Deputy recounts traffic stop that led to gunshot to his face

Robert Odell Brown
Robert Odell Brown

Robert Odell Brown, 29, center, has been charged with several crimes in connection to the November 2011 shooting of a Spartanburg County sheriff's deputy.

Published: Tuesday, June 18, 2013 at 10:28 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, June 18, 2013 at 10:28 p.m.

It began as a routine traffic stop.

Spartanburg County Sheriff's Deputy Brad James testified Tuesday that he was working third shift on Nov. 6, 2011, patrolling the county's south side when he saw a blue Pontiac speed past him on Irwin Avenue. James said the driver made a quick, right-hand turn onto Carolina Drive after spotting him. That's when the chase began.

The car chase became a foot chase, and then a struggle. That's when, prosecutors say, Robert Odell Brown shot James in the face and fled.

“I go over the fence and as soon as my feet hit the ground he's within arm's reach of the right-hand side,” James testified Tuesday, the first day of Brown's trial.

“I turn to face him and a loud bang and flash goes off…” James said before he exhaled and dropped his head. Until that moment, he recounted the events of that night with emotionless precision. For several seconds the courtroom was still and silent as James worked to regain his composure.

The jurors sat to his left. He later stepped down from the witness stand and showed them where a plastic surgeon reconstructed part of his face.

Brown, 29, of 124 Oakview Drive, Spartanburg, is charged with attempted murder, possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime, resisting arrest with a deadly weapon and failure to stop for a blue light.

James said that after the first shot, he turned to put distance between him and the suspect, heard two more shots, and fell face first to the ground after he was struck in the left hip. James said the suspect had freed himself from the fence and was coming directly toward him. Thinking the suspect might shoot him, he pulled his service weapon and fired nine rounds and said the suspect ran toward Kimberly Drive.

James got up and began chasing the suspect and realized he couldn't see out of his right eye. He reached up and felt a “good-sized hole” in his head and laid down, radioed in that he had been shot, returned fire and that the suspect had run down Kimberly Drive.

Seventh Circuit Assistant Solicitor Timi Poulos said Brown fled the scene in another car and later drove out of the state with two accused accomplices. They reached Virginia, Poulos said, where officers tried to stop them. The accomplices got out of the car, but she said Brown led police there on another chase until the car he was driving was pushed into an embankment and there was a standoff that ended when police shot tear gas into the getaway vehicle.

“This is a case about a police officer doing his job and about someone who almost killed that police officer rather than just simply stop,” Poulos said.

She and 7th Circuit Solicitor Barry Barnette are prosecuting the case.

Brown is represented by Clay Allen, who heads the office of 7th Judicial Circuit Public Defender.

“When someone shoots at another individual there's a tendency to want to get away from that shooter and from that danger,” Allen said in opening statements.

He said the state would try to establish that Brown was at the crime scene, while the defense would show that Brown was being instructed to do something he could not do at the time and was shot.

Allen asked for a mistrial after James became emotional during testimony. Allen thought it could sway the jury and appeal to jurors' sympathy and Brown would not receive a fair trial.

Circuit Court Judge Derham Cole denied the motion, saying that it's understandable that someone shot in the face would be emotional recalling the event just as someone who's been in combat might become emotional.

Cole also denied other motions that Allen made, including to sequester witnesses and suppress results of a vehicle search since the search warrant incorrectly identified the model and had an incorrect character in the VIN number. That was overruled on the grounds that the suspect vehicle was “sufficiently described” as a blue, 2001 Pontiac and the license plate number matched.

Allen questioned certain details in James' report on the incident, including that he was at the intersection of South Church Street and Irwin Avenue when he saw the suspect vehicle. James said he was pulling out of the intersection when he saw the suspect vehicle. Allen said James' report indicated that he turned out onto Irwin Avenue after the car made the right-hand turn. The report was made Nov. 30, 2011 and reviewed the following month before a copy was submitted to the S.C. Law Enforcement Division, which routinely investigates officer-involved shootings.

Allen also questioned James about why nothing was in his report about seeing the suspect again leaving the area in a burgundy Cadillac. James said that although that detail wasn't in the report, he did share that information on scene.

Spartanburg plastic surgeon Michael Orseck treated James and testified the officer had a gunshot wound to the right side of his face and another to the buttocks.

Orseck said titanium plates and shattered bone were used to reconstruct James' eye socket. He also repaired the eyelid, cleaned out injured tissues and closed them. He said there were pellets in the back of eye, next to the orbital nerve, which is the nerve responsible for sight.

“He's blind in that eye,” Orseck said.

The shot could have been life-threatening had it not been treated, he said.

An officer testified that the Pontiac belonged to a codefendant and SLED assisted in tracking the same codefendant's phone. That helped lead authorities to the suspect.

A SLED agent testified that she collected evidence, including swabs for DNA and from a trail of blood that led investigators down Kimberly Drive to a shop behind a residence. The same agent testified that she analyzed fingerprints from the Pontiac and found a palm print that matched Brown, as well as other prints that could not be identified and some that didn't match Brown.


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