Yahoo Autos Mental Health: Woman with mental illness wielding a shovel is killed by highly trained deputy
WAHNETA — Jessica Hernandez, 14, was off from school for Veteran’s Day, sitting at her kitchen table on a rainy afternoon in Wahneta when she heard a man yelling “Stop! Stop! Stop!” and then heard “three or four” gunshots.
When Hernandez looked out the window, she saw a woman now identified as 24-year-old Jessiram Hweih Rivera lying on the ground and Polk County Sheriff Sgt. Sean Speakman running to his car to retrieve a medical aid kit. Deputies Hannah Ferguson and Daniel Villagran arrived as Speakman was running back down the small dirt driveway off of Rifle Range Road to try to save the woman he had just shot.
Hernandez picked up her cellphone and videotaped a few seconds of Ferguson doing chest compressions on Rivera as Villagran sat ready to give mouth to mouth and Speakman called for paramedics and an ambulance. A shovel is seen lying at Rivera’s feet.
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In just a few moments that afternoon, everything Speakman was trained to do to help mentally ill people throughout his 17-year law enforcement career collided with a woman whose family says — and documents show — has sought out, but also walked away from, help for a “history of bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, and drug abuse” following the death of her father in 2011. She also had at least one suicide attempt.
While Rivera’s family and some in the public arena are demanding to know why Speakman didn’t use his taser or why he shot her, law enforcement experts are saying Speakman did what he was trained to do — which includes protecting himself.
The Ledger has reviewed dozens of court documents related to Rivera, along with Speakman’s personnel file, which is about 600 pages long. The documents show two very different people — a woman who grabbed a knife and cut her mother during a heated argument and a law enforcement officer who has commendations for saving lives, including people contemplating suicide.
Jessiram Hweih Rivera
Rivera was born June 11, 1997. In 2011, when she was 14 years old, her father was killed and that’s when her mother, Jessica Hweih, says her daughter began hanging out with the wrong people.
Two years later, at 16, she was charged in Osceola County with felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Court records show that the case was labeled “no disposition specified.” In other words, it was dropped.
In 2015, court documents show that Rivera, then 18, had an ex-boyfriend, a baby, and a temper.
On Dec. 16, 2015, the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office responded to a domestic disturbance call. Rivera’s ex-boyfriend stated that the couple had gotten into an argument at 2 a.m. when he returned to his home. As he was holding their daughter, Rivera hit him with an open hand, angry that he was seeing someone else. She told officers she was angry that he was out late every night and not spending time with their daughter. When Rivera tried to leave, her car got stuck and, when she put it in reverse, she backed into him, although he wasn’t sure if she knew he was behind her car. He was not hurt. The ex-boyfriend called police at 8:30 p.m. the next evening and Rivera was charged with simple battery.
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In 2016, Rivera got into an argument with her mother, who repeatedly slapped Rivera “to get her to stop acting ‘out of control,’” according to a police report. Rivera ran past the front door and into the kitchen, where she grabbed a knife. Her mother ran after her and tried to get the knife.
“While she was trying to get the knife away from Jessiram, she was cut by her on the arm,” the affidavit reads. “Shortly after getting cut, the knife was removed from Jessiram’s hands and Jessiram was escorted out of the house to prevent them from fighting any further.”
Both women were arrested and Rivera’s young daughter was left with her stepfather, who had broken up the fight between the two women. Rivera’s charge of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon was dropped by the state.
In 2017, Rivera petitioned the court in Osceola County for child support from her ex-boyfriend. That case continued in court until two months ago, when he was ordered to pay Rivera.
That year, she was also charged by Kissimmee Police with felony battery on a law enforcement officer, for which she was convicted.
Suicide attempt
In February 2018, she was charged with felony possession of cocaine and eventually convicted.
The next month, Rivera’s mother called 911 to report that Rivera had tried to commit suicide.
