A year after Ellis Road police standoff little has changed [Bristol Herald Courier, Va.]

April 08--BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. -- Nearly a year has passed since the Ellis Road police standoff, yet the scorched husk of the double-wide mobile home, ringed by clothes and busted furniture, remains relatively unchanged.

The only noticeable difference is that the grass surrounding the house has grown waist high in some spots.

And someone nailed a wooden plank across the front entrance where a door used to be and scrawled the words "This is what Sullivan County done."

So far, an offer of $30,000 from Sullivan County's insurers is the closest Margaret Spradlin and her adult daughter, Shirley Spradlin, said they have come to getting a replacement home.

The offer could not be confirmed with the county's adjusters, Tri-State Claims in Kingsport.

"I want a brand new home," Margaret Spradlin said in a recent interview. "I think I deserve it."

Police were looking for Junior Kemper Spradlin, 43, then charged with second-degree murder for a deadly mid-January fistfight, and chased him through Blountville to his mother's house, where he sometimes stayed. A jury has since found him guilty of the charge and recommended he serve 40 years in prison.

Following a daylong standoff involving local and federal police, an armored car, dozens of rounds of teargas, and a fire department, Junior Spradlin was nowhere to be found and the home was left in shambles.

Days later, Junior Spradlin surrendered to a local jail, where he remains locked up.

Since then, mother and daughter have struggled to replace everything lost in the fire -- medication, clothes, music albums and winter coats, just to name a few items.

After nearly a year of waiting, the two wonder if they will ever get their lives back on track.

"How can you just come in, destroy a person's home, turn their lives upside down, and walk away?" Shirley Spradlin asked.

Charity

Shirley Spradlin still dreams of police, guns, interrogations and fire.

"They came up to my door ... drawing guns on us," she said of the standoff's beginnings.

Mother and daughter heard sirens and stepped out the front door to find police officers on their lawn.

The pair told officers that Junior Spradlin never stepped in the home, documents show.

They offered a tour of the home to prove it, shows a review of the day's police radio traffic, but officers declined and took them into custody.

Shirley Spradlin, a call center operator, insisted she needed to go to work or lose the day's pay and a bonus. She spent much of the day in the back of a police car with her mother.

The two were among the last to know their home had been destroyed.

For them, most of that day was an endless round of fielding questions about Junior Spradlin and the layout of their home.

Police delivered the news of the destruction hours after the neighborhood, which had been closed to traffic throughout most of the ordeal, was opened and media crews had come and gone.

The shock was still fresh when police pointed them to a local Red Cross chapter for help. The chapter put them up in a hotel room for several nights.

"I'd like to see you pick yourself up the day after you lost everything and go back to work and you're a nervous wreck," Shirley Spradlin said about what she considers a lack of empathy shown by police.

Displaced and with everything gone, the pair faced obstacles when trying to replace even the little things. For example, three days passed before Margaret Spradlin convinced doctors to reissue prescriptions for her high blood pressure and other medical ailments.

Winter arrived before they got the opportunity to shop for new coats.

They have spent the last year replacing lost clothes and accepting donated furniture.

"There's no way to replace everything," Shirley Spradlin said.

Friends and local churches have replaced some of their clothes.

But there are some items they know they will never be able to replace.

Shirley Spradlin wishes she could replace the hundreds of country and rock albums she had collected since a child. The records are now a congealed heap of melted plastic left behind in the charred living room.

Margaret Spradlin, who plays just about every type of stringed instrument, misses the aging fiddle passed on for generations in her family. That was in the living room, too.

"Oh, it's been rough," Margaret Spradlin said of their recovery.

A friend stepped in days after the standoff to offer them a two-bedroom rental home just a few miles from Ellis Road. They're still there.

The friend agreed to defer the monthly rent until after they get a new home, which the pair thought would have been found, bought and furnished months ago.

Margaret Spradlin, when asked why she thought the process has drawn out for so long, grew quiet and stared at the floor.

After a few seconds, she glanced back up and replied: "To me, nobody wants to accept responsibility."

Standoff

Sullivan County Sheriff Wayne Anderson declined to comment for this story. He has not commented on the incident since the news conference held hours after the home burned.

Incident reports by Bristol police in Virginia and Tennessee show that Anderson was the top officer calling the shots on that day, April 27, 2011.

"We were under the direction of the sheriff's department," Bristol, Tenn., Police Chief Blaine Wade said. "Ultimately, it's their ballgame and we're just there to provide support."

Anderson's orders flowed from a command post comprised of his department's leading officers.

He ignored repeated warnings that a pyrotechnic teargas grenade meant for outdoor crowd control could spark a fire if thrown into the house, reports show.

"Their concern seemed to be the gas they had released so far had been ineffective and felt this type of gas would make the suspect come outside and end the incident," Bristol, Tenn., Police Lt. Terry L. Johnson wrote in his report.

By then, police had doused the home with at least a dozen teargas grenades made for indoor use.

Anderson had a bomb squad robot drop the outdoor grenade in the living room anyway, reports show, and flames erupted minutes later.

Federal agents and police from Virginia and Tennessee were trying to arrest Spradlin in connection with the beating death of Robert W. Roberts, 49, a nuclear inspector for Hartford Insurance. Roberts, of Nathalie, Va., died Jan. 16, 2011, a day after a fight with Spradlin in Abingdon, Va.

A single punch to the face whiplashed Roberts' head back, medical experts testified in December, and in turn ruptured blood vessels near the base of the neck. The resulting brain hemorrhage rendered Roberts unconscious and unresponsive before paramedics arrived.

Spradlin, who faces a decades-long prison stay, is scheduled to be sentenced May 1.

More discrepancies concerning the standoff cropped up in the following months. For example, police initially said they contacted Spradlin for several seconds on his cell phone, yet a Bristol Herald Courier inspection of the phone shows that no calls were answered on it during the standoff. Police later said contact was made on the home phone, but a review of the day's radio traffic reveals an officer claimed contact on the cell phone before later asking for the number to the house phone.

Other discrepancies include:

--Spradlin said he was never in his mother's home that day;

--Sullivan County Sheriff's Office admitted no guns were in the house, despite initial claims of finding three;

--Firefighters said they cut the hole in the floor that Anderson suggested Spradlin used as an escape hatch;

--Firefighters said the blaze likely would have killed Spradlin if he were inside;

The offer

Initially, the county's insurers, Tri-State Insurance of Kingsport, offered the family $6,300 for the home. The insurer pointed to a 2009 appraisal in Tennessee real estate records listing the home's total market value at $12,000 when making the offer.

Family lawyer Ursula Bailey, based in Knoxville, countered with an independent appraisal from 2008 that valued the home at $42,500 and the land at $10,000. She also noted that an estimate for the demolition and removal of the home was $5,500.

In a letter obtained by the Herald Courier, Bailey initially suggested a $350,000 settlement would cover the structure, all the belongings destroyed inside, and the emotional stress suffered by the mother and daughter who lived there.

"I realize that your offer [of $6,300] was made to get the conversation started, but it is well below what is necessary," she wrote.

Margaret Spradlin said that negotiations between her lawyer and the county are ongoing.

County Attorney Daniel P. Street said he likely would not hear about the status of the case until it's about to be closed by the adjuster.

"I haven't heard anything about it in months," Street said Friday.

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