Minutes after he was shot the nightof June 11, blood dampening his uniform, Louisville Metro Police Officer Kyle Carroll got into his partner's car and uttered the name of the man he says shot him.
Jacquan Crowley, a man whom he arrested months before, had fired a bullet into his chest after a short foot chase, Carroll told his partner.
"I knew exactly who it was and if I was gonna die I wanted to get his name out there," Carroll told Sgt. Arnold Rivera of the department's Public Integrity Unit, which investigates whenever an officer is involved in a shooting, nine days after the incident.
But also detailed in recent court filings is Crowley's nearly three-hour June 17 interview with Rivera in Daytona Beach, Fla., where Crowley had fled.Crowley denies involvement and appears resigned to the idea that no matter what he says, a jury would convict him, given his criminal record and the allegationof shooting a police officer.
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When Rivera asked Crowley to help himself prove he was innocent, he replied that he couldn't.
“'Cause how you see it and how he see it, how any LMPD officer see it, what the(expletive) can you say for us to believe you over one of our officers?" Crowley said. "At the end of the day, it's gonna be him against me, period."
“Sorry he got shot, though, but not sorry I shot him, 'cause I ain't shoot him," he said as the interview came to an end. "... I swear to God I'm sorry, I know y'all good people, but I'm not gonna confess that I shot a police officer without a lawyer, I'm sorry, y'all good people.”
In Carroll's June 20 interview with police investigators, with attorney Steve Schroering by his side, the officer said he was driving in the Russellneighborhood when he saw Crowley walking down the 2300 block of Magazine Street. He said he knew Crowley, known as “Lil’ Dummy,”was wanted and that last time he tried to arrest him, he ran.
When Carroll turned and drove back down the block, he said, Crowley took off running and heeventually got out of his car and gave chase. When Carroll caught up with Crowley, who had run into a fence, he grabbed him, he said.
A gun then appeared in his face, Carroll said. The officer said he grabbed for the gun,pushing Crowley’s hand and part of the gun down to his chest when Crowley fired.
Carroll fell and lost his grip on Crowley.
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“I heard the gunshot, and then it just felt like somebody lit me on fire,” Carroll recalled in the interview, which was transcribed and entered into evidence as part of the pending criminal case against Crowley.
“He took about four or five steps running, he stopped, turned around toward me and started shooting again down at me at the ground, I could see him shooting back at me.”
He curled himself and tried to cover his head, Carroll recounted.
The bulletwas slowed by a bullet-resistant vest, leaving aquarter-inch puncture in Carroll's chest.
When asked by Rivera if he remembered turning on his body camera, Carroll saidhe wasn’t sure.
Court records also detail thedayslong search for Crowley, who was arrested June 16 in Port Orange, Fla., and soon charged with attempted murder of a police officer.
Police spent nearly a week chasing leads, including a tip that led to SWAT members being in a seven-hour standoff outside a "flop house" in the 2500 block of Chestnut Street where Crowley was supposedly seen after the shooting.
U.S. marshals searched a business in Radcliff he had been known to frequent. Local police interviewed Crowley’s wife, who was in jail at Metro Corrections when the shooting occurred. She warned them that if police put his picture on the news, he would skip town, according to a transcript of her police interview.
In Crowley's interview with Riveraat theVolusia County Sheriff’s Department, he said he was planning on going to police headquarters to clear his name and was on his way there, in fact, when wanted posters with his mugshot hit the news. He left town for his own safety, he said, after seeing that people on Facebook were threatening to kill whoever shot Carroll.
Crowley also said he went to the scene shortly after the shooting and was seen by multiple officers who knew him by name yet didn't arrest him.
He was extradited to Louisville in late June and indicted by a Jefferson County grand jury in July. He's next due in court Nov. 10.
Reporter Matthew Glowicki can be reached at 502-582-4989 or mglowicki@courier-journal.com.
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