A man ran from police in Kansas. He ended up shot in the back of the head in Missouri
Just before midnight on Thanksgiving, Jeremy Pelican drove through a McDonald’s parking lot instead of waiting for a red light. He saw police lights come on as an officer tried to pull him over.
Rather than stop, Pelican fled east. He’d evaded police before, his girlfriend said, and in the past officers let him go. Often, they would arrest him at home later.
This time was different.
The officer chased him for five miles, leaving the city limits of Pittsburg, Kansas, and crossing into Missouri. At one point, a superior advised the officer to stop the chase — but he didn’t. He said he wanted to record a plate number first.
The chase continued on foot into a field in Barton County, Missouri, where Pelican ended up shot in the back of the head. The officer would later say Pelican pulled a gun on him. When investigators found Pelican’s gun at the scene, it was loaded but had not been fired and the hand grip was still in Pelican’s car.
Pelican, 34, died at a hospital.
“I can’t believe that they chased him over that and it evolved into what it evolved into,” Pelican’s mother, Cande Hill said.
For months, Pelican’s family knew almost no details about how he was shot. Over the next nine months they called, wrote and emailed prosecutors and law enforcement seeking answers.
In mid-July, Barton County Prosecutor Mike Smalley said he would not charge the officer. He declined to answer questions about when he made the decision and what evidence led him to it.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol’s investigation of the shooting found that the officer, Theodore Cook, broke no laws. An internal review by the Pittsburg Police Department found that he did not violate department policy, according to Deputy Chief Tim Tompkins.
But the family had questions. And through that process they felt ignored, as they had been for years when they tried to get Pelican help for his mental health and addiction problems.
Hill and Crystal Castagno, Pelican’s girlfriend, said they were given the distinct impression by law enforcement that no one cared about them.
“Whether he did wrong or not, the family didn’t. That was still someone we loved and we cared about,” Castagno said.
Shortly before he was killed, Castagno had called police on Pelican after a fight.
When a police officer arrived, Hill asked him to have a mental evaluation done on Pelican at the jail. She now sees this as a critical moment that could have changed everything but didn’t.
“If they had taken Jeremy and had him evaluated they would have taken him to Osawatomie and he would have still been in the hospital,” Hill said, referring to the state’s psychiatric hospital.
But police in the area knew the family, and the officer simply said: “Unfortunately, he’s his father’s son.”
Seeking answers
Castagno and Hill arrived at the hospital Thanksgiving night after a relative listening to a police scanner heard Jeremy’s name in radio traffic about a shooting.
They spoke to a doctor who motioned to his forehead and said Pelican was shot. Hill and Castagno mistakenly thought Pelican had shot himself.
The only time law enforcement spoke to the family that night, she said, was when they told them no one could see Pelican’s body.
It was only from news reports that Castagno and Hill learned Pelican had been shot and killed by a police officer.
“This was my son. This was my life, And it’s just like another day to you guys,” Hill said.
Tompkins, the deputy police chief in Pittsburg, said in an email that he did not know what agency was responsible for communicating with the family. He referred The Star to the Missouri State Highway Patrol.
Collin Stosberg, a spokesman for the highway patrol, said his agency only investigated the shooting. Because the family lived in Kansas, he said, the notification would be outside the agency’s jurisdiction. He pointed to Pittsburg police and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.
Kansas Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Melissa Underwood said the agency’s only role in the shooting was coordinating information and evidence to be shared across state lines. The agency was not involved in communications with family and the Missouri State Highway Patrol was in charge of the investigation, she said in an email to The Star.
“We regret if the family was not fully and timely informed,” Underwood said.
The next morning, when Hill asked to see her son’s body, she found out it had already been sent for an autopsy. After the autopsy, she said, the coroner did not put his body back together.
“That was my baby, I deserved the right to see him. I wanted to hold his hand and tell him goodbye,” Hill said.
Because she never saw his body, Hill said she can’t shake the feeling that her oldest son could walk through the door any minute.
A Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper, Hill said, promised to walk her through the full investigative report once it was completed and answer questions.
But when she reached out to him later, she said, she was told she would have to go through protocol and pay for the report.
Hill did get the report and provided a copy to The Star.
According to the records:
Cook began tailing Pelican shortly before midnight because, he said, he saw him driving fast around corners.
Not knowing who the driver was, Cook attempted a traffic stop after Pelican cut through the McDonald’s parking lot.
Cook followed Pelican when he fled and as Pelican drove through numerous red lights at high speeds, the report said.
Eventually, after a superior officer suggested he stop, Cook said he would end the chase after he recorded a plate number. Shortly later, he said, Pelican’s car slowed down and started smoking.
Pelican parked by a field on State Line Road and ran off. Cook followed on foot, losing sight of Pelican when he tripped and fell.
When Cook found him again, Pelican was crouched down, attempting to hide. Cook said he called commands he cannot remember and watched as Pelican stood and took a few more steps away.
Cook yelled another command, at which point he says Pelican turned around and pointed a gun at him.
Fearing for his life, Cook told police, he fired five to six shots and took cover by Pelican’s car. Pelican was shot in the back of the head at a downward angle, and in his leg.
