The voice on the phone speaks in a soft, polite tone tinged with a few cracks from worry. Reta Abbott tells the 911 dispatcher that her daughter is posting suicidal thoughts on Facebook.
“I mean, she needs to be in a hospital,” the mother says.
Abbott called the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office in Litchfield Beach, South Carolina, at 4:57 p.m. on July 12. At times, the mother seems almost apologetic for seeking law enforcement’s help. The 911 operator responds with compassion: “All right, we’ll have someone go over there and do a welfare check for her, OK?”
Mom: “I’m telling you, she may seem normal, but she is not. So please, get – you know, she needs to be in a hospital – not in a jail cell, but in a hospital. Thank you. OK?”
Valerie Abbott Harrington graduated at the top of her class from Sardis High School in Sardis City, Alabama, in 1995. She was a gymnast, softball star and pianist – “almost the perfect daughter” in her parents’ view. She earned a chemical engineering degree from Auburn University in 2000 and climbed the ladder at International Paper to become an area manager, first at a mill in Alabama and then at one in South Carolina.
There, she met Joey Harrington. They had a quick romance and moved in together. Four years later, he proposed and they soon learned she was pregnant. Their daughter, Lexi, was born on April 1, 2011.
A photograph shows Valerie Harrington holding her young daughter, who is dressed in a pink butterfly shirt, her hair in a pigtail. Harrington beams with a radiant smile and stands next to her own mother – three generations of family.
But Harrington’s life began to unravel over the last year. A bitter divorce in the spring ended with an agreement for joint custody of Lexi. By this summer, the relationship with her former husband soured further.
On June 22, Harrington was arrested for sending a flurry of nasty text messages to her ex-husband. She was then fired from her job at International Paper after 14 years.
The day Reta Abbott called the sheriff’s office, she’d just returned home to Alabama after visiting her daughter. During that trip, she’d taken her handgun away because the mother was concerned about her daughter’s mental health.
Harrington confided to her mom that she was being bullied and harassed by people she once considered friends. “They’re going to kill me. Nobody believes me, but they’re going to kill me,” she told her mother.
Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office
Joseph Wilson, left, a decorated member of the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office in Litchfield Beach, South Carolina, fired multiple shots after arriving at Harrington’s apartment. He remains on leave pending the outcome of the investigation into the shooting.
Early on July 12, Harrington unleashed a tirade on Facebook. She lashed out at folks and some hit back with vicious comments. She changed her profile photo to a honey badger, the “badass” Internet meme and viral YouTube sensation, the “most fearless animal in all of the animal kingdom.”
When one friend asked about the photograph, Harrington said, “It's a honey badger. I'm a honey badger. Look it up.”
The Facebook messages grew darker, more worrisome. She posted about the desire to kill herself; she said her estate should be left to her daughter.
Valerie’s ex-husband, Joey Harrington, says mutual friends told him what she was saying on Facebook and he contacted the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office and spoke with a deputy around noon that Saturday. He says he told the deputy his ex-wife needed help from the Waccamaw Center for Mental Health, but was told it was closed on weekends.
“I told the guy: ‘Somebody is gonna be sorry for this.’ That was my exact words.”
About five hours later, Valerie Harrington’s mother called authorities after hearing from her daughter’s attorney about the Facebook postings.
That call prompted three deputies dressed in bulletproof vests to show up at Harrington’s apartment. She wouldn’t open the door, so they got a key from a manager and entered.
At 6:14 p.m., an officer from the scene can be heard over the sheriff’s office radio traffic, saying, “Shots fired! Shots fired!” A woman at dispatch screams, “My God!”
Seven seconds later, another shot is heard, with an officer again yelling, “Shots fired! Shots fired!”
Deputy Joseph Wilson, a four-year veteran of the sheriff’s office and decorated member of the force, fired all of the shots.
He has been suspended while the shooting is investigated, according to the sheriff’s office.
Training aimed at empathy
Valerie Abbott Harrington, 36, was killed inside her apartment, authorities say, after she charged deputies with a knife. She was shot seven times, according to her family. Authorities have refused to comment about the number of shots fired or how many times she was struck. The coroner’s office would say only that she was hit “multiple times.” Across the nation, law enforcement officers often encounter people with mental health problems. Sometimes, they have a long history of serious mental illness -- those suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or severe depression. Other times, police are summoned in a mental health crisis driven by divorce, unemployment or another bad break that has spiraled out of control.
All too often, mental health advocates say, these incidents end tragically. To better prepare officers for such situations, more than 3,000 law enforcement departments have put their personnel through Crisis Intervention Team training, known as CIT.
During the 40-hour course, police meet people with mental illness and their families, tour mental health facilities, and train for an array of scenarios. CIT is meant to teach officers to respond with empathy while maintaining their own safety. That way a situation doesn’t escalate into violence.
“Law enforcement needs to recognize that at times, it is the wise officer who can conceal their combat-ready status,” says Michael Woody, the president of CIT International, which works with local, state and federal agencies to hold the courses.
Wilson, the deputy who shot and killed Harrington, was one of nine county deputies to earn an honor for outstanding service in 2013. In March of this year, he’d undergone annual training for firearms and Taser. Three months later, he trained with sniffer dogs.
A photograph from June shows Wilson dressed in a black baseball cap, black T-shirt and green cargo pants, a handgun holstered on his hip. He holds the leash to Diesel, a giant bloodhound belonging to the sheriff’s department.
Although CIT training has become popular across the nation, it is not required by law or mandatory for law enforcement. The Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office says Wilson did not have CIT training.
Could it have prevented the tragedy of July 12?
A troubling debate
Valerie Harrington was buried next to her great-grandparents in a cemetery in Alabama. Her parents, Roger and Reta Abbott, are left with unanswered questions. “To date, no one from the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Department has called us to let us know that our daughter died,” Reta Abbott says. “Unless you’ve lost a child, you have no concept of the hurt and the grief.”
The mother called authorities with the best of intentions; now she lives with an indescribable emptiness. “If I could take that one phone call back, I would,” she says, crying.
“It not only compounded our grief,” Roger Abbott says, “it’s made us angry, hurt, revengeful – everything. It just makes us mad.”
In South Carolina, a little girl keeps asking for her mother. “What do you tell a 3-year-old? It’s rough. It’s killing me,” Joey Harrington says. “I just simply told her: ‘Your momma’s gone to see Jesus and she won’t be coming back.’”
In the quiet community of Litchfield Beach, the shooting prompted a troubling debate among residents: How much of a threat could a 100-pound woman have posed? At what point is force considered excessive?
Others ask: What did she expect for rushing at police with a knife?
Police traditionally operate on a “21-foot rule”: A person within 21 feet of an officer can kill, injure, or overcome police before they can draw a weapon.
A state investigation into the shooting was turned over to the local prosecutor, Solicitor Jimmy Richardson, in mid-September. Richardson must now decide whether to prosecute Wilson. He will not comment on the matter until he reaches his decision.
Valerie Harrington’s family wonders just how much justice will be pursued. State investigators, they say, never spoke with them.
Her mother sums up the shooting this way: “It should never have happened.” LINK
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