A Winter Haven Police Officer arrived at the Haines Boulevard home at 4:20 a.m., where Hweih was waiting after Rivera texted her aunt and said she “had drank a whole bottle of pills to go to sleep and said goodbye.” The officer found Rivera in bed and unresponsive. She did have a pulse and was breathing. The officer found a half empty bottle of EZ-Nite Sleep Aid, an empty bottle of hydrocodone, an opioid painkiller, that had 20 pills a few days before, and an empty bottle of Cephalexin, an antibiotic.
“In my professional opinion, without proper treatment or care of a treatment facility, Jessarim was likely to cause harm to herself or others,” the officer wrote. The officer Baker Acted Rivera. A week later, the officer returned to the home to check on Rivera, per Crisis Intervention Training.
The mother told the officer that “her daughter has been doing better since she was released from the hospital. She is on four different kinds of medication and Jessica has been helping to make sure she takes them.”
In addition to the officer checking on Rivera, the hospital also called every few days, the mom told the officer.
“Jessiram was laying down at the time,” the officer wrote. “She didn’t really want to talk, but simply advised she was fine.”
She was found guilty on the cocaine charge and in September 2018 violated her parole and rearrested. She was let out on conditional release. In 2018 and 2019, she was charged with violating probation in both Orange and Osceola counties and rearrested.
Rehabilitation
Her mother said Rivera went through several rounds of rehab to try to kick her drug habit.
Hweih, who is a native of Puerto Rico, said that one out-patient facility in Kissimmee discontinued treatment because Rivera missed three appointments, a policy she found infuriating because the mentally ill don’t think or act like people in the general public.
“One day, maybe she was depressed but she don't wanna talk to nobody or the other day, maybe she was sleeping until it was late or it was days she forget about it,” Hweih said. “So she started missing appointments because sometimes she stayed up all night and then she didn’t wake up or she forgets, she was not in the mood because her mood swings. So now you have to look for another place for treatment all over again.”
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In December 2019, Rivera walked away from a rehab facility in Avon Park.
"She walked out and she got to Wahneta and she hide in Wahneta with this guy for over two months - hide, completely hide,” Hweih said. “And me and my husband and my kids, we used to go here 2, 3, 4 o'clock in the morning. I went there with the sheriff three times ... I went with the sheriff who said, ‘You need to leave. This place is bad.’ And I said I'm not leaving without my daughter and we found her and I took her with me.”
In May 2020, she had a new boyfriend.
That month, Rivera called her mother crying and asking the woman to come pick her up “because her boyfriend was hitting her.” Polk County Sheriff’s Deputies arrived at the Dollar General on 3rd Street E in Winter Haven, but couldn’t find her. They called the boyfriend, who asked deputies to come to his automotive shop and talk to him. He said he and Rivera had gotten into an altercation and he asked her to leave. On May 1, Rivera was declared a missing person, but the next day she was found at her home in Winter Haven.
Final boyfriend
Twenty-four days later, Rivera appears again in law enforcement reports, this time with her final boyfriend. The couple were both arrested on May 26, 2020, for possession of meth. A jail booking sheet shows she was held at Tri-County Human Health, a provider of mental health and drug rehabilitation in Polk County.
Rivera became enraged at her boyfriend six months later in November 2020. An arrest affidavit shows she pulled a knife on him because he wouldn’t marry her.
“He stated she said she would cut him, cut his throat, and his family if they called law enforcement,” the affidavit states. “He stated he became afraid she would harm his parents and called law enforcement. He believed Rivera was seeing things because she began accusing him of injecting heroin into himself. He advised he has never used heroin.”
The altercation happened in the boyfriend’s parents’ home. His mother told the responding deputy that she also thought “Rivera was seeing things and observed that Rivera had not eaten much in the days she had been with them.”
Rivera’s mother described her to Ledger reporters as schizophrenic, which involves visual and/or auditory hallucinations.
Rivera was charged with felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, but the State Attorney’s Office dropped the charges because the boyfriend would not cooperate with the prosecution.
