrol deputies,
fire department was there, EVAC.
Everybody, unfortunately, is kind of standing around
because I'm the one coming with the boat
to get us out there.
Uh, fire?
Sergeant Brodie Hughes jumps on board to assist
with the rescue.
I also need medical personnel.
John Kyp was able to get on board.
John is also familiar with boating.
So, as we're approaching the boat,
we're trying to come up with a game plan.
We're trying to just make an initial assessment
on what type of boat it is, what kind of throttle it's got,
where's the victim at inside the boat, what's his position.
We were looking to see, how can we stop this boat.
Is there something we can grab?
Can we yank a kill switch
or yank the-- the throttle?
Those guys trained to work close quarters
boating at speed.
Those guys are some of the best boat operators.
Looks like he's getting--
The problem was, is that the unconscious patient,
his leg was on the throttle.
So now we couldn't help pull the throttle back
to get that boat stopped.
It's all about timing.
I don't wanna hit the boat and knock him overboard.
There's a lotta-- lot of risk in that.
He causes that boat to overturn, and the boat comes
back around and hits him with the prop.
At that point, he's certainly gonna die.
2 It was working out very, very well.
Our waves were pushing the boat closer to shore.
We're hoping that the engine will hit a log under the water.
It'll hit sand.
It'll hit shoreline and disable it.
But it started to bounce off the land,
it started to bounce off the shore and come back out.
I started hitting bottom with my engine.
We're running out of options.
Eventually, my brain was like, we're probably gonna have
to get on the boat.
And I'm mentally like just seeing like,
if I were to jump, hey, where would the perfect timing be?
But if I fall in the water and get run over by a boat,
not just one boat with a propeller in it,
but now a bigger boat with a propeller in it,
and you could end up-- you could get killed.
It bounced off the tree just perfect.
It came around.
Our boat was perfectly positioned.
Parallel gunnels, the speed was right, everything was perfect.
Never thought about in my life that I would jump off of a boat
onto another boat to stop it.
The boat drifts right into the tree
that we tried to stop it into earlier,
and then just assess the patient.
Just eyes on him. I thought he was deceased.
There was a black diabetes kit that we carry
on our fire trucks to check your sugar for your BGL
when it's low or high.
This might be what's caused his medical emergency.
I got to get with your boat.
OK, one.
When you're a diabetic and your sugar goes really low,
you become unresponsive.
And once it gets low enough to come unresponsive,
your body starts shutting down.
And once it gets low enough, you eventually pass away.
He actually had a pulse, and he was breathing.
He had shallow respirations, but he was breathing.
We need to get him off the water
and into an environment where we can treat the patient.
Getting him off the water, our part was done.
Once we got the patient
in with the paramedics, it felt good.
Everybody was happy with what we did,
and it was a good vibe on the dock.
On our way back, I stopped at the hospital
and the crew that had treated the patient was still there.
And I was like, "Hey, you know, what's going on
with this guy?" Like, well, he did have
a medical emergency on the boat.
They believed that it was his sugar.
They weren't, you know, that it was low,
and that he was up and talking.
He was still-- still haven't-- you know, still being treated,
but he was gonna make a good recovery.
We did something really good that day.
Who knows how long he would have been out there
going in circles before his boat either capsized
and he went under or, uh, whatever?
The good Lord put the right people
in the right place to make a difference that day
and let that gentleman live to see another day.
I could go the rest of my career
and never know him.
And that's OK.
Because I can sleep better at night knowing he's safe,
knowing that he's back with his family,
back with his loved ones.
And working as a team got him back to where he is today.
10-4. Good job, guys.