By Tom Ales
The Des Moines Register
Related: When the smoke clears: Your legal first aid after a shooting
DES MOINES — A Des Moines parole violator who was shot to death in a struggle with authorities outside a south-side apartment building was unarmed, police confirmed Wednesday.
But a witness said an officer told him that Bradley Edward Behmer, 50, of 5013 N.E. 12th St., had tried to take another officer’s gun when he was shot in the chest.
Police said that the shooting followed a “violent struggle,” and that Joe Emberlin, 42, a member of the 5th Judicial District’s “warrant team,” fired the fatal shot Tuesday night outside Deer Ridge Apartments, 6009 Creston Ave.
Emberlin, a state law enforcement academy graduate and parole officer, was put on leave while Des Moines police investigate the shooting. Further details apparently will remain secret pending a grand jury inquiry.
Behmer, who had a lengthy arrest record that dates back to 1985, was wanted for a parole violation related to a marijuana charge. It was unclear why he was at the apartment building, where authorities closed in shortly after 7 p.m.
Police said a U.S. Marshals Service agent got word from an informant that Behmer might be en route to the complex. Armed officers with a fugitive task force surrounded the building.
Des Moines police spokesman Sgt. Vince Valdez said police dispatchers in Des Moines received a call about 7:30 p.m. from a task force member, who said Behmer had been found and would be apprehended.
Behmer was in custody, lying on his side, when police arrived. He had already been shot, Valdez said.
Neither Valdez nor Iowa Department of Corrections spokesman Fred Scaletta would confirm what a witness, Richard Caldwell, 74, told a reporter Wednesday. Caldwell, a retired railroad engineer, said he was in his chair on the first floor of the apartment building with his patio door open when the events unfolded. He heard one shot and went outside to see the suspect “on the ground, and he was still struggling and fighting.”
“Several of them were holding him down. And one of them was wandering around with his hands over his eyes. He said he’d been sprayed with Mace,” Caldwell said. “I think the officers did the only thing they could do. One of them told me he was trying to get an officer’s weapon — take it away from him or take it out of its holster or something.”
Behmer, who faced 25 years in prison on the probation violation, was taken to Iowa Methodist Medical Center, where he died. No one answered the door at his address Wednesday. Relatives could not be reached for comment.
Employees of the apartment complex, meanwhile, worked Wednesday to remove blood from the concrete just outside a back door of the building.
Cory Gray, 28, said he watched from a second-floor window as officers took Behmer into custody. His fiancee, Danielle Sparks, 26, said, “We saw a bunch of cars come flying in. ... I saw a U.S. marshal with gray hair standing outside our window. Then he took off around the building and we heard a boom. It wasn’t him shooting. He didn’t have time to shoot anyone.
“I’m very nosy, so I ran down the hallway and I saw about three or four police officers or marshals on top of him,” she said. “He was handcuffed, and they rolled him over on his side and his face was yellowish-orange with pepper spray. He was throwing his head back like he was gasping. I looked at my fiance and asked him if he was dying.”
Gray said the handcuffed man continued to kick his feet.
“When I looked out, he was face down, and then they rolled him on his side and there was a puddle of blood,” he said.
Tuesday’s incident is the first shooting this year in Des Moines where a law enforcement official has killed someone.
Last year, Des Moines had two police-involved fatal shootings. In August, a Des Moines police officer shot and killed Christopher Byrd after Byrd fired at patrons at an east-side bar and injured three people. In April, a Des Moines officer shot and killed David Stehl after Stehl advanced on the officer with two shards of glass.
Behmer, who had spent at least five years behind bars since 1992, was charged April 5 with methamphetamine trafficking. It was his fourth drug-related arrest since 1997. Behmer also had at least four prior parole violations connected to charges that ranged from drunken driving to felony possession of weapons and prescription drugs.
He was arrested at the Polk County Jail in 1992 after officers seized nearly $40,000 in methamphetamine and marijuana from his Ankeny apartment. He was at the jail to deal with an unrelated drunken driving charge.
Copyright 2008 The Des Moines Register