Yahoo Finance A prisoner who led Florida Keys police in a rolling gun battle hangs himself in jail
A Florida Keys man who was awaiting a new trial for leading police on a rolling, high-speed gun battle through Key Largo in 2015 hanged himself in Monroe County jail Tuesday morning.
The Jan. 21, 2015, incident shook a quiet Upper Keys community, and left a Monroe sheriff’s deputy with a grazing bullet wound to the leg, a Florida Highway Patrol trooper with hearing loss and both officers with post-traumatic stress.
The trooper and the deputy each got a Medal of Valor for their actions that night.
The mayhem on the residential streets and Keys highways was carried out by a man friends and relatives described as a quiet county employee with no history of violence or run-ins with the law. He worked as a heavy equipment operator for the Roads and Bridges Department from June 2006 until April 2015, said county spokeswoman Kristen Livengood.
A detention deputy making the rounds Tuesday at the Stock Island jail found Robert Schminky, 63, with a bed sheet around his neck about 1:30 a.m., said sheriff’s office spokesman Adam Linhardt. The deputy performed CPR on Schminky before he was taken to the Lower Keys Medical Center in Key West, where he was pronounced dead, Linhardt said.
“Sheriff Rick Ramsay requested the Florida Department of Law Enforcement conduct an independent investigation and their investigation has begun,” Linhardt said in a statement.
Jessica Carey, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, confirmed to the Miami Herald Tuesday that the agency is investigating Schminky’s death.
The Monroe County State Attorney’s Office declined to comment. And Schminky was being represented by the county’s Public Defender’s office, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Conviction reversed
Schminky was jailed on two counts of attempted first-degree murder of a police officer, charges of which he was convicted after a 2018 trial.
However, a three-judge panel of the Third District Court of Appeal reversed the sentence in April 2020.
The reason was because of a Florida Supreme Court decision on jury instructions for his specific charge made after Schminky was convicted but before a judge sentenced him to two life terms in March 2018.
Specifically, the Supreme Court mandated that jurors must consider whether the defendant knew the person he or she tried to kill was a law enforcement officer. When Judge Luis Garcia read the jury the instructions at the end of his trial, that standard did not exist.
“Instead, the jury was instructed on regular attempted first-degree murder, which excludes the element of knowing that the victims were law enforcement officers,” the appellate court judges wrote in their April 29, 2020, decision.
The Monroe County State Attorney’s Office almost immediately chose to retry the case.
Schminky was also convicted of aggravated assault, aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer and fleeing and eluding police under aggravated circumstances. Those convictions stood.
Schminky’s lawyers never disputed the version of events presented by prosecutors during the trial because much of the dramatic chase and shootout was caught on police dash-cam video.
His defense instead was that he was temporarily insane the night of Jan. 21, 2015, and did not appreciate right from wrong because he was withdrawing from the prescription anti-anxiety medication Paxil.
Shootout in the Keys
The string of violent events began when Schminky beat his wife with a shotgun so badly outside of their Buttonwood Drive home that he broke her arm, several of her ribs and the stock of the weapon.
Jurors heard the grisly attack during the trial because it was recorded while Honour Schminky, his wife, called 911. Not only was she pleading for help and for her husband to stop beating her, each thud of the shotgun making contact with her body was heard on the audio of the call.
When deputies arrived, he walked past them and fired two blasts from the shotgun into the ground before getting into his Lexus SUV and driving off.
The FHP trooper, Cpl. Christine Gracey, and another deputy began chasing Schminky from his neighborhood off mile marker 100. The pursuit went through several other neighborhoods, U.S. 1 and then to County Road 905, which runs parallel to the 18 Mile Stretch of U.S. 1 that leads in and out of the Keys.
As Schminky was heading north on 905, Sheriff’s Sgt. Sydney Whitehouse was driving south. As their two cars neared each other, Schminky opened fire on the deputy with a pistol through his windshield. Whitehouse returned fire through his driver-side window.
Schminky turned his car around to drive south, and as he did, he sideswiped Gracey’s marked FHP cruiser. Whitehouse and Gracey caught up with Schminky in the parking lot of a Circle K gas station located between the entrances of both the 18 Mile Stretch and County Road 905 at mile marker 106.
Gracey tried to use her car’s push bar to T-bone Schminky’s Lexus into the woods to disable it, but he accelerated toward her cruiser and rammed it. Gracey said she could see he was holding a handgun. Both cars became stuck together. Schminky fired several shots into Gracey’s cruiser, the bullets narrowly missing her.
Gracey said during the trial that she continues to have hearing issues because of the loud sound of the bullets whistling and bouncing through her car. The trooper did not shoot back because she said she did not want to strike the several deputies who now surrounded both cars, according to her testimony. When she managed to dislodge her car from Schminky’s, Gracey fired back once through her windshield, but missed him.
Whitehouse got out of his car and began shooting at Schminky, who was also firing repeatedly at deputies in the gas station’s parking lot. A bullet ricocheted and hit Whitehouse in the leg. Schminky drove off again, this time south on U.S. 1.
He pulled the Lexus into St. Justin Martyr Catholic Church at mile marker 105.5, where a deputy was posted. The deputy, Nestor Argote, said at the trial that he saw Schminky run toward him holding a handgun. Argote fired 10 shots at Schminky, but missed.
Argote and another deputy chased Schminky and caught up with him in a field behind the church. Schminky had ditched his gun during the chase. Argote tried cuffing Schminky, but he fought back. He finally stopped after the other deputy, Sgt. Barney Sajdak, hit him with the butt of his rifle.
After arresting Schminky, police found a Smith and Wesson .44-caliber magnum revolver with six fired shell casings in Schminky’s car. Six .40-caliber shell casings were also found, as was the gun he had when he took off running, a .40-caliber Springfield semi-automatic handgun.
‘Paxil discontinuation syndrome’
Over the course of the investigation, Honour Schminky went from a cooperating witness to testifying in her husband’s defense. During the trial she and several of their friends testified that Robert Schminky was a peaceful man, and his actions that night were completely out of character.
A psychiatrist testified on his behalf that Schminky was suffering through “Paxil discontinuation syndrome” that night.
Schminky was prescribed the medication for anxiety and depression in October 2015. But, Schminky said it made him more anxious, so he stopped taking it around December.
The psychiatrist said at the trial that Schminky started taking it again before abruptly stopping about three days before the rampage. The doctor said Paxil is among a number of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor drugs that can cause bizarre side effects if someone quits using them all at once rather than tapering off.
