Andrew 'Drew' Scott, 26, a pizza delivery driver, was
shot dead at 1:30 a.m. on Sunday when deputies knocked on his apartment door
without identifying themselves as law enforcement officers.
Scott opened his door holding a gun, according to Lake
County Sheriff spokesman Lieutenant John Herrell.
The Lake County Sheriff has no policy requiring deputies
to announce themselves, Herrell told Reuters.
Prominent Orlando lawyer Mark Nejame, who has been hired
by Scott's family, told Reuters on Friday that lack of policy puts gun-owning
homeowners like Scott in a life-threatening dilemma.
'If they go to the door and it's a criminal, fine. But if
it turns out in the game of Russian roulette that it's a law enforcement
officer, you're dead,' Nejame said.
Nejame said Scott acted reasonably and legally in arming
himself while trying to determine who was banging on his door in the middle of
the night.
Brian Evey, manager of the Hungry Howie's chain where
Scott worked in Leesburg, 45 miles northwest of Orlando, scheduled a
candlelight vigil for Saturday night in front of Scott's apartment complex, and
marched with several dozen protesters earlier in the week in front of the
sheriff's office.
'This could happen to anybody. We do not want this to
happen again,' Evey said.
They said they mainly wanted to change the law, so police
must announce who they are when knocking.
Kyan Ware, a former prosecutor and lawyer for the Florida
Civil Rights Association which is conducting its own investigation, on Friday
called the shooting 'a tapestry of ineptitude' in which poorly trained deputies
operating with little information 'acted on a hunch that was wrong, that was
miscalculated and ultimately resulted in an innocent person's death.'
At the time of the shooting, several deputies were
looking for Jonathon Brown, 31, who was involved in a beating 37 minutes
earlier in a different neighbourhood and fled the scene on a motorcycle,
according to Brown's arrest affidavit.
Deputies found Brown's motorcycle, still hot, parked
directly in front of Scott's apartment although he was later located in an
adjacent apartment building, Herrell said.
'When the person came to the door, the door was flung
open and the occupant in that apartment pointed a gun at the deputy's face ...
At that point, the deputy took the action he took, obviously he was in fear for
his life, and at that point he shot Mr. Scott,' Herrell said.
Herrell said he did not know why deputies chose not to
identify themselves as they knocked on Scott's door, but that decision was
within the deputies' discretion.
Ware said the deputy who shot Scott had witnessed two
other Lake County deputies shoot a suspect four days earlier, and should have
been placed on desk duty to recover from the trauma.
Evey said he hopes to get more people involved in further
protests until the sheriff's department makes changes to shore up public
safety.
'This guy lit up every room that he was in. He was
amazing. We want the whole country to know who this guy is,' Evey said of
Scott.