FROSTPROOF, Fla. – A 37-year-old man was shot and killed, and a Polk County deputy was injured after an 11-mile chase and two-hour standoff ended in a shootout, according to officials.
The shootout happened around 10:45 p.m. Thursday in Frostproof along T.S. Wilson Road at U.S. 17.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said during a Friday morning news conference that deputies with the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office spotted a car that ran a stop sign and tried to conduct a traffic stop but the driver took off.
“The vehicle didn’t stop, so they started a pursuit. As the pursuit proceeded toward Polk County, they were just about to cancel the pursuit because they were only pursuing for traffic charges when they received a 911 call from a lady who said she was being held in the car,” Judd said.
The sheriff said deputies chased the vehicle for 11 miles until it stopped at T.S. Wilson Road and U.S. 17.
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Judd said they believe the driver, a woman considered a “partial” victim, was not allowed to stop and was forced to flee deputies with the suspect, 37-year-old Ramon Martinez, in the passenger seat. Polk County deputies were then called to the scene and when they arrived, they were told three people, including a baby, were in the vehicle.
The sheriff said his lieutenant arrived and began negotiations with him in an attempt to get out of the car. Martinez said he had two guns in the car and was smoking meth during the negotiations, according to the sheriff. Martinez then asked for water. Judd said his team would give him water if he let the baby and woman out of the car.
Martinez refused and deputies asked what he would trade for the water when he threw out a magazine and handgun, the sheriff said. At one point, Martinez was telling the baby to quiet down and stay underneath a cover, Judd said.
“He is high and low and high and low as he continues to smoke meth through the evening. He’s incredibly erratic. He at one time threatened suicide. He said he couldn’t let the baby go and he certainly couldn’t let the woman go because if he did that, then we would shoot him. We assured him that that was not the case, that we wanted to peacefully take him into custody,” the sheriff said.
The SWAT team arrived and crisis negotiators took over and were able to convince Martinez to let the woman out of the car, Judd said.
“Our deputies immediately grab her, rescue her, bring her to safety. And I want to underscore this point of the investigation. We have rescued the hostage successfully and she’s not injured. We confirmed with her at that point in time that there was no baby in the car, that this was just part of his ruse to keep us at bay,” he said.
Martinez then jumped into the driver’s seat and tried to flee when law enforcement officers threw a chemical agent into the vehicle, Judd said. Martinez began firing at the SWAT team, and they returned fire, according to Judd.
One of the Polk County deputies, Samuel Yates, was struck in the shoulder and suffered facial wounds from glass when the bullet went through a patrol car window, officials said. Yates was airlifted to a hospital and was in “excellent condition.”
“As you can well imagine when you start shooting at a SWAT team, it doesn’t end up well. And we shot Ramon Martinez a lot. We killed him graveyard dead. We gave him exactly what he asked for. After negotiating and trying to de-escalate him for hours. He was shot and killed in an orange grove in Polk County because he asked for it, and we gave it to him,” Judd said.
The sheriff said it is not known yet what the relationship was between the woman and Martinez.
“It was a heck of a shootout for a few minutes. This guy was so jacked up on meth that he stayed in the gunfight because of his hyper-drug-induced state,” he said.
The deceased suspect is 37-year old Ramon Martinez (DOB: July 4, 1985). https://t.co/ZjZ4ZhY6y6 pic.twitter.com/LpiflkLmq9
— Polk County Sheriff 🚔 Grady Judd (@PolkCoSheriff) June 30, 2023
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