The Last Gun (18 page)

Florida law presumes everyone to be sane. The burden is on a defendant to prove otherwise. The applicable statute required Delgado to show not only that at the time of his offense he had “a mental infirmity, disease, or defect.” He also had to show that either he “did not know what he . . . was doing or its consequences” or that although he “knew what he . . . was doing and its consequences,” he did not know that what he was doing “was wrong.”
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Judge Battles ruled against Delgado. “The court is reasonably convinced that the defendant was under the influence of an extreme mental or emotional disturbance at the time he killed Cpl. Roberts,” he wrote in his sentencing order. “The court is reasonably convinced that the defendant's ability to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law was impaired, albeit not substantially.”
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Humberto Delgado was born in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He was a police officer there from April 1996 to October 2000.
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During this period, according to his family and mental health professionals who examined him after his arrest, Delgado began to develop a lifelong complex of paranoid delusions. More
specifically, he became convinced that a woman in the Virgin Islands had tried to poison him and that she had influenced a cult of Masons to get him.
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The Masons, he believed, were harassing him, threatening him, and interfering with his work.
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His life spiraled downward after he left the police force. He worked for a while in an oil refinery, but his paranoia—he thought it was the Masons at work against him—ruined that job. His family ticked off some of the manifestations he displayed. “He made his wife and children sleep on the floor because there were demons outside, people in trees and eyes peering through the windows. He wore gloves, walked with a cane and said he was Abel from the Old Testament. He said his kids had goat legs that needed to be cutoff.”
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Somehow, Delgado managed to enlist in the United States Army and served between September 2004 and December 2005.
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Private First Class Delgado was a petroleum supply specialist, fueling aircraft and vehicles. He was stationed at Fort Lee, near Petersburg, Virginia, and at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
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But his illness caught up with him at Fort Bragg, home of the Eighty-second Airborne Division. According to an army doctor, Delgado started carrying a pellet gun, a hammer, and a flashlight for self-defense. He thought the rapper 50 Cent was out to get him. Diagnosed by an army psychiatrist as “bipolar with psychotic issues,” Delgado was medically discharged from the Army in December 2005.
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After his discharge, Delgado had trouble finding a job. His girlfriend in North Carolina, the mother of one of his children, told detectives that she kicked him out.
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It was sometime around then that Delgado apparently decided to acquire guns. In November 2006, he was issued a concealed-handgun permit in Cumberland County,
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where Fayetteville and Fort Bragg are located. Sometime later, probably in 2008, he bought at least four guns from Guns Plus, at 1503 North Bragg Boulevard in Spring Lake, near Fort Bragg.
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The nature of Guns Plus is described in the following review, posted on the North Carolina Gun Owners website:

It's well stocked with both handguns and rifles, although most of it leans toward military style guns. Based on that, if you're looking for pure hunting stuff, you might be better off going somewhere else, but if you are looking for high-speed, low-drag Soldier of Fortune stuff, this is the place to go. Guns Plus definitely caters to the Ft Bragg community, with a hint toward the Black-Ops wannabes (you know the type). Like previously mentioned, they do carry virtually everything you will need to go out and fight the war on terror single-handedly.
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This “high-speed, low-drag Soldier of Fortune stuff” is exactly what sustains the gun industry's dimming fortunes today. “The modern sporting rifle . . . platform continues to provide dealers with strong sales, even as the buying frenzy of a couple of years ago has quieted,”
Shooting Industry
reported in March 2012. The magazine highlighted the strong role that follow-up accessories also play in the assault weapon market. “Manufacturers are introducing new models of the rifle, along with a seemingly endless number of add-ons and accessories. There are magazines and loaders, lights and lasers, slings, multi-rail hand-guards, conversion kits, bipods and rests—the list goes on and on.” One manufacturer's representative told the magazine, “The AR platform is like Legos for grown men.”
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On the night of August 19,2009, Humberto Delgado was well stocked with the guns he thought he would need to fight his personal terror. He had in his possession a Kel-Tec PLR-16, a Glock Model 17 semiautomatic 9mm pistol, a Taurus Millennium 45 caliber semiautomatic pistol, and a 22 caliber revolver of uncertain make and model.
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The Kel-Tec PLR-16, manufactured in Cocoa, Florida, has been mistakenly identified in some reports as an assault rifle.
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It is actually an assault pistol. Designed to accept the high-capacity magazines of the AR-15 and M-16 assault rifles, it combines the power of a rifle with the concealability of a handgun. As the NRA's
American Rifleman
magazine put it in
its review of the gun, “You can enjoy all of the head-turning flash and hoorah of a magnum revolver, but with modest recoil similar to that of a 9mm pistol.”
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Delgado had drifted south from North Carolina to live with an uncle in the town of Oldsmar, located about fifteen miles west of Tampa. But his family said he refused to accept the fact that he was mentally ill and had stopped taking his medication because it made him “feel like a zombie.”
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His uncle had thrown him out of the house. Delgado had thus been homeless, probably for about a week.
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Disheveled, his hair a tangled mass of unkempt dreadlocks, he had cleaned out most of a storage locker he rented, put the contents in his shopping cart, and walked all day from Oldsmar to Tampa. Among the items in the cart was a laptop computer. Mental health experts for the defense testified that lack of food and sleep made Delgado delusional by the time he got to Tampa.
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Corporal Mike Roberts spotted Delgado pushing his shopping cart down Nebraska Avenue. It was an area where there had recently been a rash of burglaries. At 9:58
P
.
M
., Corporal Roberts radioed two cryptic phrases to the police dispatcher. “Lincoln 61,” he said. “Signal 80.” The first was his personal identifier, the second signaled his intent to conduct a “field interrogation.” There was relative silence after that, except for a brief, inaudible transmission three minutes and forty seconds later. The dispatcher interpreted that transmission as a sign of distress. Other units were dispatched to the scene, where Corporal Roberts was found, lying on his back.
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He had been shot once. Although he was wearing body armor, the powerful 45 caliber slug had ripped through his shoulder, into his chest, and perforated his heart and lungs.
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At 10:50
P
.
M
., less than an hour after he had signaled his intention to question Humberto Delgado Jr., Corporal Michael Roberts was pronounced dead at Tampa General Hospital.
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The field interrogation had gone terribly wrong, terribly fast. The exact sequence is unknowable, but it appears that at some point within those few minutes, Corporal Roberts may have
looked into Delgado's backpack and asked him about the laptop computer. Delgado tried to run away and Roberts fired a nonlethal, ordinarily disabling Taser gun at him. At least one of the barbed electrodes the gun fires became entangled in Delgado's dreadlocks instead of anchoring in his flesh. Rather than falling immobilized to the ground, Delgado turned around, and the two men fought. Delgado got the upper hand, pistol-whipped Roberts into unconsciousness, and then shot the officer with Delgado's Taurus Millennium 45 caliber semiautomatic pistol.
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Responding police officers found Delgado hiding nearby. During a struggle with them, Delgado shouted, “Don't hurt me,” “I'm sorry,” “I'm crazy,” and “I'm one of you.”
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The next day, investigators opened Delgado's storage locker. Among other things, they found a 22 caliber semiautomatic rifle with a scope and laser sight, and a
Shooter's Bible
, a popular source for gun enthusiasts, a combination gun catalog and reference book.
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There is a final thread to this tragic story. A record was made of Delgado's statements while he was in a holding cell. Among them were these: “He deserved it. . . . It was self defense. . . . I was scared and I ran when he discovered my guns. . . . He f—violated my rights by going through my bag. . . . He shouldn't have went through my s—.”
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Later, Delgado had a conversation with a defense psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Scott Maher. “He told me that the police officer searched through his backpack without asking permission,” Dr. Maher said. “Mr. Delgado was afraid that the police officer would misunderstand and react to the fact that he had a laptop computer . . . and guns.” According to the doctor, Delgado reacted with fear and paranoia. “This was confirmation that the officer was after him. He was going to get him. He was going to kill him. He was going to do bad things to him. There was no way out of this situation.”
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As crazy as it may seem, Delgado's addled expressions of fear and assertion of his rights are precisely the elements of the rhetorical foundation upon which gun rights activists now are
building a third wave of dangerous gun laws, this one aimed directly at cops. To understand why it may well succeed, one needs to understand the first two waves of gun laws pushed by the NRA, the role of Marion Hammer, and the logic that propelled the gun industry's arguments.

