Wednesday was a day of horror in Mississippi as a troubled veterinarian shot two Bay St. Louis policemen to death in front of her child. Unfortunately, questions pile up while answers are few. One clue may lie in prison where her ex-husband is serving a ten-year sentence for molesting one of their children.
A Madison County grand jury indicted Royce Mize, Jr. for sexual battery of a child in August 2017. The indictment states:
"on or about and between the dates of February 1, 2017, through or until March 31, 2017, in the county aforesaid and within the jurisdiction of this Court, the said Defendant, being a male human being above the age of eighteen (18) years, whose date of birth is October 04, 1959, did willfully, unlawfully and feloniously engage in sexual battery, as defined by Miss. Code Ann.§97-3-97, (1972, as amended), by performing cunnilingus on victim, XX, a female child whose age was under fourteen (14) years and whose date of birth is xxxxx xx 2xxx, while the said B.B. was 24 months or more younger than ROYCE JARRELL MIZE, JR., in violation of Miss. Code Ann.§97-3-95(1)(d), and being aaainst the peace and dianitv of the State of Mississippi."
Royce pleaded guilty to the indictment in February 2018. Circuit Judge Steve Ratcliff sentenced Mize to serve 20 years in prison but suspended ten years of the sentence.
WLOX provided much more information:
Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell gave WLOX News a more detailed timeline of that morning’s events. At 3:35 a.m., a distressed Amy Anderson asked the clerk at the Motel 6 to call 911. Four minutes later, Sergeant Steven Robin and Officer Branden Estorffe arrived and met with Anderson in her motel room. Anderson’s 8-year-old daughter and three dogs were also in the room.
Why was Anderson at the Bay St. Louis motel when she lived in Ocean Springs? Tindell said, “She believed that she was being followed.”
Tindell said based on what he observed on Officer Estorffe’s body camera, the officers talked with Anderson for about 40 minutes. A portion of the talk was described by Tindell as “pleasant conversation.”
However, the pleasant chat took a dark turn.
“During the course of the conversations with Ms. Anderson, the officers became concerned for the safety of her daughter,” said Tindell.
He wouldn’t elaborate on what made them concerned, only saying, “She had made a number of comments that had the officers concerned for the safety of the child.”
A decision was made by the two officers to call Child Protective Services.
A little more than a half hour into the talk, Anderson packed up her stuff and headed to the car. Tindell said, “Ms. Anderson was loading up her car and was apparently attempting to leave the hotel. They were trying to keep her there until Child Protective Services could arrive.”
At 4:19, “Ms. Anderson, while seated in her car, shot and killed Officer Robin,” said Tindell.
The head of the Department of Public Safety said Sgt. Robin was at the door of Anderson’s vehicle when he was shot and killed. Officer Estorffe and Anderson then exchanged two shots each. Estorffe was hit in the arm and head, while Anderson took a fatal shot in the chest. Estorffe was treated for his injuries, but later died at Memorial Hospital in Gulfport. Anderson died at the scene.
Investigators say a total of five shots were fired, three by Anderson, two by Estorffe. Throughout the gun battle, the eight-year-old daughter was in the front passenger seat.
23 comments:
what an irretrevibly broken family-
My god. I will never understand the choices some people make.
Or in this case, the choice that many people made.
God bless the fallen officers families and this poor child.
They don't deserve the consequences of so many garbage adults.
Just a horrible, horrible story
I pray there is someone who can provide this child a safe, stable home.
Amen, 1:36. C
How about charging that POS Ex with accessory or something similar, give him a speedy fair trial and speedy appeal, then inject him with anything that’ll kill him. Pretty sure support for such a course of action would cut across all the socio/economic/political divisiveness we usually see.
Meanwhile, let’s pray for the child and all do our part for to make the world better.
No forgiveness in this life for the ex. None. Take that up with the Higher Power. Disgusting a— POS.
My heart aches for the children in this tragedy. Our world is filled with broken people. May GOD help them to overcome the evil that people do.
From Anonymous, on Wednesday when the first post of this incident was made - clearly a comment from someone who would NEVER jump to conclusions based on his intellectual knowledge and analysis:
"4:30 am in Bay St Louis with a possibly suicidal woman. This woman may have just lost everything at a casino. Possibly getting divorced etc.
Both officers had to be bunched up in a doorway making a perfect target. Regardless, a tragedy for BSLPD and the citizens. RIP."