Other officers arrived but until EMS came Pelican laid in the field, handcuffed, and did not receive medical treatment.
According to investigative records, officers worried if they administered medical treatment they would harm him further because of the nature of his head injury. A medical helicopter was grounded because of weather.
Cook, police said, was reissued his service weapon that night.
The Pittsburg Police Department does not have dashboard or body cameras, Tompkins said. The department is evaluating the option but has been previously stopped by the cost.
After reading the report, Hill and Castagno have even more questions.
Why didn’t the officer stop the chase? Why were multiple shots fired? Did Pelican’s gun even work without the hand grip? Why did the officer pursue him in the first place?
“I’ll never know the truth,” Hill said.
To this day, both women cringe when they see a Pittsburg police vehicle. Castagno is terrified at the prospect of being pulled over by Cook, and worries she would break down on the spot.
No policy
The Pittsburg Police Department does not have a singular policy for determining when a police chase is justified. Instead, Tompkins said, officers are taught to handle things on a situational basis.
“A normal law abiding citizen is not going to just up and flee and put themselves at risk and put officers at risk, put the community at risk,“ Tompkins said. “As an officer deciding at what point do you begin a chase, at what point do you terminate a chase, those are all critical decisions.
“The simple fact is you have to judge each incident based on the facts there.”
Dennis Kenny a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Geoffrey Alpert, a criminologist at the University of South Carolina, each said that the department should have a better policy for police chases.
“They had every right to initiate a traffic stop, but just because he fled you can’t assume he’s a good guy or bad guy,” Alpert said.
If Pelican did point a gun at the officer, both said, Cook would have been justified in shooting.
“The weight of the evidence would tend to support the officer’s argument,” Kenny said. “Was there proof that it’s true? It doesn’t look like there is. But there’s no proof that it’s not.”
The shot to the back of the head, Kenny said, could have been the last shot fired. If this is true, he said, there may have been time for Pelican to turn away from the officer before he was hit.
Kenny also said it is concerning that Cook was issued a new service weapon the night of the shooting. Time is needed, Kenny said, to ensure the officer does not have post traumatic stress disorder.
“If you’re psychologically traumatized, we don’t want you running around armed until it’s addressed,” he said.
Tompkins said Cook was removed from duty pending the internal review but would not say when he returned to active duty.
Looking for help
Hill and Castagno focus on the good memories of Pelican — of a good father to his daughter, a best friend to Castagno, and a dutiful mama’s boy to Hill.
He hated having his picture taken and was afraid of public speaking. He was fiercely protective of those he loved. One of his criminal charges, Hill said, was a result of his efforts to protect his sister from an abusive ex.
Pelican also struggled. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and addicted to methamphetamine, which his father introduced him to at a young age, Hill told police. Pelican would go through episodes where he could be paranoid, irrational and violent.
Hill and Castagno worked as a team to get him help, calling the county’s mental health hotline, bringing him to doctors appointments and warning one another of his state of mind. When they asked Pelican’s probation officer for help, she told them it wasn’t her job. She wasn’t a counselor.
“Nobody took it seriously,” Hill said. “He was suffering. He needed their help. He needed supervision.”
Earlier that year, they said, Pelican had been admitted to a rehabilitation program for his drug use. He came back better than ever but began to see a relapse.
Part of what triggered his relapse, Castagno said, was his difficulty with classes he was required to take while on probation. They required him to speak in front of a whole class. There wasn’t a different option for Pelican despite his anxiety.
At the time of his death, Pelican had warrants out for his arrest in part because he had violated his probation by failing to attend those classes.
“We can call and talk to them all day long and that doesn’t change the situation,” she said. “They say he’s got to want change. He did want change, he was just scared of the help.
“What do you do when someone is fighting a mental illness and they want the help but they’re too scared to get it?”
Castagno and Hill thought the police could help. Castagno filed for a protection order, hoping it would be a wake-up call.
This experience is not unusual, said Steffon Staley, a therapist who owns a behavioral health practice in the Kansas City area and serves as a mental health professional in the Johnson and Wyandotte County jails.
Unless families are well-versed in how to work within the public systems it can be exceedingly difficult to get help for an adult with addiction or mental illness, he said.
“They usually get caught up in the jail system and dealing with officers because no one truly understands what it’s like to be in a manic state,” Staley said.
This, Staley said, underlines the need for crisis intervention training and co-responders.
Tompkins, the Pittsburg deputy police chief, said the department works with mental health services and some officers have CIT training, but he declined to specify whether Cook had such training.
On Thanksgiving morning, Hill said, Pelican left with her car without telling her. He texted friends and family telling them he loved them and saying goodbye. At one point he sent Castagno a series of texts because he was convinced she was cheating on him and that man was in her home.
Castagno called police but Pelican wasn’t in the area.
The family spent hours that day and night searching for Pelican, eventually returning home with no luck. They never saw him again.
Even if their questions remain unanswered, Castagno and Hill said they hope their story could spark change. They want police body cameras, better mental health resources and better coordination between police and mental health services.
“I want the family members to feel like they’re being taken seriously,” Castagno said. “These situations are really scary. So often people cry for help and it goes unnoticed.”
