SUMTER COUNTY, Fla. – The daughter of 81-year-old Janet Sours said that when Sumter County deputies came to her home Monday, she was experiencing mental health challenges.
She said deputies had been called to Sours’ home previously.
Sours’ neighbors are now wondering if the situation could have been handled differently.
Just before midnight on Monday, deputies were called to Rails End Mobile Home Park.
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The Sheriff’s office noted it was in regard to Sours, who was in distress or having a mental health episode.
She requested rescue personnel and said, “People were dying over here.”
When a deputy made contact with Sours, he said she lunged at him with a knife.
The deputy stepped back, pulled out his gun and shot her.
First responders provided life-saving measures before rushing Sours to the hospital, where she later died.
Her neighbor and friend Irene Wegner said Sours wasn’t taking her medication, and it became noticeable.
“She just got worse and worse and worse. Everybody was an enemy. It was in her head, she was sick, but before that, like I said, she was welcome in my home anytime,” Wegner said.
Wegner said it was devastating to learn Sours was shot to death.
“It’s a terrible way to die when she was a good woman,” Wegner said.
She questions why it happened that way.
“It would’ve been nice if they would’ve used a Taser or something on her, but that didn’t happen,” Wegner said.
Licensed therapist Cherlette McCullough said crisis intervention teams should assist deputies in the field.
She added that they are trained to assess safety and de-escalate mental health crises.
“When we do have households or people in our community who have mental challenges, I think it is the responsibility of law enforcement to look at the priors and based on the priors for that home or that address, they should determine if we dispatch someone from the behavioral response team or the crisis intervention team,” she said.
McCullough said one roadblock for some law enforcement agencies when it comes to having an in-house crisis intervention team is funding.
News 6 asked a spokesperson for Sumter County Sheriff’s Office whether deputies receive mental health training and whether someone with mental health training was at the scene when Sours was shot.
The response was: “Deputies do receive training.”
The spokesperson chose not to elaborate.
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