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Season Six: Holiday Episode 11 (2025)
54 Plays46 minutes ago
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Transcript
Content Warning and Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:50
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
00:00:58
Speaker
So we're about halfway through, or we're getting to the middle mark here.
The Hostage Situation
00:01:02
Speaker
And like some of these hostage takings have been kind of brutal and dark. and I looked at one that at first I was like, this will be some lighter fare.
00:01:16
Speaker
Let me go ahead say that like, it's barely lighter fare. I think it's more eccentric. It's very eccentric. As opposed to like lighter, because it still is serious. Yeah, it ends up being pretty serious. But it's but it's and eccentric.
00:01:33
Speaker
I think that's the best way to describe it. Whimsical almost, but eccentric. Yeah. This takes place in August of 1994. And it takes place at a Fred Meyer store. in Gresham, Oregon.
00:01:46
Speaker
Now, the players that are involved here, the primary one is Janet Merlin
Janet Smith's Background
00:01:53
Speaker
Smith. She's born June 9th of 1966.
00:01:58
Speaker
She had moved to Portland, Oregon with her family in 1973, but they had originally lived in Lodletta, California, which is this little community down in Humboldt County. I've seen population counts on it, but there are under a thousand people.
00:02:13
Speaker
It's about 15 miles south of Eureka. So she is a member of an American tribe known as the Yurik people. So they're indigenous people to California.
00:02:26
Speaker
And she attends Lincoln High School over in Portland. But her sophomore year, she ends up dropping out. So that would have been 10 years or more before the the time we're talking about.
00:02:42
Speaker
But she had been employed at various retail sales jobs, ah including Fred Meyer's store in Portland, Oregon. i think it was in North Portland.
00:02:55
Speaker
She and her grandmother, so this is Janet Marilyn Smith, grandma is Mary Smith.
Mental Health Struggles
00:03:01
Speaker
They had moved from Portland over to an apartment in Gresham, and The quote that is used to describe why they're doing that is because they wanted to live ah quieter, safer life.
00:03:15
Speaker
So that gives me the impression that they had not been experiencing the best things that you can experience in Portland. And whatever was happening there, they were having either some safety issues or potentially just some bad experiences with Other people, I don't know exactly what they were, but I can tell you that that seems to have inspired their move over.
00:03:40
Speaker
So police end up being called to the Smith's apartment about three times in the two months before this August 1994 incident.
00:03:55
Speaker
According to a sergeant named David Lurwick, who was a spokesman for the Gresham Police Department, he does not release or know the reason for the visits. And I don't know which word is accurate, whether he doesn't know or he can't release it.
00:04:10
Speaker
But prior to this an incident, it was said that Janet Smith used to chat about flower pots and gardens with her apartment manager, Gail Geer.
00:04:23
Speaker
Personally, it sounds to me like they were kind of brand new to this area. I know that they had been here for a couple of months or whatever, but I think they were still finding their footing.
Escalating Paranoia
00:04:33
Speaker
And I don't think they know that many people.
00:04:37
Speaker
Now, for Janet Smith's part, when she was 17 years old, she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. So that would have been 1984. 1984. nineteen eighty four And by all accounts, for the last 10 years, she's been on antipsychotic medications.
00:04:57
Speaker
Her family had said that at one point she was being stalked by a former boyfriend and that she had become increasingly fearful and paranoid, which stalking incidents or schizophrenia both could account for feeling both fearful and paranoid.
00:05:16
Speaker
I will say that diagnosing a 17-year-old girl with schizophrenia in 1984 is unusual. Don't you like a, well, I don't know what you do. I immediately go, more than likely she was not schizophrenic.
00:05:30
Speaker
I don't know what it would have been. it it just seems like that was a catch-all for like some personality disorders. Yeah, it's ah it's it's pretty unusual to see a young female with schizophrenia. It's not like completely impossible.
00:05:47
Speaker
The average onset is, it is young adulthood. So, but it's typically, you see it in males first and the age that they describe the onset is sometime in the late teens to the early thirties. The peak incidence or the average ah for males is the early to mid twenties. And for females, it's the peak incidence rates are typically the late twenties.
