On Jan. 14, 2014, Stephanie Ann Mills was picking up her child at a Fort Pierce, Fla., elementary school when she called 911 to report a disturbance: Across the street, Gregory Hill, Jr., 30, was listening to Drake in his garage with the door open.
At a later press conference, the sheriff said Mills claimed Hill was playing “F.U. music so all the students could hear it." Oddly, the principal of the elementary school, Juanita Wright, never heard it. “If that’s why the police were called, because the music was loud… we didn’t hear any loud music.”
When two deputies arrived a short time later, the garage door was closed. They banged on the door until Hill opened it. That’s when, the officers claim, they saw a gun. No one else did. One of the pair, Deputy Christopher Newman, claims he shouted at Hill to drop the gun repeatedly. No one corroborated that claim either, according to the Hill family’s attorney.
Hill started to close the garage door again, no doubt startled by the intrusion and confused, if the music was, as Wright said, not at a level that should have resulted in two deputies invading the privacy of his home. Before the door even closed, a deputy fired four shots at Hill through the door, striking him three times.
Those shots killed Hill and robbed his family of their cherished son, brother, fiancé, and father. Now a court has taken away any hope of justice.
The deputies called in SWAT, claiming that they were not sure if Hill was alive and claiming Hill had a gun. The sheriff later claimed that family members told law enforcement well after the shooting that they’d spoken with him on the phone, that he was alive and well.
SWAT gassed the house and sent a robot into the garage to photograph the scene.
Remember, this started with a noise complaint.
A gun was found in Hill’s back pocket. “No one has been able to link that gun to Mr. Hill at any point,” wrote his attorney. “It had no identifiable DNA, fingerprints or trace of Mr. Hill’s blood despite the garage door having brain and blood splatter on it.”
The timing doesn’t work: “[A]ccording to forensic analysis, Mr. Hill was incapable of putting a gun back into the back pocket of his sagging pants once the bullet struck his brain.” The officers started shooting before the garage door had even closed; just 1.5 seconds had passed.
At the press conference to report a “deputy-involved shooting,” the sheriff used a mug shot to identify Hill. He highlighted a “decade-long record” including drugs, theft, and driving related offenses, none of which was relevant to the decision that ended Hill’s life.
Given the apparent insanity of a noise complaint ending in a son, a brother, a fiancé, and a father’s death and all of the attendant evidence, Hill’s family filed a wrongful death suit.
Among other attempts to place blame on Hill, the defendants emphasized repeatedly that he’d been drinking. (Again, in the safety and privacy of his home.) But the blood alcohol level they tried to use in their favor cuts against the reasonableness of their actions. In other words, if Hill was as drunk as they claim, it should have been evident to them as a mitigating factor—and it’s even less likely he had the coordination to get a gun into his back pocket in 1.5 seconds.
Yet the jury decided that the sheriff’s office was just one percent at fault in Hill’s death. They awarded $1 for funeral expenses and $1 to each of Hill’s children. Based on the one-percent finding, the judge reduced the award to four cents. Because Hill was both mostly responsible and intoxicated, the judge eliminated the award altogether.
There may have been hijinks in the jury room. After eight hours, the jury said it was unable to reach a verdict. Only after being sent back for another two hours did they generate this facially offensive decision.
The Hills are appealing; their lawyer is already drafting a motion for a new trial. In the meantime, they live with the knowledge that the justice system found Hill’s life and their suffering worth nothing, literally.
