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City, MPD officers named in lawsuit from 2014 shooting incident

T-R FILE PHOTO From a Dec. 18, 2014 file photo, a Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Crime Scene Unit with Marshalltown Police Department vehicles are shown near the area of Second Avenue and Linn Street. The DCI was called to the scene as as a result of a 3:47 a.m. Dec. 17 shooting involving armed suspect Andrew Worsfold and MPD officers Ramon Maxey and Benjamin Scheevel. Worsfold was killed in the incident. Law enforcement personnel were seen examining an area near the CIRSI parking lot and the southwest corner of Primary Health Care.

A lawsuit has been filed by against the city of Marshalltown, Marshalltown Police Department Officer Ramon Maxey and former MPD Officer Benjamin Scheevel, following an officer-involved shooting back in December of 2014, in which a Marshalltown man was killed.

According to Marshall County District Court records, Jeanette Heil and the estate of Andrew Jay Worsfold filed the suit back in December of 2016, but Maxey and Scheevel were only served this week. Heil is Worsfold’s mother.

In the early morning hours of Dec. 17, 2014, Officers Maxey and Scheevel stopped Worsfold, 25, for suspicious behavior while being in the vicinity of a robbery the previous night at the Jiffy Mart convenience store in the 100 block of South Third Avenue In Marshalltown.

“Officers were on routine patrol and encountered the suspect,” Marshalltown Police Chief Mike Tupper told the Times-Republican in December, 2014. “Our officers saw this individual and got out to talk to him. At some point they were talking with him when he produced a handgun. Commands were given by the officers to drop the weapon.”

Worsfold fired one shot from a .45 caliber Glock at the officers.

Maxey and Scheevel returned fire. Worsfold was hit twice.

He was critically wounded, and transported to Central Iowa Healthcare where he died shortly thereafter as a result of gunshot wounds, according to autopsy reports cited in Marshall County Attorney Jennifer Miller’s legal opinion about the incident issued in January of 2015.

The two officers were not injured.

At the time, Miller said the officers were legally justified to defend themselves. “Based on my review of the case with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and a full review of the facts and circumstances surrounding the death of Andrew Worsfold, it is determined that the officers were legally justified under the laws of the State of Iowa in using deadly force,” wrote Miller.

“Consequently, no criminal charges are supported by the evidence. The actions of the officers were objectively reasonable under the circumstances. The actions of Andrew Worsfold clearly posed a deadly and imminent threat to the officers. Therefore, it was reasonable and justifiable, under these circumstances, for the officers to use deadly force to protect their lives.”

Miller continued: “During the course of the investigation, it was determined in the days before the shooting Worsfold was attempting to recruit someone to assist him with ‘shooting up the Marshalltown Police Department.’ It was also determined that Worsfold had been a suspect in a burglary from his mother’s residence on Dec. 16, 2014 in which four handguns and $2,200 in cash had been stolen. The .45 caliber Glock that Worsfold fired at police was identified as one of these stolen weapons.

When asked to respond to the lawsuit earlier this week, Tupper replied via email: “On the morning of Dec. 17, 2014, members of the Marshalltown Police Department were confronted with an imminent and deadly threat. They were given no other options but to defend themselves. I fully support them.”

City Attorney Roger Schoell said he had no comment.

Worsfold family response

Worsfold’s relatives told a Des Moines Register reporter the day after the incident Worsfold “suffered from a complicated combination of mental illnesses.”

Heil said her son had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, according to the Register report (http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2014/12/18/family-man-fatally-shot-police-mentally/20621835/).

“He heard voices,” Heil told the Register.

He had an ultra-active mind — energy that he harnessed through such creative endeavors as drawing, mixing hip-hop jams and break dancing from the minute he got home from school until bedtime. It was his dream to dance competitively.

A doctor discovered scar tissue on Worsfold’s brain about six months prior to the incident, which he likely received from a kick to the head during a fight, Heil said. They believe that may have exacerbated things for him

But about four years prior to the incident, the effects of his mental illnesses grew worse, Heil said.

He would put on sound-canceling headphones to help him concentrate. Worsfold took prescriptions and visited specialists in Mount Pleasant, but he started to self-medicate with drugs. “He thought it helped him focus,” Heil said.

He started to slip backward socially and started hanging with the wrong crowd, Heil said. “He wanted to fit in like he used to when he was in high school,” she said.

Worsfold was a Marshalltown High School graduate,

He attended Marshalltown Community College from 2006-10, but never graduated.

Worsfold was kicked out of his apartment and moved in with his mother. He progressed there, Heil said, and he was excited at the prospect of starting a new treatment program in Iowa City at the end of December.

Then he went missing.

The family couldn’t find Worsfold for three days. He turned off his phone. Worsfold didn’t have a driver’s license, and he didn’t take his prescriptions with him, Heil said.

Then they received word he had been shot and killed after confronting the officers.

Attempts to reach Heil for comment for this story were unsuccessful.

At this point, no court dates have been set.

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