00:06:14
Speaker
Um, if it is happening at the time they say it's happening, it would be a form of early onset. And it is known that like there's a condition that you can see out there in the world called childhood schizophrenia.
00:06:31
Speaker
It's very different in terms of how it's treated, but it's sort of early onset and late onset schizophrenia is different.
00:06:42
Speaker
And when, We don't know exactly what the gender differences are, but we've been led over the years to believe that it's more of a more frequently seen in young males than it is young females.
00:06:57
Speaker
That's why the research that we're able to access at this point in time in 2025. During the week prior to 1996, august twenty first of ninety ninety six
00:07:12
Speaker
janet smith had been calling friends and family members saying she needed help. She ah apparently either was having a change in her medication, was unable to get like a specific type of her medication, or was at least complaining about changes to her medication, causing her some significant issues.
00:07:38
Speaker
Now, When all of the stuff that we're about to talk about comes out, the family doesn't want to talk about Janet Smith's medication. So we don't learn much in terms of like social and sort of historian records about her mental illness.
00:07:58
Speaker
We do find out that she's been going through it for 10 years and that she had been seen multiple times at the emergency department in the North Tabor neighborhood of Portland, Oregon called Providence Medical Care.
00:08:12
Speaker
This is like in the days leading up to this end incident in August 21st. She also had been hospitalized sometime in 1996.
00:08:25
Speaker
According to witnesses, she is seen twice in this Fred Meyers store on August 20th. There's a cashier that they, her name is Corey Luttle, I don't know how pronounce her last name, it's L-U-D-A-H-L.
00:08:41
Speaker
She is frequently quoted in articles about this story
The Fred Meyer Incident
00:08:46
Speaker
saying she was in here twice. According to some things that Janet Smith had told people, she was actually a, quote, diabetic.
00:08:58
Speaker
And It is reported that she said her grandmother was a Satan worshiper. I've seen that three places on the internet, including the Albany Democrat Herald and a mental health article from the following day. I don't know how accurate those quotes are. They don't look vetted like traditional journalism.
00:09:23
Speaker
Right, and just to be clear, it's it's Janet saying... That she's diabetic and that her grandmother's a Satan worshiper. Like, we're not saying that it's true. We're just saying that it was said.
00:09:34
Speaker
Yeah, these are the words that have come out. So August 20th is a Saturday. she's reportedly in there twice. On Sunday, August 21st, 1994, Janet Smith is said to have been standing outside her apartment building screaming for help.
00:09:54
Speaker
When a neighbor comes over and attempts to help her, she tells him to get away. So then Janet takes her pet Siamese cat, Blue, and she walks to the Fred Meyer store closest to her.
00:10:13
Speaker
She arrives there about 1 p.m. She has Blue in her arms, and she is holding a six inch kitchen carving knife.
00:10:26
Speaker
So what they described sounds to me like a kind of a standard chef knife. um I don't know I've seen the blade is six inches. I've seen the whole knife is six inches, but she is holding this cat and she is holding a knife when she comes into the Fred Meyer store.
00:10:45
Speaker
So she goes down aisle seven, picks out a can of president's choice brand lemon-lime soda, and she tells everyone she's thirsty.
00:10:56
Speaker
So she is holding this cat, holding this knife, drinking this soda, and she lights up a cigarette. It's fascinating image. How many hands does she have? i I'm imagining the knife and the cigarette in her right hand. Okay.
00:11:13
Speaker
The drink and the cat in the other hand? The drink in the left hand and the cat tucked up against her with her left arm holding it in place. Yeah. yeah Okay. So she tells someone, which we don't know exactly who it is, to call the police for her.
00:11:31
Speaker
The claim is, and this is overheard by several people, and it's confirmed by the spokesperson from the Fred Meyer Company, that someone is following her. and the spokesperson for the Fred Meyer Company, in an article for the Registered Guard, she says that Janet Smith is in the grocery aisle, which is one aisle over from whoever she is telling to please call the police.
00:12:05
Speaker
This is an old article. I found it on newspaper.com. I'm going to read it to you because it's interesting to me. it said that calls pour in over threatened Siamese cat.
