‘I have no violent thought in my mind,' Sanford murder suspect tells police

Hours of bodycam footage released in double fatal shooting

SANFORD, Fla. – Hours of body camera footage released Monday shows the arrest of a man accused of gunning down his girlfriend, her two children and her father in their Sanford home as well as the aftermath of the horrific shooting.

Sanford police say Allen Cashe, 31, armed himself with an AK-47 and fatally shot Latina Herring, 35, hours after officers had separated the two for arguing about a set of keys, first at a Wawa gas station, then outside Herring’s home.

[VIDEO: Police called to Wawa before fatal shooting]

Herring’s son, Branden Christian, 8, died as a result of his injuries a day after the March 27 shooting.
Brendon Christian, 7, and Bertis Gerard Herring, 56, were also shot inside the home around 6:20 a.m. They have since been released from the hospital.

Police said Cashe also shot two bystanders a short time later as he was leaving the scene. They survived their injuries.

Cashe was arrested that same day at Seminole Garden Apartments, about two miles away from Herring’s home on Hays Drive in Sanford.

Video of the arrest appears to show a man, who police say is Cashe, surrendering and laying on the ground after initially fleeing. Once cuffed and in the back of a police car, Cashe becomes combative and begins kicking the cage and cursing at an officer.

“You think I give a [expletive]? You think I give a [expletive]?” Cashe screams at an officer through the backseat window.

[GRAPHIC VIDEO BELOW: Allen Cashe curses at officers]

An officer said Cashe told her that he wished he would have shot at the responding officers. Full video of the arrest is available here.

The aggression continued when Cashe was placed in an interrogation room. He wanted to know why the process was taking so long and he seemed impatient.

“This is crazy man. This is starting to piss me off,” Cashe says in the video.

He was reluctant to provide information about the argument he had with Herring before the shooting about keys and some other possessions.

“I gave her what was hers and I did get what was mine. That’s the truth. I never want to go at it...I was calm. All I do is get up and go to work. Turned my whole life around,” he continued to tell investigators.

He denies knowing anything about the AK-47 that was fired 15 times in the Sanford home, or about shooting Bertis Herring.

Cashe then goes on to tell investigators that he did not have any intentions of hurting anybody and that Herring was argumentative and escalated the confrontation.

"She flipped out, and the next thing I know, she is grabbing my keys and running in the parking lot. I called them because I didn’t want to touch her," Cashe says. "I had no violent thought in my mind. I just wanted to be with my keys, get my stuff from this house and go home, go to sleep, go to work in the morning."

Eventually, toward the end of the nearly two-hour interrogation, Cashe breaks down as investigators ask him if he believes in the Lord Almighty.

"This is not an act. This is not a game. This is not how I wished my night went," Cashe says as he sobs in the interrogation room.

 Family, friends struggle to understand aftermath

Hours after the shooting, family and friends of the victims gathered outside the hospital where their loved ones were being treated, desperately trying to put together the pieces of how the morning's tragedy unfolded.

Several of them had frantic text messages and missed calls from Herring, saying she was scared. At least one woman said Cashe texted her saying Herring tried to set him up.

“My friend, my friend, where’s she at? She was talking to the police. She was scared. Now she’s not here no more. What happened?” a grief-stricken friend of Herring's asks an officer at the hospital. “Y'all didn’t help her. Where’s my friend?”

Emotions outside the hospital constantly shifts between sadness, guilt, anger, frustration and confusion.

One man was on the phone with Herring during the earlier dispute at Wawa. He was the one who called police, and he showed an officer text messages she sent him shortly before police say Cashe opened fire in the family's Sanford home.

He's sobbing, sitting on the ground on the phone with his mother when officers approach him to get more information. He's soon joined by more mourners, begging for a miracle that will bring Herring back to life.

"Please, I want my friend back," one woman cried.

About 10 minutes later, the man tries to tell officers what happened and why he called 911 the night before. He said the earlier incidents made Herring reluctant to call 911 when she feared for her safety.

"We was on the phone. She was getting undressed; getting in her bed. When she laid down, she was like, 'I hear something, I hear something.' Well, call the police. She don’t want to call the police. They won’t answer my number, they gonna be trippin’," he said.

Back at the scene of the crime, officers who responded to the home similarly struggle to come to grips with the gravity of the situation.

One officer said that it's by far the worst shooting he's ever seen.

“I've been here 20-something years, 27 years, and this is pretty bad,” one officer said.

They also discuss the logistics of covering multiple crime scenes, notifying the families of the six victims and of what happened in the earlier altercations between Herring and Cashe. One officer said Herring told police that she was scared Cashe would kill her.

"I know they didn’t see this earlier, which is going to come back and bite us in the [expletive] because they had hands on him," an officer said.

A police captain at the scene makes sure one officer knows to address any mental health concerns he may experience from seeing the bullet-riddled crime scene.

“You’re a dad, too, and you know how that goes, and we’ll put something out where you can reach out and talk to somebody about this if you need to, but don’t struggle through it if you’re having an issue or anything,” the captain said.


Recommended Videos