Susan Teel
It shouldn’t have taken a three-judge federal appeals court to see what was obvious to most: Sheriff’s Deputy Jonathan Lozada had plenty of non-lethal options when he shot and killed Susan Teel – a suicidal, 62-year-old woman – in her Vero Beach home in July 2017.
Fortunately, though, the Miami-based U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals possessed the vision, wisdom and common sense to overrule a lower-court judge’s puzzling decision last year to dismiss a $10-million wrongful-death lawsuit filed against Lozada and the Sheriff’s Office by Teel’s husband, Dudley, a local emergency room doctor.
In a 22-page opinion, the appeals court judges rejected U.S. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks’ summary-judgment ruling that Lozada’s decision to shoot Teel three times was “reasonable under the circumstances” because she was moving toward the deputy with a butcher’s knife in her hands.
“Isn’t it time we have deputies trained to handle these cases more like ‘The Negotiator’ and less like ‘Rambo?”