00:12:18
Speaker
and it says there has been an international outpouring of public concern for a Siamese cat held hostage in a store. Cat lovers are nodding in sympathy. And apparently Sergeant David Lurwick, who we just spoke about, said, who cares about the cat after receiving an inquiry at the Gresham Police Department from a London newspaper? um I'm just pointing out that like this cat being taken hostage becomes kind of a huge deal in the middle of the story. but All right.
00:12:50
Speaker
There's a witness. Her name is Mary Bradley. And according to Mary Bradley, Janet Smith was freaking out in the store. She starts screaming for everyone to please help her and to call the police.
00:13:06
Speaker
After she's asked, no one has responded. She cannot figure out how she is not inducing panic on her own behalf by these store patrons.
00:13:17
Speaker
And from what we can tell, the store patrons, at least one of them, thinks that like she is pulling some kind of bizarre and meticulous prank.
00:13:31
Speaker
So Janet Smith walks over to the soda cooler. She's still got the knife in one hand and the cat in the other, and she sits down with her back against the cooler. One of the cashiers said that Smith was saying she didn't want to harm anyone and she didn't want to do any harm.
00:13:52
Speaker
So store managers come and talk to Janet Smith, and they end up blockading this aisle that she's on at either end with a couple of shopping carts.
00:14:02
Speaker
And they start moving people away. And I got to say, that is so weird to me. It ah Let's trap her.
00:14:14
Speaker
Yeah, she's sitting. I guess maybe the cat inspired this. She's sitting on the floor back to the cooler and they think she can't move the shopping carts because of. I mean, yeah, I think that I think part of the reason she was having trouble eliciting the
Police Confrontation and Shooting
00:14:32
Speaker
response that she wanted is because, like, why should anybody call the police? She's completely fine. Right. Right. Literally standing there yelling for the police to be called, just like she could be grocery shopping.
00:14:47
Speaker
And people have a hard time processing that kind of thing because it makes no sense. Well, by 1 10 PM, five Gresham, Oregon police officers have arrived.
00:14:59
Speaker
And that same Sergeant complaining about the cat says that three officers had positioned themselves on the far end of the aisle and another two took position at the other end.
00:15:11
Speaker
Officers asked Janet Smith to drop the knife. She's alone on an aisle in the grocery store completely by herself except for the cat.
00:15:24
Speaker
What do they think she's going to do?
00:15:29
Speaker
She threatens to kill the cat because that's all she's got. Which she was not going to do, by the way. I don't think she was going to kill this cat in a million years. the The officers kept asking her to put the knife down and she would not do it, said Sergeant Lurbert.
00:15:45
Speaker
So she stood up and unfortunately the cat got loose and ran away. Because I'm telling you now, i do not have cats. There's some barn cats on my property, but I do not have cats as pets because cats are smarter than us.
00:16:02
Speaker
And this cat did what cats do. He got loose, he read the situation, he read the room, and he got away from what was about to happen.
00:16:12
Speaker
Janet Smith starts walking down the aisle towards the back of the store, and police spray her in the face with pepper spray. Not one can, not two cans, but three full cans of pepper spray in an attempt to stop her from walking down the grocery aisle.
00:16:33
Speaker
At this point, Smith cries out. She has the knife raised above her head, and she charges blindly at the police. Police officer Ron Willis, who had been a member of the Gresham Police Department since 1987, shoots her twice.
00:16:54
Speaker
She goes to the ground in the aisle of the grocery store, and she will be pronounced dead at the scene.
00:17:03
Speaker
Okay. Was that really necessary? Well, we're going to get into like, like that's the story here. I do want to point out though, nobody died except for the hostage taker when we did the Honolulu hostage taking.
00:17:21
Speaker
Now in Gresham, Oregon, a cat has been taken hostage. Okay. And we already have a fatality. The cat got away, though. The cat saved itself. The cat got away. the cat The cat saved itself. It did indeed. Once you've sprayed somebody with pepper spray, okay, so it's either a six-inch blade, six-inch knife, but she's like at least a little bit incapacitated from the pepper spray.
