By Amanda Codispoti
The Roanoke Times (The Virginian-Pilot Edition)
Ashley Hunt lingered at the edge of the crime scene, not far from the body of a burglar who dropped face-down in the road from a homeowner’s bullet in his neck .
She was 13 and arrived at the homicide with her father, Ewell Hunt, then a lieutenant at the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office.
Her appearance there inaugurated a law enforcement love affair that began with a part-time sheriff’s office job as a clerk when she was 14 and, once her father became Franklin County’s elected sheriff in 2008, produced a gun-carrying, uniform-wearing, tantrum-throwing teen whom deputies nicknamed “Hurricane Ashley.”
Ashley Hunt, now 19, captured a starring role in a special grand jury’s seven-month probe of her work hours that led to her father’s arrest in December on a misdemeanor charge of failing to keep proper records. She endangered herself and the public and left the sheriff’s office chain of command in tatters, the panel’s report said.
Interviews in the past two months with six current and former sheriff’s employees, most of whom didn’t want to be named out of fear of reprisal, elaborated on the grand jury’s findings. They said Ashley Hunt accompanied undercover deputies to buy drugs, rode along on stakeouts and cruised county roads in an unmarked sheriff’s Jeep Cherokee, stopping behind deputies as “backup.” Once, her father let her take the wheel during a 90 mph car chase, according to the grand jury.
“She was a kid trying to play in a grown-up world,” said Josh Carter, the former chief deputy, who said he was fired last year after taking his complaints about Ashley to the sheriff. Carter’s observations were corroborated by the other people interviewed for this story.
Sheriff Hunt’s attorney, William Stanley, said in a December statement that the sheriff is innocent and that parts of the grand jury’s 18-page report are “factually inaccurate.” Hunt won’t resign his $85,542 a year job, Stanley said.
Stanley called the grand jury’s statements about Ashley, who wasn’t charged, “unfounded.”
“She worked exceptionally hard for Franklin County and she accurately reported every hour that she worked,” the statement said. “Ashley Hunt committed no crime, period.”
Ashley Hunt declined three requests for an interview for this story. Sheriff Hunt also wouldn’t speak about the investigation.
While working as a civilian clerk, the teenager invited herself to investigators’ confidential meetings, hung a police radio on her belt, took over the duties of assigning uniforms, badges and patrol cars, and was so quick to anger that seasoned deputies tried to avoid provoking her, according to the grand jury and those she worked with.
Sheriff Hunt, 55, did little to stop her, and fired two of his top commanders, Carter and Allan Arrington, when they questioned Ashley’s work and hours, according to Carter. Hunt said in May their firings had nothing to do with his daughter’s work hours. He didn’t elaborate, saying it was a private personnel issue. Carter, 37, a Roanoke police officer until Hunt became sheriff and hired him, remains unemployed.
Arrington didn’t want to speak publicly about the investigation. The grand jury report faulted him for mishandling drugs seized as evidence, saying it was “indicative of a systematic defect” in office procedures. He wasn’t charged with a crime and now works as a contractor in Afghanistan.
By the time Ashley left her job for college in 2008, the sheriff’s office - a 70-officer police force responsible for enforcing the law in the county of nearly 50,000 - was sapped of leadership and broken, the grand jury said.
Former county sheriff Quint Overton had been Hunt’s best man, and bowed to Hunt’s request to hire Ashley. Later, Overton said he tried to get Hunt to control his daughter’s intrusions.
“When he told me in my office that she wouldn’t listen to him, I knew I had a problem,” Overton said.
She spent little time on her assigned duties, ordering uniforms and cataloging inventory, Carter said, concentrating instead on what the deputies were doing.
Three months into the new fiscal year in 2008, she had nearly depleted the $37,000 uniform budget, stocking up on needless badges and leather belts, Carter said.
She preferred attending meetings about investigations, hanging around the office with commanders or riding on patrols and stakeouts with deputies.
“She wanted to be present for everything we did,” Carter said. “It was a daily struggle to try and appease her.”
When the department ordered new cars, Ashley insisted on driving two sergeants to Richmond to pick them up. She paid for the trip with office credit cards and signed for the cars.
Back at the sheriff’s office, the lieutenant in charge of patrol assigned the new vehicles. The young woman interrupted him in front of his deputies and said Deputy Jonathan Agee would get one of the coveted new cruisers.
She’d been seen spending a lot time with Agee, a 29-year-old drug investigator, according to the grand jury and people who were interviewed.
Her involvement with him became an ongoing problem at the sheriff’s office, Carter and others said. The grand jury report said the pair’s work activities “exposed her, other employees of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department and members of the general public to demonstrated risk and significantly increased exposure of the department to civil liability.”
Once, while Agee was supposed to be watching a drug deal in Rocky Mount, he and Ashley were eating at Taco Bell 20 miles away in Collinsville, Carter said.
William Davis, who was Agee’s attorney during the grand jury investigation, didn’t return calls seeking comment. Efforts to reach Agee were unsuccessful.
Meanwhile, deputies had begun asking office commanders why Ashley was showing up on calls in an unmarked vehicle.
And she’d been seen with an old service pistol that the sheriff had brought back from the agency’s gun dealer and given to her, Carter said.
“She had free range,” Carter said.
He said he talked to the sheriff about Ashley’s gun, county vehicle and clothes, which resembled a sworn deputy’s uniform.
Hunt told him to ride it out. Ashley would be leaving at the end of summer for college.
The young woman’s screaming fits also concerned sheriff’s commanders, Carter said.
After Agee had been yanked off the sheriff’s drug unit for violating an order to stay away from Ashley at work, she wrote a letter of resignation and left it on her father’s chair, Carter said.
Then she waited outside for the sheriff to return to the office. With about 20 people watching, including deputies and officers for other agencies, Ashley, shaking with rage, screamed that her father was trying to take her friends away and that she hated him.
“It was horrible,” Carter said. “We felt bad for him.”
Hunt stared at the ground, hands in his pockets. He didn’t accept her resignation.
Ashley Hunt left Franklin County in the fall of 2008 to study biology at Concord University, in Athens, W.Va.
That October, Sheriff Hunt ordered Carter to approve Ashley’s summer time sheets, which included an 84-hour workweek. Carter was certain she hadn’t worked as many hours as she claimed and took his concern to the Franklin County commonwealth’s attorney and other county officials. The grand jury said Carter improperly approved Ashley’s time records, “but that this does not rise to a level of an indictable criminal offense.”
Ashley was paid $11,494 in 2008, according to the grand jury. She submitted inaccurate payroll information and “engaged in behavior that was destructive to the morale and good function of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department,” the grand jury said.
The report also said that the sheriff mismanaged public funds. The panel said in the report he wasn’t charged “as a result of the deference afforded a constitutional officer.”
Sheriff Hunt is scheduled for a jury trial on the record-keeping charge March 23. If convicted, he faces a maximum one-year jail sentence and $2,500 fine. State law says the Circuit Court, if petitioned by voters, may remove a sheriff from office for neglect of duty, misuse of office or incompetence.
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