HOUSTON, Tex. — Bob Meadours' family hesitated to ask for help from police when the 38-year-old suffered a paranoid breakdown in 2001. It took a dispatcher's assurance that officers were trained to deal with the mentally ill to finally persuade them.
But when police encountered Meadours in his La Porte backyard, the distressed man only became more agitated. Within five minutes, he was dead, shot 14 times by an officer who said Meadours had come at him with a screwdriver.
Today, the four La Porte police officers who answered the call for help more than seven years ago will face a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Meadours' family.
The officers — Steven R. Ermel, Jeffery Dalton, Jeffrey N. Kominek and Stephen M. Martin — were never indicted on criminal charges. For the family, today is a long-awaited chance for a jury to decide whether the police used excessive force in the killing.
"It's been very hard to do this, and I'm dreading going through the whole thing again," said Meadours' mother, Stennie Meadours. "I just hope that these officers can be held accountable."
Bob Meadours was a successful electrician who "could fix anything," his mother said. He was kind and gentle — a man who carried insects out of the house instead of killing them.
He had a mental breakdown in the late 1980s, after which he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He took medication for a while, then eased off it and lived for a number of years without symptoms. The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, however, triggered new bouts of depression. By late October of that year, he was becoming increasingly fearful and paranoid.
A few days before his death, his longtime partner, Martha Palacios, took him to a Baytown hospital for treatment, but the hospital would not admit him, his mother said. She did not know why.
He grew so disturbed that on Oct. 29 that year, his sister, Katie Raterink, reported he would not let his feet touch the ground for fear that it would kill him. Finally, after trying unsuccessfully to find a mental health professional who could intervene, the family called 911 for help getting Bob Meadours to a hospital.
He was perched on a porch swing in the backyard, holding a screwdriver, when the police came that evening.
When he refused to come with them, they shot him with a nonlethal "beanbag gun," according to reports, but he climbed on top of a doghouse, still clinging to the screwdriver.
His sister was walking toward the house when she heard the gunshots. La Porte officials, who couldn't be reached for comment Sunday, have insisted that deadly force was necessary because Bob Meadours attacked one of the officers with the screwdriver.
His family says the killing could have been avoided.
"They ended up creating the need to use deadly force," said the Meadours' attorney, Jeff Mundy. "The officers escalated it to that point."
The shooting led state lawmakers to pass the Bob Meadours Act, which took effect in 2005 and requires all law officers to take a 16-hour training course in mental health crisis intervention. The Meadours family has taken comfort in knowing other officers have been better trained in responding to breakdowns, but Stennie Meadours said she hopes to see a jury send a firmer message.
"We never dreamed this was possible in the United States," she said. "It's devastated the whole family."
Stennie Meadours said she has never received an apology from the Police Department, nor the individual officers. Mundy asked them in depositions whether they had any regrets about the shooting, or anything to say to the family. Three said they did not, according to Mundy. Only Kominek said he felt bad about what happened.