00:17:50
Speaker
They could have gotten the knife away from her. I'm thinking you could have thrown a box of cereal at her and she would have went down, let alone like a tomato soup can or something. well Well, but you could also like there's a way I'm sure police officers learn to. It's where you like grab, you know, the elbow and the forearm and you take the knife out of someone's hand.
00:18:12
Speaker
right? Yeah. I get the distinct impression that this shooting happens out of laziness. Well, or fear. Like they're legit. I mean, three police officers are five. Yeah. five How many was there? There's five. There's five officers. They're split up like three at one end, two at the other. Okay. But only one of them shoots. Okay. But you, so you've got all these guys, right? Or I guess they're guys. You've got all these law enforcement officers and this one chick.
00:18:41
Speaker
who was, you know, gonna kill her cat and the cat got away. That tells you how, how this is gonna pan out here. Right.
Public and Family Reactions
00:18:49
Speaker
And she gets shot. Yeah. Not only does she get shot, we're going to find out much later in an autopsy that what she dies of is she bleeds out from these gunshots laying on the grocery aisle floor. Now the family, they're going to learn of this when they see a news report on television, grandma, Mary back at the apartment,
00:19:12
Speaker
She's calling around trying to figure out what's happened because she's seen it on the news. And the quote that they're going to put out from her is I wanted to go see her because I thought she was hurt.
00:19:25
Speaker
So she ends up calling the Gresham police and they tell her they don't have any information about Janet Smith. And at that point in time, she realizes that her granddaughter is likely dead.
00:19:41
Speaker
So the public... has a field day with this young lady being shot by the police in the grocery aisle. And they react quite angrily with a lot of criticism.
00:19:54
Speaker
Most people felt like this was improperly handled and could have been avoided. And I'm going to go with, yeah. 100% for sure. David Lerwig says they didn't have a choice. The knife is a deadly weapon.
00:20:06
Speaker
I agree with that statement, but i think he's missing the boat for the trees, and I'm saying that wrong because... I think that's how he's used the rule. I think he's completely wrong. you don't You don't use deadly force just because the person has a deadly weapon. You use deadly force on somebody when they're going to hurt or kill someone. Right.
00:20:27
Speaker
Okay. She could have possibly maybe cut herself, but like they could have gotten to her long before she stabbed anybody. Yeah, I mean, they've dumped three cans of pepper spray on her. Right. And yes, a knife has ah a deadly weapon, but they're missing the entire boat, like you said, when that woman needed help. Correct. And they killed her. Yeah. Grandma Mary Smith is going to be quoted in The Oregonian as saying, i don't know why they did this. i don't know why they had to shoot her. She would never harm a fly.
00:21:01
Speaker
And they justify this officer up one side, down the other. David Lurwick is quoted as saying that the possibility of officer missing his target was one reason. Being attacked by Smith was another reason. and about the shooting itself, he says, you know, your target is normally the center of mass. You want to make sure that when you fire your weapon, the bullet strikes its and target on a person that's the torso At first, he refused to reveal the name of the officer who shot Janet Smith because of the outcry from the public. There were several Gresham police officers who felt wronged and even angered by the public reaction to Smith's death, saying that the officer who shot Smith did what he was, quote, trained to do, which is not true at all. Most police officers are never engaged in a situation like this.
00:21:51
Speaker
In any form, they largely back clean up and it is a stressful job, but it doesn't involve a lot of incidents with a woman and a knife and a cat being pepper sprayed three times on a grocery aisle. Right, but that's how they're applying it, right? And I believe that. I believe that they're trained to do it to the extent that like they don't even have the common sense it takes to realize that that's not what they were trained to do to begin with. Yeah, I can't imagine like seeing a woman running down a grocery aisle, knife or no knife, regardless of who she is and what she's doing. She's just been pepper sprayed.
00:22:26
Speaker
And i I think it's wild. Yeah. Why are we shooting her? now you'd be like, you would be disarming her. Yeah. Like with your hand.
00:22:36
Speaker
Oh, wait. There were so many other solutions to this besides killing her. Yeah. And they called the police because a woman was having a problem, right? Clearly, she was saying, call the police, help me, whatever. I don't know what her prerogative was. We don't know because they killed her. Yeah. Well, right. And so there's this investigation by the district attorney's office there for that county. Of course, he the local police officers associations come out and they defend the officers saying that they reacted because Janet Smith was threatening the public.