Of course now we know, doesn't appear that she lost anything, much less everything, in those damned sin-holes of casinos - probably not even had been in one any time recently. Nor was she getting divorced. But, forget all the facts that come out over the next 48 hours when we can actually learn some details about the tradegy - lets jump in and make assumptions; always a lot more fun to do anonymously on a blogsite.
According to the Simpson County News and the Magee Courier (newspapers.com archives) October 9, 1997 arrest report, Royce Mize, Jr., age 37, was arrested on seven counts of molestation and one count of unnatural intercourse.
Maybe I'm off base, but I thought I read an earlier report that said the offed herself. Thank the Lord she's not alive to suck off the taxpayer's tit for the next 50 years.
What could these LEOs have done, or future ones do, to prevent this outcome? Presume the worst about suspicious people, including that they are armed and dangerous?
Most would have given a mother with an 8 y.
o. child a sympathetic ear and they'd be dead.
Wonder what motivated Ratcliffe to suspend 10 years for this POS.
December 16, 2022 at 3:23 PM, the old boxing adage comes to mind, protect yourself at all times. I'm not law enforcement, but that's what I live by.
They let their guard down responding to a mother and daughter, things went from 0-100 very quickly. I ASS-U-ME she was going to try and run and get her daughter out of there before CPS took her away. That kid is going to be scared for life, hopefully not but being next to it hearing and seeing that and most likely sitting there till someone else rolled up.
It's time to armor up our police officers. LEO's need to start wearing body armor and Kelvar helmets at all times.
I'm dead serious!
Without knowing how the ex husband was convicted, I sure hope it was not purely her testimony that she saw this happen. She easily could have made it up to get rid of him or more likely, it was as real to her as the people following her that she imagined. She was the dangerous one the whole time.
"It's time to armor up our police officers. LEO's need to start wearing body armor and Kelvar helmets at all times.
I'm dead serious!"
100% probability these LEOs were wearing a kevlar vest already.
They need bigger guns, right? More armor. Bulletproof cars. Those ridiculous MRAPs. Hell, why not have the military do patrols.
Keep trying to address the symptoms, not the problem.
@8:22 AM
We need AI controlled, cybernetic crime “terminators” who can’t be bribed, and can’t be reasoned with. And they absolutely will not stop until they have destroyed the target they were programmed to eliminate!
@9:45 - he pled guilty
8:22. Agree that we should be addressing problems as best we can. But when symptoms develop that involve injuring others or damaging or destroying their property those have to be dealt with firmly and consistently. That’s part of dealing with the problem, making it so that “acting out”, if you want to call it that, is going to clearly only going to make the problem worse. When I hear people saying that we need to try to address the problems that some people have that tend to lead them to commit crime, I’d agree with that. But part of that attempt has to include the understanding that committing crime is going to result in painful consequences. A society cannot afford to treat people who are committing crime as works in progress. It is deeply unfair to expect citizens to accept being robbed or assaulted and so on in the cause of addressing the problem.
God help us all.
The officers obviously determined that she posed an imminent danger to her child or they wouldn’t have called CPS. Unfortunately, they didn’t realize how much graver the threat was. It sounds like she may have been extremely paranoid and possibly in the throes of a complete psychotic breakdown. She was an imminent threat to them, the child, herself, and prob the public at large at least at that time. The Commissioner all but said as much (“there’s little doubt that the actions they took probably saved the lives of others.”)
Ffs, is there not some mechanism by which LE can hold someone in this condition just long enough to for the paramedics to arrive and safely get them to a hospital? If not, then the system failed them all.
Such a tragic, tragic outcome to a wellness check or whatever it was.
Wonder if he took the rap to keep her or someone else from doing time. I find it interesting that she was at a Motel 6 with the child at the time of this event.
“By dismantling the mental illness treatment system, we have turned mental health crisis from a medical issue into a police matter,” said John Snook, executive director and a co-author of the study. “This is patently unfair, illogical and is proving harmful both to the individual in desperate need of care and the officer who is forced to respond.”
Not sure what any of this has to do with the husband and his crime, but rabbit trails take life on this blog occasionally.
@3:29 - There could have been a mental health facility on every other block and psychologists and psychiatrists stationed on every street corner and it would not have made one damned bit of difference in this sad story. When someone's anxieties and inner demons trigger, they rarely head over to a counselor's office.
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