![](https://i.imgur.com/CLvY2jA.png")
11-08-2022, 08:36 AM
By JIM MUSTIAN
yesterday
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A veteran of the DEA’s military-style commando teams, Poole acknowledged he fatally shot a mentally ill neighbor just minutes after calling law enforcement to report the man was trespassing on his land – yet again – “out of his mind” and threatening him with a rock.
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Sheriff’s investigators were skeptical of Poole’s self-defense claim from the start, reports show, mostly because he mentioned in his call for help that the trespasser was already leaving. No rock of any kind could be found. And the shooting happened 200 yards from Poole’s house, near the edge of his property, prompting deputies to determine Mississippi’s “castle doctrine” didn’t apply.
Yet a little more than a year after Poole was arrested on a murder charge in the April 27, 2021, shooting, he has quietly returned to work as a supervisor in the DEA office a half-hour’s drive north in Jackson after a grand jury this spring declined to indict him.
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“No citizen could have done what this DEA agent did and walked away,” said W. Lloyd Grafton, a use-of-force expert who reviewed the investigative case file
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Former DEA supervisors who examined the case for AP questioned the agency’s heavy-handed involvement in the critical first hours, even though the shooting had no nexus to federal law enforcement and Poole had been off duty feeding his chickens when he first spotted the trespasser.
Multiple DEA agents responded to the crowded crime scene and one supervisor declared himself “in charge” and blocked state and local investigators from interviewing Poole for at least 48 hours, citing an unspecified policy, the law enforcement records show.
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“They tried everything they could to get us not to charge him,” Copiah County Sheriff Byron Swilley told the dead man’s family the day after the shooting
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Deputies charged Poole anyway, the sheriff explained, because it was obvious the agent failed to wait for law enforcement to arrive and “took the law into his own hands.”
“When it’s wrong, it’s wrong,” Swilley added. “You take somebody’s life because of a rock?”
......
Just weeks before, DEA brass responded to a separate controversy involving another off-duty agent, Mark Ibrahim, who posed for photos in which he flashed his DEA badge and firearm outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot. Ibrahim is awaiting trial on four federal counts.
And only months before that case, a once-standout DEA agent admitted conspiring to launder money with a Colombian drug cartel. Jose Irizarry was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison, joining a growing list of former agents behind bars.
Lots more details in the long report at: https://apnews.com/article/shootings-mis...10eda0735d
yesterday
......
A veteran of the DEA’s military-style commando teams, Poole acknowledged he fatally shot a mentally ill neighbor just minutes after calling law enforcement to report the man was trespassing on his land – yet again – “out of his mind” and threatening him with a rock.
......
Sheriff’s investigators were skeptical of Poole’s self-defense claim from the start, reports show, mostly because he mentioned in his call for help that the trespasser was already leaving. No rock of any kind could be found. And the shooting happened 200 yards from Poole’s house, near the edge of his property, prompting deputies to determine Mississippi’s “castle doctrine” didn’t apply.
Yet a little more than a year after Poole was arrested on a murder charge in the April 27, 2021, shooting, he has quietly returned to work as a supervisor in the DEA office a half-hour’s drive north in Jackson after a grand jury this spring declined to indict him.
......
“No citizen could have done what this DEA agent did and walked away,” said W. Lloyd Grafton, a use-of-force expert who reviewed the investigative case file
......
Former DEA supervisors who examined the case for AP questioned the agency’s heavy-handed involvement in the critical first hours, even though the shooting had no nexus to federal law enforcement and Poole had been off duty feeding his chickens when he first spotted the trespasser.
Multiple DEA agents responded to the crowded crime scene and one supervisor declared himself “in charge” and blocked state and local investigators from interviewing Poole for at least 48 hours, citing an unspecified policy, the law enforcement records show.
......
“They tried everything they could to get us not to charge him,” Copiah County Sheriff Byron Swilley told the dead man’s family the day after the shooting
......
Deputies charged Poole anyway, the sheriff explained, because it was obvious the agent failed to wait for law enforcement to arrive and “took the law into his own hands.”
“When it’s wrong, it’s wrong,” Swilley added. “You take somebody’s life because of a rock?”
......
Just weeks before, DEA brass responded to a separate controversy involving another off-duty agent, Mark Ibrahim, who posed for photos in which he flashed his DEA badge and firearm outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot. Ibrahim is awaiting trial on four federal counts.
And only months before that case, a once-standout DEA agent admitted conspiring to launder money with a Colombian drug cartel. Jose Irizarry was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison, joining a growing list of former agents behind bars.
Lots more details in the long report at: https://apnews.com/article/shootings-mis...10eda0735d