00:23:14
Speaker
ah They do start an internal investigation and There's supposedly gonna be grand jury testimony and witnesses that were there in the grocery store that day questioned whether the police had acted properly. And when people in the scene are questioning it,
00:23:28
Speaker
Like even one person, usually it means that something was wrong. But according to a guy named Ken Williams, he's quoted in the wiki for this. And i don't know where that original source was from because when I clicked on the source for that, it didn't take me anywhere related to this case. But he said, they maced her first and you cannot see when you're maced. So where's the threat?
00:23:52
Speaker
So, They have a private funeral for Janet Smith. She's laid to rest at Skyline Memorial Gardens over in Portland. 60 people come out to mourn and to protest, ah closing of a hospital that had closed in 1995 because they feel like this is a part of it. They link pretty quickly Janet Smith's death to like general treatment of people who have ah mental health issues.
00:24:18
Speaker
One of the big things, as I kind of already mentioned, was the cat. Everybody wanted to know what happened to the cat. ah The public was very much concerned what had happened to Blue.
00:24:29
Speaker
And literally, there was some level of international attention drawn to this cat. According to Gail Gere, who was the manager of the apartment building that used to talk about flowerpots and gardens with Janet Smith, she had received multiple calls from people inquiring about the cat's well-being. She said she was off-put by the apparent concern for the cat,
00:24:52
Speaker
with people not seeming to be concerned for the death of Janet Smith. And she said, i was concerned about her and I was trying to rationalize the whole thing. And then you have people call you out of the blue and ask about the cat.
00:25:05
Speaker
It kind of throws you off a little bit and it shows you the way the world is getting. And this is a long time ago now, just throwing that out there. Yeah. Well, it's, it's still not any different. The only thing I could say is perhaps they realize what's done is done.
00:25:20
Speaker
Right. Like there's no bringing her back, right? But maybe the cat needed a home. I don't know. I mean, the cat was smart and saved itself. so Yeah. ah Blue slipped away and apparently was hiding in the store. So animal control officers were called in, but they could not find the cat after the shooting.
00:25:40
Speaker
ah Cheryl Perrin, who was one of the employees we were talking about, they overhear the cat meowing around 530 in the morning the following morning. and they returned the cat to ah Janet Smith's relatives and grandmother who had inquired about if they had found the cat.
00:25:58
Speaker
And the cats the cat apparently moves on. And i don't know i don't know how that goes. I i can just tell you that the cat was given to her family. Now, here's where it gets weird.
00:26:12
Speaker
The grand jury testimony... Ultimately, i don't know if you think of it this way, I think that the grand jury is at least supposed to clear things up.
00:26:23
Speaker
Even if it doesn't go exactly the way i imagine the grand jury will go, indict, they don't indict, and I was thinking the other way. i expect, typically, grand juries to fix things.
00:26:39
Speaker
Or at least... Give me information so I can understand it. water Yeah, I don't expect that. well It'd be nice. It seems like there should be some point to them, but it lost it all meaning a long time ago.
00:26:53
Speaker
Yeah, sort of being facetious with all of that I'm saying, but it gets really messy.
Legal Outcomes and Societal Implications
00:26:59
Speaker
So we get this initial version of events, and then the police start changing how they present this.
00:27:10
Speaker
So the way they change their story is that they say there was no shopping carts at both ends of the aisle when these five officers confront Janet Smith.
00:27:21
Speaker
Instead, they say that the employees in the store move the carts and block the aisle with the officers on the aisle with Janet Smith. I don't know if that's true or not.
00:27:33
Speaker
But Sergeant Lurwick, who we've talked about already, he said that there were multiple inaccuracies in the versions of events released to the public because he had failed to ask investigators the right questions.
00:27:47
Speaker
So this is a sergeant falling on his sword. He also said he made assumptions based on his experience and observations after the shooting, not from interviews with witnesses or officers involved.