In February 2021, Hweih said her daughter posted on Facebook that she had been raped by one of her boyfriend’s friends when she was passed out. Her boyfriend told her later what had happened to her.
“And he didn't do anything” to stop it, her mother said about the boyfriend. “He told the story what they did to her and she was so hurt and she posted on Facebook.”
Hweih said in April or May, she got her daughter an apartment in Haines City, away from the boyfriend’s bad influence. She said Rivera was four or five months pregnant when she set her up in a studio rental, furnished it and filled the refrigerator with food.
“I said listen I’m going to get an apartment for you and because you don't want to live with me, you know, because (of) the rules and stuff, but I want her close to me, so I can monitor,” Hweih said, adding that her daughter was basically homeless before that point. “She got so happy in that little studio and she was, you know, doing well with this there every day.”
And then Hweih said Rivera’s boyfriend found her and started showing up at the apartment. The couple got into fights loud enough that law enforcement had to be called and the landlord told her she had to move out. Hweih told Rivera that her boyfriend was trying to make her homeless again and dependent on him.
At some point in 2021, Rivera’s mother said her daughter was turned away from a drug rehabilitation facility in Avon Park “because she was pregnant.” But she did not provide records to The Ledger to prove that.
On Sept. 9, 2021, Rivera gave birth to another daughter. Hweih said she saw bruises on her daughter when she would bring the baby over to visit.
But five weeks later, Rivera’s mother called the Department of Children and Families to have Rivera’s newborn daughter removed from her custody because of drug use.
“The referral suggested that the mother was unstable and the safety of the minor child was compromised,” a report provided by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office states. “Jessiram appeared to be stable and did not appear to be under the influence at the time of this investigation. She was drug-screened by the Investigator, which netted a positive result for MDMA (ecstasy), cannabis and amphetamines. Due to these results, a safety plan was put in place for the minor child, which places the minor child with the grandmother, Jessica.”
Rivera’s mother tried twice in the last month to place Rivera in a rehabilitation facility or the county jail for drug use under the state’s Marchman Act. The first attempt was on Nov. 4.
“I then transported (her) to Tri-County in Bartow, where she was turned over to staff with no issues,” a deputy wrote in a report. “I had no further involvement.”
But instead of getting the help she said she wanted earlier in the year and her mother so desperately wanted her to have, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said Rivera immediately checked herself out, which is allowable under the law.
On November 10, Rivera’s mother took out another Marchman Act on Rivera and asked that this time she be taken to the county jail so she could not leave. A warrant was issued for Rivera.
The next day, Rivera would encounter Polk County Sheriff Sgt. Sean Speakman.
Sgt. Sean Speakman
Speakman, 46, is a homegrown deputy – graduating from Kathleen Senior High in 1992 and Polk Community College in 1994. He worked as a computer network engineer in Tampa for several years before joining the Polk County Sheriff’s Office as a civilian in 1998 to work in its computer division.
Within months, he was receiving written compliments from his colleagues and supervisors, commending him for going “above and beyond” anything asked of him, helping co-workers with technical issues without them even asking. “Dedicated” and “professional” were also frequently sprinkled throughout his 600-page personnel file. He was named “Member of the Quarter” several times for his work, including creating a new way to format 50 new laptops, cutting the process from three hours each to just eight minutes per laptop.
Polk County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Scott Wilder said Speakman had “only two disciplines, but the originals have been purged per retention requirements.” One in 2001 required a letter of reprimand while another in 2006 involved verbal counseling. He has never been suspended and Wilder said Speakman has had no internal affairs investigations.
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In 2004, Speakman applied to become a deputy and began taking classes at Polk State College’s Law Enforcement Academy.
By 2006, he was assigned to the computer crimes unit, where he excelled in tracking down online pedophiles.
He gave a demonstration to a woman’s group, their husbands, and several teenagers in 2006. A letter from one of the members said the sheriff must “reap tons of accolades on Sean Speakman.”
