CHARLOTTE COUNTY, Fla. — Sheriff Bill Prummell says the man shot and killed by deputies in Englewood had relapsed from drugs within seven days of the deadly shooting.
According to the Charlotte County sheriff, a neighbor called 911 on Jan. 17, reporting that 36-year-old Shawn Ravert had been up for seven days and was using methamphetamine.
Deputies Dalton Brasch and Alejandro Muina responded to his home. Prummell says they walked to the side of the house and found Ravert in the backyard.
He was armed with a large hunting knife, also known as a survivor knife, which was believed to be a machete at the time. Prummell says deputies did not know he was armed until they got there.
In newly released body camera video, the deputies told Ravert to put the knife down several times, but he refused, and told deputies to shoot him.
Prummell says Ravert started moving towards the deputies, picking up the knife and waving it around. He quickly stepped forward with the knife in his hand and possibly started to lunge forward, Prummel said. The deputies shot 17 rounds; Brasch shot nine times and Muina shot eight times.
Ravert was shot 12 times and died at the scene.
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When questioned about the amount of times shot, Prummell explained the training.
"You shoot until the threat is over...it’s just the stress of the situation, that’s what happens," he said.
The sheriff says when they first started talking to Ravert, he was 50 feet away. When shots were fired, he was 18 feet from deputies.
Prummell explained why describing these numbers matter. He said deputies are trained with a reactionary gap of 35 feet. This means if a suspect is within that area, a deputy has less time to pull their weapon and fire on the target. Prummell says Ravert was almost half that distance.
Prummell also called this area a fatal funnel. The deputies, he said, were in a narrow alleyway between two houses. With this, their reaction time and ability to maneuver was very limited. He said at one point, a deputy backed into a garbage can.
As investigators started looking into Ravert, they discovered he was recovering from substance use and had relapsed within the past seven days. He also had a dislike towards law enforcement, according to Prummell.
Prummell says his drug of choice was meth and they found a syringe in the backyard with the drug in it.
Neighbors told detectives he had been acting erratically prior to the shooting. They said he was talking to officers that weren't there. His girlfriend also told deputies he was hallucinating, using meth and started to see people not there.
The night of the shooting, neighbors say he knocked on doors in the area and one homeowner found Ravert in their lanai with a baseball bat. However, deputies were not called.
On another night, neighbors say they found Ravert hiding in the bushes, coming out like he was surrendering and then ran into the house.
In that case, Prummell says no one called them.
"Now if he was on a binge for seven days, I wish somebody would have called us much earlier," Prummell said. "We probably could have interacted - our IRIS team probably could have interacted with him and tried to get him into services."
IRIS is the department's mental health unit, trained to help people find services. They're equipped with an unarmed mental health professional, who is a citizen.
Prummell said if the IRIS team was called during this encounter, it wouldn't have worked because it was past that point.
Ravert does have a lengthy criminal history. In Charlotte County, he was pulled over twice. However, he has a history of obstructing, terrorist threats, aggravated assault, resisting, fleeing and more in Pennsylvania.
He also had an active warrant out of Arizona for DUI.
The sheriff says Ravert had no evidence of mental health issues, but said substance use disorder does fall under mental health disorder.
To their knowledge, the only living relative is Ravert's brother and Prummell says they are not getting a lot of information out of him.
Only living relative is brother, not a lot of information out of him.
Per department policy, the deputies are on leave during the investigation.