00:28:01
Speaker
And then he literally says, it's my fault and I take all the responsibility. He said that the officers investigating the incident didn't correct some of the details because they didn't think they would be all that controversial.
00:28:16
Speaker
He also said he didn't know why police went around the carts and entered the aisle before calling in a mental health professional or a trained negotiator. Which contradicts what he said earlier.
00:28:28
Speaker
Right. He's talking out of both ends to cover his butt. He says that a store manager told him that employees had moved the carts, but he failed to ask when the carts were moved.
00:28:40
Speaker
He had been thinking they were put into place before the police arrived. But a detective investigating the shooter later confirmed the information. And I have to tell you, I've now read six articles about this, and I don't know what information that detective confirmed because they never correct and say this is what happened. They just leave both versions in every article.
00:29:03
Speaker
And none of it matters. and None of it really matters. Because shopping carts literally roll Yep. Nobody was blocked from leaving the aisles. Yep. All they had to do was roll them out of the way. This is a stupid moot point. And the reason that they're focusing on this garbage is because they have nothing else of value to say. yu So he says that he gets information from the detectives that Sunday afternoon.
00:29:28
Speaker
he says he did. This Laura Ricksell we're talking about. is he He did not talk to the other officers until Wednesday to, quote, spare them reliving the event. What event is that? the event Where they killed the girl with the knife in the ah that was holding her Siamese cat hostage.
00:29:48
Speaker
It's traumatic for them. Maybe they should relive it a little. I'm just saying. The officers were also told to not read newspapers and not to listen to radio or television broadcasts because they didn't want them seeing the news that week and influencing their testimony to the grand jury who was going to be investigating the case.
00:30:11
Speaker
And I'm going to go ahead and tell you that all of those officers had already listened to radio and television broadcasts about this long before they were told not to. No, no question.
00:30:22
Speaker
According to two police officers' accounts of the incident, they said... The police were dispatched to the store at 1 11 p.m. Four officers and a sergeant arrived two minutes later, and they saw Janet Smith sitting 10 feet in front of the checkout counters down aisle six.
00:30:39
Speaker
She was holding the Siamese cat blue and a knife. A police officer believed she was threatening to kill the cat, but others have since said she wasn't threatening to kill the cat.
00:30:51
Speaker
Which is exactly what I figured. And I'm going to throw it out there and just say, If you're a police officer and you're worried about someone killing an animal with a knife, you are not justified to use lethal force in the defense of others for a cat, no matter how cute it is and no matter how much the Internet loves it.
00:31:13
Speaker
You cannot shoot a person who is holding a cat. That's what I wondered like the whole time was like, did she really even say that? No, I don't believe she said that. It makes no sense, right? I believe it. For comfort.
00:31:29
Speaker
Right. I believe Janet Smith was probably not making a lot of sense. But I think the lack of ability to understand what she was saying is probably what led people to think, oh, cat, knife.
00:31:42
Speaker
whatever battling she's doing right now, she's going to hurt that animal, which you still cannot shoot a person is going to kill their own cat.
00:31:55
Speaker
That cat's on gone, gone. No, but you could have taken the knife away. that's what you should do. Right. So later on, we're told that one officer goes to the back of the aisle, four officers position themselves in the front,
00:32:13
Speaker
We're told in different news accounts that that number is actually two and three. Again, it's sort of irrelevant. But they say that one officer went down to Janet Smith to speak with her.
00:32:25
Speaker
She got up, walked away from that officer towards the back of the store. The four officers didn't follow her. One was walking side by side with her.
00:32:40
Speaker
Ron Willis was walking behind her. And the other two are somewhere behind ron Willis. So as Janet Smith is approaching the officer who's at the back of the aisle, the two unnamed officers at Smith's side and Ron Willis unload with three cans of pepper spray mace. And that's how they describe it here is pepper spray mace.
00:33:05
Speaker
They were making an attempt to subdue her that failed.
00:33:11
Speaker
So Janet Smith then, quote, charged at Willis, end quote, who shot her twice in the chest, five feet in front of him.
00:33:24
Speaker
Lurwick said, what do you do when you're trapped, when you can't turn and run? This is him talking about whether Willis backed up before firing the gun.
