By Jeff Lehr

jlehr@joplinglobe.com

Sheriff’s Deputy Adam Blankenship testified Thursday that he feared for his life when he shot an Oronogo man in the face during a domestic-disturbance call earlier this year at the man’s home.

Blankenship was the lone witness called to testify at the preliminary hearing of Wayne E. Stewart Jr. in Jasper County Circuit Court in Joplin on a felony charge of assault on a law enforcement officer.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Associate Judge Richard Copeland found probable cause for the defendant to stand trial and set Nov. 20 for an initial appearance in a trial division of the court.

The Jasper County deputy had described how Stewart, 34, gained the upper hand on him during a scuffle May 6 in the front yard of a home on Webbwood Drive in Oronogo. Stewart had defied repeated orders by Blankenship to get down on the ground, and he fought back after being sprayed three times with Mace, the deputy told the court.

When Blankenship finally took Stewart to the ground in a headlock, Stewart slipped out of the hold, got the deputy on his back with a forearm across his throat and started gouging one of his eyes, the deputy said. He said the forearm pressing down on his throat was cutting off his air supply.

Mortal fear

“I was in fear for my life,” Blankenship said. “I could not get out from beneath him.”

He said he drew his service weapon with his free right hand, pressed it to the side of Stewart’s head and pulled the trigger. The gun failed to discharge. He withdrew the weapon a slight distance from Stewart’s head and squeezed the trigger a second time. The gun fired, and the bullet struck Stewart in the face.

The defendant got up off him at that point, Blankenship said, although he continued to scuffle with other officers who were arriving at the scene and attempting to subdue him and render first aid. The deputy said he thought he had shot Stewart in the side of the head and did not learn until much later that the round actually struck him in the face.

Stewart was taken to a Joplin hospital in serious condition but survived the shooting and appeared in court on Thursday.

Stewart originally was charged with first-degree domestic assault and felony resisting of arrest as well as assault on an officer. The other two counts were dropped by the prosecutor’s office before the hearing.

Initial call

Assistant prosecutor Jeremy Crowley said the defendant’s girlfriend, Nikki Ann Ford, 33, no longer wanted to pursue prosecution of Stewart for the alleged attack on her that drew the deputy to the scene of the shooting.

Authorities said at the time that the couple apparently had been arguing for several days about Stewart’s alleged drug abuse, and the argument turned physical the morning in question. A probable-cause affidavit states that Stewart choked Ford and squirted a liquid substance in her eye that she believed to be methamphetamine.

Blankenship told the court that he spotted two women running down the street with a man chasing them as he arrived on Webbwood Drive. He said one of the women had a baseball bat in her hands, and he ordered her to drop it. The women then ran to a Webb City police officer’s home down the block as Blankenship ordered their pursuer to drop to the ground.

The deputy said Stewart refused to get down despite repeated orders, and he took out his pepper spray and told him he would spray him if he did not do so. When the man still would not get down, he sprayed him from a distance of about six to seven feet, Blankenship told the court. Stewart just rubbed his face and yelled, he said.

He sprayed him a second time, Blankenship testified, and administered a couple of kicks to his legs behind his knees in an effort to get him to the ground. When Stewart persisted, walking away from him up a driveway of a residence, he sprayed him a third time from the side, administered additional kicks behind his knees, and finally grabbed him by the neck and took him down, Blankenship said.

No Taser

Defense attorney Stuart Huffman asked Blankenship why he never used a Taser on Stewart, and the deputy explained that he does not carry one.

Blankenship told the court that he suffered bruising to the eye that the suspect had tried to gouge, and that pepper spray was transferred to his own eyes by Stewart during the scuffle. He also injured tendons in both his hands but did not require surgery.

The Sheriff’s Department reported at the time of the incident that Stewart repeatedly threatened to kill the deputy before being shot. Blankenship’s testimony made no mention of that, and Crowley said after the hearing that apparently was mistaken information. The deputy instead told the court that Stewart kept telling him something else.

“He kept repeating over and over: ‘You’re going to have to kill me to get me off you,’” Blankenship testified.





Handled internally



The Jasper County Sheriff’s Department never sought an outside agency’s help in investigating the shooting of an Oronogo man by a deputy earlier this year. Sheriff Archie Dunn insisted that his own department conduct the investigation.