The NRA's first wave gutted laws restricting the concealed carry of guns (and in some states, other weapons, such as blackjacks and knives). Until 1987, Florida, like most states at the time, had a discretionary system for issuing licenses to carry concealed guns, commonly referred to as “may-issue” licensing. Under a “may-issue” system, authorities such as a county sheriff, judge, or local police official have discretion as to whom they grant a license to walk around with a gun tucked out of sight. Such discretionary systems lessen the chance that a mentally disturbed person like Humberto Delgado will get a concealed-carry license. Applicants are generally required to show a good reason for carrying a concealed weapon and to pass a thorough background check.
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Marion Hammer and the NRA were determined to change that. They wanted a system known as “shall-issue” licensing, under which authorities have no discretion. The state must issue a concealed-carry license to any applicant who meets a few specific, minimal criteria. These include being a citizen or resident alien and not having a felony record—or having had one's civil rights restored after a felony conviction. Perfunctory training, or a substitute for training, such as military or law enforcement service, may be required.

The difference between the two points of view about the advisability of handing out gun licenses on demand was aptly summed up by the
Miami Herald
in 1987. “Pro-handgun people divide the world into two kinds of human beings: law-abiding citizens and criminals. Anti-handgun people think it consists of many kinds: law-abiding citizens, criminals, mental patients, angry husbands, drug addicts, housewives, disgruntled former employees and so on.”
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The NRA's gun mill had tried to loosen the concealed-carry law in Florida before 1987, but had repeatedly failed. In 1985, the legislature passed such a bill, but Governor Bob Graham vetoed it. In 1986, similar legislation was bottled up in committee. To make matters worse from Marion Hammer's point of view, populous urban counties in the southern part of the state had imposed waiting periods on would-be handgun buyers. Two of the counties did so after their residents voted in local referenda for “cooling off” periods.
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That would change in 1987. Robert “Bob” Martinez, a Republican, had been elected governor. State Representative Ron Johnson, a Democrat, introduced another shall-issue bill. Johnson was the kind of man who during a newspaper interview would prop his feet up and cough “a gooey wad of Levi Garrett chewing tobacco into a yellow cup. He does not excuse himself for that.”
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Hammer and the NRA “spent thousands of hours and tens of thousands of NRA dollars” to finally ram their change in law and common sense through the legislature. It also helped that police groups in the state, who had opposed earlier legislation, “pulled the old switcheroo,” as the
Miami Herald
described their action, and endorsed the NRA's bills. “If you see a freight train coming,” the cops' chief lobbyist explained, “do you stand in front of it? Or do you stand aside and grab ahold of it and try to ride it to glory?”
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When the final vote came, Hammer was sitting in the gallery behind bulletproof glass, making sure there were no defectors. Governor Martinez signed the bill into law the day before a delegation from South Florida—the Broward County commissioner, the Palm Beach County commissioner, and a Dade County gun-control activist—had an appointment with him to urge him to veto it.
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