00:33:38
Speaker
He does admit they're all in the back half of the aisle. Why can't he turn and run? he's Is it that she's coming at him with a knife and she will then stab him in the back?
00:33:53
Speaker
Because I don't know that she can even stab the air correctly if she's had three scan three cans of pepper spray mace unloaded. I think he's alluding to the fact that Janet was trapped. She couldn't turn and run and she was going to attack.
00:34:10
Speaker
Yeah. I think that's what he's saying there. I'd buy that. I don't think that's true though. I'd buy that being what he's saying. Yeah. Well, right. He's trying to, he's trying to say it was justified.
00:34:23
Speaker
Right. What else could she do? What are you going to do? You've been backed into a corner, right? Right. Yeah. And you can't turn around and run. of course, like, what's she running from to begin with? Like, they literally just sprayed her with three cans of pepper spray.
00:34:37
Speaker
yeah Can you imagine? i can't. Like, I'm even thinking the officers standing in the aisle are probably affected by the pepper They have to be. so they should know. i mean, I guess everybody's just freaking out.
00:34:49
Speaker
And she was five feet in front of him when he shot her. Yeah. That's ridiculous. That's like almost point blank range. It is point blank range.
00:35:01
Speaker
She could have pushed her and she would have fallen over. Well, yeah, exactly. but she also, he said that she put the knife up in the air and charged or whatever.
00:35:12
Speaker
She charged from, and she was five feet away. Like what? I don't know. I don't understand it, but I do realize this is just, you know, the sergeant that has been like put as a spokesperson. No, this is them testifying, right?
00:35:29
Speaker
This is the grand jury. They convened a grand jury for Multnomah County in August of 1994, and they hold a presentation.
00:35:40
Speaker
And what they're doing is they are putting up an indictment or a potential indictment for officer Ron Willis on criminal charges for the shooting of Janet Smith.
00:35:50
Speaker
So the grand jury is made up of seven members. They spend five minutes deliberating and they vote seven to zero to clear officer Ron Willis of the charge of criminal homicide arising from the shooting of Janet Smith.
00:36:07
Speaker
This decision is the end of the district attorney's investigation. So The way that they come out and talk about it is ah one of the chief deputy district attorneys says, he continues
00:36:21
Speaker
and decided there's no basis upon which to bring criminal charges against anyone so he continues to say that had Smith lived, she would have faced a criminal charge of threatening an employee who tried to prevent her from entering the store.
00:36:40
Speaker
The employee allegedly had blocked the entrance. And according to the story, Janet Smith threatened him to let her in with her knife.
00:36:53
Speaker
So why didn't he want to? Oh, because she had the knife. I guess the cat, the knife, take your pick why they wouldn't let her in.
00:37:04
Speaker
I still don't think that this type of i I feel like that was the wrong approach to kill her. Oh, I agree. Yeah. You know, I mean, like, look, I get split second decisions have to be made. But the woman that was holding the cat that ran away with a knife, that's not the one you shoot.
00:37:25
Speaker
Right, but he was looking out for himself, right? like That's what I've said previously. like Most of the time when police officers shoot, they're afraid they are going to die. And whether that fear is real or not is a subjective thing.
00:37:42
Speaker
scale right yeah in this case i don't think that there were i think that there was probably less than a one percent chance that she would have been able to kill any of them with that knife or even severely wound them okay yeah she was definitely not going to kill of them It also makes me wonder, was she trying to commit suicide by cop? Did she know that they would shoot her?
00:38:09
Speaker
Because she did, supposedly, she said call the police, right? Yeah. And I don't know if you saw or not, but the grand jury testimony, it ranged from Smith's attack being...
00:38:26
Speaker
From a lunge to just a bent over run. Yeah, probably with her hands on her eyes, doing that thing that no one should ever do with pepper spray maize. and Rub your eyes.
00:38:38
Speaker
Trying to fix her eyes by rubbing them and making it much, much worse. Right, but that's still, none of that is, it seems like a vicious attack. And then, of course, later they revealed that Officer Willis had a bulletproof jacket on. Yeah, yeah they did reveal that. So the grand jury had a total of 17 witnesses. 12 of those were shoppers or store employees who witnessed like the actual events.
