SANFORD, Fla. – Sanford police Chief Cecil Smith held a news conference on Thursday to discuss a response to a hostage situation at a gas station in 2024 that received his criticism and prompted an administrative investigation.
Two officers have since resigned while several others were subjected to disciplinary measures, Smith said Thursday.
Smith announced the investigation in March as body-worn camera video circulated online — shared by the YouTube channel EWU Bodycam — showing officers responding to a hostage incident at a RaceTrac gas station last June.
A woman working at the gas station had been taken into a bathroom by a knife-wielding man, yet the video shows two officers discussing waiting for more units to arrive before confronting the suspect.
“The hallway’s narrow, bro,” an officer can be heard saying. “It’s a setup, you feel me?”
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Identifying the first officer to arrive on scene as Dominick Delorbe, Smith noted he was the senior officer of the first two to make it to the gas station.
Though the chief appeared to take issue with the YouTube channel’s alleged doctoring of the video — stating at the start of the news conference that the officers could not in fact hear the scream-laden 911 call, as the video’s editing might suggest, and that they were instead operating on what a dispatcher was able to tell them — Smith said that Delorbe was eventually able to hear the victim in the gas station and that he thus had an obligation to engage the suspect sooner.
“The agency policy during an active assailant threat where continuous violence or death essentially is this: The officer had a responsibility and a duty to act. They have the responsibility and duty to act if there was one officer or two officers. He knew that someone had already informed him that a situation had taken place and it was clearly his responsibility, the first officer, to take action,” Smith said Thursday.
The video shows a third officer eventually breach the bathroom once more units arrive and arrest 63-year-old Randal Lawton, who faces charges of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, kidnapping another person and resisting/obstructing an officer without violence.
The victim suffered severe lacerations to her neck and mouth, according to Smith.
“The first two officers essentially had every responsibility to go in based on our policies and procedures. The next two officers who arrived effectively followed the department procedures to move forward,” Smith said.
Now outside the gas station, one of the officers doubted why the first two waited to make the arrest.
“We were just waiting for one more person to come,” an officer replied.
In a video statement shared in early March, Smith said that he, too, questioned the officers’ response. Additionally, Smith said that the discussion outside of the gas station was never reported to him.
“I agree that the videos prompt a need for a thorough review of the incident and the officer’s response. (...) I was made aware that after the incident, a debrief was held by the immediate supervisors, in which the response was analyzed and discussed; however, a formal internal notification to my office regarding the incident did not occur, leaving myself unaware of the incident and any concerns surrounding it. This was a failure which has been corrected,” Smith said in part, going on to announce an administrative investigation had been opened to review the officers’ response.
Smith said that the first two responding officers were removed from their patrol duties and placed on administrative assignment pending the outcome of the investigation.
Of those two officers, Delorbe resigned while Smith was in the process of terminating him, the chief said. Geovanni Castro, identified as the second officer to arrive on scene and wait with Delorbe, was suspended for five days without pay, according to the chief.
Smith added the supervisors who failed to properly notify chain of command received letters of counseling and that the other officer who resigned during the investigation had made a “derogatory, off-color comment about the suspect’s mental health.”
“We do recognize that this is a tragic situation and we as a department want to be transparent and acknowledge that there are some concerns. We believe that we have taken the appropriate actions to deal with those circumstances. We appreciate the patience given by our community as we work through this investigation and at its conclusion. We will continue to expect our officers to fulfill their duties with integrity, dedication, and adhere to department policies and procedures,” Smith said.
Delorbe and Castro do not face any criminal charges.
Watch the news conference again in the video player below or by clicking here.