By AMANDA STEWART
TRIANGLE, Va. --
After shooting his wife and two stepchildren, Carrillo Dean stepped outside his house and called the police.
First, Dean called 911 and asked to speak to a police supervisor.
Then he hung up, called the police non-emergency number, identified himself as a Prince William County park ranger, and again asked for a supervisor.
Minutes ticked by as a dispatcher looked up the names of the supervisors on duty.
The dispatcher eventually found the name of a police sergeant who Dean knew.
“Can you have him call me at my residence?” Dean asked. “It’s an emergency.”
The emergency on that day, Feb. 12, 2009, was that Dean had shot his wife, 45-year-old Elizabeth Dean, and stepchildren Brittany Kirk, 14, and Connor Kirk, 13, inside their home in the 18400 block of Cedar Drive in Triangle. When police arrived Elizabeth Dean and Connor were dead.
Brittany was airlifted to an area hospital, where she died hours later.
At a hearing in Prince William Circuit Court Tuesday morning, Dean, 45, pleaded guilty to three counts of capital murder.
A recording of Dean’s phone calls played during the hearing.
As part of a plea agreement, prosecutors dropped several other felony charges against Dean and did not seek the death penalty. Dean faces life in prison when he is sentenced on April 1.
Prince William Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert said defense attorneys planned to present evidence from a psychiatrist to prove that Dean was legally insane at the time of the shootings.
A psychiatrist hired by prosecutors found that Dean was not insane, but did “suffer from severe emotional problems,” Ebert said.
“As a result, I did not seek the death penalty,” Ebert said.
At the plea hearing, retired Prince William County police Sgt. Pete Paradis, the police supervisor who Dean asked to call him that night, testified about his conversation with Dean, which was not recorded.
“He asked me to get down there as soon as I could,” said Paradis, who had known Dean since high school.
Paradis said he asked what happened and Dean said, “Just get down here.”
Dean told Paradis there had been a domestic incident involving his wife.
When Paradis arrived, Dean met him outside the house.
Paradis said Dean seemed “very calm” and asked Paradis to handcuff him.
“I said, ‘I need to get inside and check on your family,’” Paradis said.
“It’s too late. They’re all dead. I killed them all,” Dean said.
Paradis said he then went inside the house. He heard moaning coming from one of the bedrooms and found Brittany Kirk in her bedroom, shot, but still alive. He then found Connor Kirk dead in his bed and Elizabeth Dean dead in the master bedroom suite.
Dean’s mother was also inside the house, in a basement room, uninjured.
Dean was taken to the police station, where Detective Quenton Sallows interviewed him.
“He stated that, in his words, he snapped,” Sallows testified Tuesday.
Dean said that his wife “had been nagging him for over two years and he couldn’t take it anymore,” Sallows said.
Dean said that night his wife was arguing with Brittany because she hadn’t done her math homework and with Connor because he hadn’t done his Bible study.
“In his mind he was in the middle of it all, in the middle of the fight and no one would listen to him,” Sallows said.
After the children went to bed, Dean said, his wife continued to argue with him, according to Sallows.
“He said he just couldn’t take it anymore,” Sallows said.
Dean took a 45-caliber handgun off of his dresser and shot his wife. He then walked down the hall to the children’s bedrooms and shot them. Connor was in bed when he was shot and Brittany was standing, police said.
At the time of his arrest, Dean was a park ranger in charge of patrolling parks in eastern Prince William County. He had worked for the Prince William County Park Authority for 23 years.
After the plea hearing, the victims’ family members remembered Connor as a bright straight-A student and Brittany as a popular, well-liked girl.
Kevin Reece Kirk, the teens’ father, said two weeks before his children were killed, they told him they wanted to live with him.
“They had told me they were old enough now to make their own decision and they wanted to come and live with me,” said Kirk, who carries a photo of a smiling Brittany and Connor in his wallet.
Kirk said he and other family members were hoping prosecutors would seek the death penalty and were frustrated with how long it took the case to reach its conclusion.
“This is not what we expected … ,” he said.
But, Kirk said, he understood that if the case went to trial, Dean could have been found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to a mental health facility.
“At least we know he’s going to be in prison,” he said. “I hope he suffers as much as my children suffered.”
Staff writer Amanda Stewart can be reached at 703-530-3908.
No comments:
Post a Comment