Armed Burglar Didn’t Fire, But Gets Stiff Term Deputy Shot By Roose’s Accomplice, Who Was Killed In Shootout
The burglar who survived a June 27 shootout with police at a Colville sporting goods store got the maximum 14-1/2-year sentence Friday after an emotion-choked sheriff’s deputy told how close he came to being killed.
“It’s the grace of God that I am standing here today,” Stevens County Deputy Dan Spring said, fighting back tears while his wife wept openly.
Spring said he was crouching to go through a broken window when Elmer L. Ingram, 21, shot him in the chest from a distance of 7 or 8 feet. The bullet struck Spring’s badge and lodged in his bulletproof vest about a half-inch from the top edge of the vest.
“I should have been off work three hours earlier, at home with my family,” said Spring, a father of four. “But I thank God because I firmly believe that, if Officer (Bob) Meshishnek had been there by himself, they would have killed him.”
Meshishnek was the only Colville police officer on duty when Ingram and his accomplice, Robert L. Roose Jr., 22, broke into Clark’s All-Sports and stole 23 guns and so much ammunition they could barely carry it.
“Somebody was watching over me by giving me a deputy to respond along with me,” Meshishnek told Superior Court Judge Larry Kristianson.
Meshishnek was handcuffing Roose, who surrendered outside the store, while Spring went through a broken window to approach Ingram. The officers said Ingram initially obeyed a command to lie down on the floor, but jumped up and shot Spring.
Spring yelled, “Gun,” just before he was shot, and Meshishnek fired several shots through the window, killing Ingram.
Looking across the courtroom at Roose, Spring said, “It is not his fault that this isn’t a murder trial. A half-inch either way and there is little doubt I wouldn’t have survived.”
Even Roose’s court-appointed attorney, Charles Burns, conceded the bullet probably would have continued downward through the crouching officer’s chest, piercing his heart. But Roose shouldn’t be blamed because he didn’t fire the shot and had already surrendered, Burns argued.
He urged Kristianson to give Roose a lighter-than-standard sentence of five or six years. But Kristianson rejected Burns’ plea to overlook a new state law that makes a separate crime of each gun stolen in a burglary. The judge said Burns already had done well to negotiate a plea bargain based on first-degree burglary and nine firearm-theft counts instead of 23.
Burns and Roose’s father also urged Kristianson to consider Roose’s previously clean record and his honorable discharge from the Coast Guard.
But Prosecutor Jerry Wetle cited the careful preparations Roose and Ingram made and the fact that they were armed with a .380 ACP semiautomatic pistol and a sawed-off shotgun when they entered the store. Wetle said the burglars wore latex gloves so they wouldn’t leave fingerprints, wore two sets of clothing to fool security cameras and used a stopwatch.
Wetle also played a security videotape from the county jail in which Roose told another inmate the burglary might have ended differently if he’d had a gun when the shooting began. Roose handed his gun to Ingram while he used a hammer to smash the glass out of the front door, Wetle said.
Burns argued Roose’s remark either was colored by emotion or was an expression of relief that he didn’t have a gun: “If I had had a gun, I could be dead like Elmer Ingram.”
Roose, who lived near Valley, Wash., apologized to Spring and Meshishnek and their families, and assured Kristianson that he would never repeat his “stupid mistake.”
Kristianson told Roose he’ll still be a relatively young man when he gets out of prison, and will have plenty of time to prove himself.
, DataTimes