By Mara H. Gottfried
Pioneer Press
ST. PAUL, Minn. — It’s a miracle that a woman is alive after she was shot in the face in St. Paul a week ago, her family said Monday.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension says Jaffort Smith, 33, shot Beverly Flowers and fired at St. Paul police officers, who fatally shot Smith last week.
Flowers, 49, was recovering from a second surgery Monday “and has a long road of healing ahead,” her family said in a statement to the Pioneer Press. They thanked God for her survival, as well as the person who initially called 911 to get help for Flowers, the police officers who they said saved her life, and the nurses and surgeons who’ve been “restoring her.”
About 3:30 a.m. May 9, officers had responded to a 911 call about a man with a gun at Rapid Recovery, a towing company on Acker Street near Jackson Street on St. Paul’s North End.
“According to the preliminary investigation, a woman had entered the business shortly before 3:30 a.m. followed by a man now identified as Smith,” the BCA said in a statement last week. “Smith displayed a gun and took the woman back outside.”
Police saw Smith and the woman about four blocks away, near Acker and Buffalo streets, soon after. Smith shot the woman, fled, fired at officers and “ignored repeated calls for him to drop his weapon,” according to the BCA statement. “At one point, officers fired, fatally striking Smith,” the statement continued.
Flowers’ family said in their statement:
“We would … like to thank those at Rapid Recovery Towing in St. Paul for their bravery when they witnessed the abuse, and still called 911 to save her life.
“Mostly, we would like to thank the four officers who were instrumental in saving her life, John Corcoran, Mark Grundhauser, Jeffery Korus, and Michael Tschida, and their families, who risked their lives to save Beverly. Their dedication and commitment to putting their lives in danger and on the line, so that Beverly could still be here with us today, makes them our heroes.”
The BCA had identified the four as the officers who fired their weapons. A BCA spokeswoman said Monday that the agency’s investigation continues.
The agency has not indicated what the relationship was between Flowers and Smith, but it appears they knew each other based on a Facebook exchange between the two.
Smith was released from prison in Montana in March 2015 and returned to Minnesota. His most recent felony convictions were for 2011 theft and gun possession cases in Duluth. He was sentenced to five years in prison and served nearly four years concurrent with Montana prison sentences for theft, failure to register and escape.
Since Smith had been back in Minnesota, he was named as a suspect in seven St. Paul police reports between March 2015 and last month, mostly involving reports that he took cars from people he knew without their permission and hadn’t returned them.
In one case, four days after he was paroled from prison, Smith’s wife reported that he took her car when she was sleeping. She told police they had argued since he’d been back and he “has told her more than once that he will never go back to jail or prison” and that she knew he’d “had guns in his possession in the past although she has not seen one since he has stayed with her,” according to a police report.
Police issued an officer-safety alert, but canceled it two days later when Smith’s brother returned the car to Smith’s wife, the report said. The officer who took the report in March 2015, along with those who took the other reports over the last year, were not among the four in the confrontation with Smith last week.
In September, an officer took a report from Smith’s wife about Smith taking her car. The officer wrote that he dealt with Smith “before and he appeared to be under the influence of drugs at the time, and was in a(n) emotionally disturbed state.”
Then, in October, police responded to a report of a man breaking in a door, and learned it was Smith banging at his wife’s door, according to a police report. The woman had an order for protection against Smith, but it had recently been dismissed, a report said.
A responding officer saw Smith coming out of a garage behind the woman’s home, with a 4-foot “metal type of pole” in his hands, the report said. The officer drew his gun, and Smith complied when ordered to drop the pole and lie on the ground, according to the report, which said Smith was arrested.
On Monday, as Smith’s mother made funeral arrangements, she said she was still gathering information about what happened last week and was not prepared to speak about it.
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