Former
Franklin County Sheriff Ewell Hunt has been charged with misconduct by an
elected official after an investigation into how he handled warnings that
preceded a Memorial Day 2011 shooting rampage believed to have been committed
by one of his former deputies.
Almost
a half-hour before Jennifer Carter Agee was shot to death in the parking lot of
a Sheetz convenience store in Roanoke on Memorial Day 2011, the Franklin County
Sheriff’s Office was warned that her sheriff’s deputy ex-husband, Jonathan
Agee, had an assault rifle and was driving to Salem to kill her.
But
Sheriff Hunt told his dispatch center not to issue a “be on the lookout” alert
to other law enforcement agencies, saying he would take care of the situation
himself, according to a sheriff’s office radio call log. He ordered a
dispatcher “not to mention anything,” that log shows.
The
charge against Hunt is a class 1 misdemeanor, according to court records. Class
1 misdemeanor charges are punishable by jail for no more than 12 months and up
to a $2,500 fine.
Hunt,
who was issued a summons on the charge Tuesday, one day before the one-year
anniversary of the tragic events, did not return a call Wednesday afternoon
seeking comment. A hearing date has been set for 8:30 a.m. July 11 in Franklin
County General District Court, according to court records.
The
state police investigation was conducted after an August 2011 request by
Special Prosecutor Michael Doucette of Lynchburg, according to a state police
news release.
The
investigation focused on “whether Hunt’s actions or inaction, related to a
series of crimes committed by Franklin County Sheriff’s Deputy Jonathan Agee,
constitute a violation of law,” according to the release.
Jonathan
Agee is accused of shooting his ex-wife in the Sheetz parking lot on Williamson
Road in Roanoke in front of one of their daughters. A Roanoke grand jury
indicted Agee in August on a charge of murder and use of a gun to commit a
felony. He also is facing criminal charges in Montgomery County, where he is
accused of wounding a state police sergeant who tried to intercept him on
Interstate 81 after he fled Sheetz in his patrol car.
Doucette
could not be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon.
Bill
Stanley, Hunt’s lawyer at the time, said last year that Franklin County
dispatchers misunderstood the sheriff’s order not to say anything about his
deputy’s threats.
“At
no time did Sheriff Hunt say not to mention anything to law enforcement,”
Stanley said. “His only advisement was not to disseminate it to the public.”
Hunt
instead called Salem’s dispatch center himself and left a message for a shift
supervisor in which he betrayed “no sense of urgency, and he did not indicate
that there was any kind of emergency,” Salem Police Chief Jeff Dudley said at
the time.
Hunt
told the Franklin News-Post last year that he “made a mistake” in not telling
the Salem dispatcher his message was urgent.
“I
can assure you that both myself and members of the Franklin County Sheriff’s
Office did everything possible, with the information that we had at the time,
to alert the appropriate authorities as to the situation regarding Mr. Agee,”
Hunt said in a June 1, 2011, news release. “At no time did we ever have any
indication that Mr. Agee was capable of such a horrific act.”
Following
the shootings, Hunt won the Republican nomination for sheriff, but lost his
re-election bid in November to Bill Overton.
A
wrongful death lawsuit against Hunt was settled earlier this month, awarding
Jennifer Agee’s two daughters, Makayla, 13, and Cameron, 8, a $900,000
settlement.
Agee’s
estate, administered by her mother, Diana Spain, filed a $20 million wrongful
death lawsuit against Hunt and Jonathan Agee in September, accusing Jonathan
Agee of shooting his ex-wife “five times at close range” in the parking lot of
a Sheetz convenience store on Williamson Road in Roanoke. It claimed Hunt
failed to act with the urgency and disclosure of information that could have
prevented the killing because of “fear of further embarrassment and his desire
to win re-election.”
Matt
Broughton, attorney for the Agee family in the suit, said he would not want to
predict the outcome of the criminal case against Hunt.
“There
are two parts to our judicial system, civil and criminal, and the civil side
went really well for family, children that are the victims,” Broughton said.
“We have all the confidence in the world for the criminal system to get to the
bottom of this and do what’s right.”
Hunt
has been charged before in connection with his sheriff’s duties.
Hunt
was charged with failure to maintain adequate records in 2009 by a grand jury.
He was cited and arrested after a grand jury report describing a dysfunctional
agency in which Hunt’s teenage daughter disrupted the chain of command, and
deputies’ lax evidence handling led to seized drugs being found at Franklin County
High School.
Those
charges were dropped in November 2010 after a special prosecutor found
inadequate evidence for the charges to move forward.
Three
other civil lawsuits against Hunt are still pending, including two involving
former deputies who claim they were wrongfully dismissed during the records
investigation and a wrongful death lawsuit by the family of Chad English, who
died in 2010.
Former
Franklin County deputies Josh Carter and Allan Arrington allege Hunt fired them
because of their involvement in the state police investigation in 2009 that led
to Hunt’s indictment on the misdemeanor records charge. Those cases are
scheduled for a combined jury trial in Franklin County Circuit Court in
December, according to court records.
And
a $5.35 million lawsuit filed May 16 alleges Hunt and two of his deputies
failed to heed an informant’s tip that might have prevented the murder of the
19-year-old English by Jeremiah Stump in May 2010.
According
to the lawsuit, filed by English’s mother, Wanda English, the Franklin County
Sheriff’s Office had been told by a longtime police informant and others that
Stump planned to kill English but did not act on the tip.