Friendship – Four officers resumed full duties at the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office on Monday, exactly one month after being involved in a fatal shooting in the community.
An internal investigation by the sheriff’s office concluded that “patrol policy and procedures were followed” during a Sept. 10 incident in which Joe Radford was shot and killed after he allegedly fired a gun at a neighbor’s home on Radford Road, then shot at deputies who responded to a 911 call. The four officers involved in the shooting returned to desk duty on Sept. 26.
“We did conclude our internal investigation and convened a review board that was composed of members from this office as well as a member from an outside agency,” said Chris Wood, chief deputy for the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office. “At the conclusion of the investigation from the review board, our office has cleared all four officers and they returned to work today in full capacity.”
Wood said the review board consisted of five members. He declined to release the names of the four officers involved in the shooting. An investigation by the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation is ongoing.
It is standard practice for the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office to place officers on paid leave following an officer-involved shooting and to contact the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation to investigate such an incident. Wood said SBI investigations can often range from as little as three months to as much as 18 months, depending on the circumstances.
“The administrative leave serves a lot of purposes, one of which is to make sure that our officers are in a good place, mentally, from being involved in such a horrific situation,” Wood said. “It also gives us time for fact finding.”
Days after the shooting, Cherokee County Sheriff Derrick Palmer said authorities did not have a motive as to why Radford, 56, shot at neighbors or deputies, but said his agency has “a history with this particular subject on similar incidents in the past.”
“No one knew what was happening or what was going on, or why he was acting the way he was,” Palmer said. “All of that is part of the SBI investigation, to get that information and to find out what led up to it and those kinds of things.”
According to Palmer, Radford fled into the darkness after he fired at the home. He was shot and killed nearly an hour later, after Palmer said he emerged from the darkness with a rifle and “aimed the weapon at the officers while making threats to shoot them.”
Radford died at the scene minutes later, while no officers or other individuals were injured in the incident.
“While officers were on scene, the suspect actually discharged the firearm several times at the officers,” Palmer said. “He’s in the darkness in the area, (with officers) not knowing where the shots are coming from or where he’s at.
“You can imagine, they called everybody in the county with a badge and a gun ... and while we were in the area, the suspect came out of the darkness threatening law enforcement and brandished a firearm. Then the officers had to do what they had to do.”
Wood said a 911 call was placed about 8:13 p.m. by neighbors who were in their residence at the time when Radford shot into the home. Radford began firing at deputies about 8:49 p.m. and was shot and killed nearly an hour later, Wood estimated.
“I would say, from the first shot he fired in the presence of our deputies, until the actual officer-involved shooting occurred was between 45 minutes and an hour,” he said.
Palmer said multiple law enforcement agencies responded after Radford began firing at officers.
“I can tell you that we had representation from the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, Murphy Police Department, North Carolina Wildlife, U.S. Forest Service – just about anybody you can imagine was there,” Palmer said. “We’re just so thankful that none of the officers were injured. My biggest fear for the night was that we’d have officers ambushed out of the darkness ... and, luckily, that didn’t happen.”
Palmer said he believed Radford had multiple weapons. Officers set up a “rough containment perimeter” and had a general idea of where he was firing from.
“You can kind of narrow it down to a certain direction and do the best you can on perimeters and try to contain the person inside that perimeter,” Palmer said. “But, again, you’re talking about a big area that officers may not be familiar with, as far as the wooded area part, and a lot of time suspects are familiar with those.”