00:39:03
Speaker
The rest of the witnesses were either police officers or detectives. And we don't know who said what, but according to the district attorney's office, everyone was consistent in what they had seen.
00:39:16
Speaker
But commenting on the situation where Smith got up and was walking towards the officers, ah the the chief... Assistant District Attorney says they couldn't have had her that... They shouldn't have had her that close.
00:39:31
Speaker
They couldn't have had her that close to the police officer or let her get to the customer. That's what they're saying. I don't know that she's that much of a ah threat, but they they're listing her as that. And he also recounted what you said, which was her speed was anywhere from a lunge to a bent-over run. And they noted that Officer Willis was wearing a bulletproof jacket.
00:39:53
Speaker
I... Could a knife get through that? Probably, but whatever. That's just evil that they're justifying what these police did to this woman holding a cat and a knife in a grocery store aisle.
00:40:09
Speaker
Right. And, you know, at that point, it's just somebody trying to clean up the mess, right? Because, i please and I do understand, like, it is, there's no question police are allowed to use deadly force. And technically, she had a knife.
00:40:25
Speaker
right uh i still i still don't believe that uh so i what i'm saying is i i don't disagree that the grand jury could find nothing that he did nothing wrong right but at the same time he did like everything wrong so it's not to me like it's anytime somebody's needing help you should never be shooting them yeah yeah It's the weirdest thing to me. like Anytime like you're in a situation like that and you know she wasn't going to hurt anybody, i don't know why she was doing what she was doing, but she was acting out a bit.
00:41:04
Speaker
Her cousin, Cheryl Matitlin, she's from St. Helens, she talks about this in the days after. She says, I couldn't see why on earth they had to shoot her.
00:41:18
Speaker
They could have handcuffed her, taken her to a hospital. They could have hit her with a billy club, a stun gun, something to hurt her but they didn't have to shoot her. And she later mentions, and this is an article from Mental Health Portland, just says family questions, police shooting. And it's in the days after this But Sherilyn says she believes that her cousin...
00:41:40
Speaker
Janet Smith went to Fred Meyer to get help from police. She said that she had been locked inside a house by a former boyfriend and police back then, which I think they're talking about the Portland police.
00:41:53
Speaker
um She said, maybe that's why she wanted the police's attention. They'd rescued her from a bad situation and probably basically that's what she wanted this time. And that time that they had rescued her from being locked inside a house with a former boyfriend,
00:42:09
Speaker
They had taken her to Providence Medical Center who had you know helped her for a period of time. I don't know that that plays in here, but shooting a woman that you just pepper sprayed, no matter what she has in her hand, if it's not a gun,
00:42:30
Speaker
She's already like like you've already lost. And I read a quote from Ron Willis, like more recently, like right after the Capitol stuff happened on January 6th, he was, he was one of those people, they ran a quote and he like flippantly referred to this, which is how I came across the aggressive cat hostage. I was wondering who he was, but he referenced being involved in a fatal shooting.
00:42:54
Speaker
And I'm telling you right now, he was just a terrible cop. He shouldn't have been doing what he did that day. And he definitely should not have been shooting a woman that he had just participated in pepper spray, no matter what he thought.
00:43:08
Speaker
Right. And there's a lot of law enforcement officers out there like that. Yeah. They, um and all I can say is, there it's hard to balance it, right? I just don't think that, like, anybody could have looked at this situation and said, like, oh, that was, like, a last resort shooting, right? I just don't believe that. There were, like, about a million things between, like, even before they pepper sprayed her, right? Yeah.
00:43:37
Speaker
There were so many things they could do before killing her. you know Instead, instead of getting help, she was killed. And, you know, that's where it was. And then, you know, everybody said it was okay. Well, I mean, cops are allowed to legally use deadly force. I don't think that he would get away with it today.
00:44:01
Speaker
no um I don't know, man. Cops are still getting away with quite ah few things. Well... and And it's what we as a society tolerate, right?
00:44:13
Speaker
yeah Because you notice everything changes as they're they're facing the heat, right? Yeah. And all of a sudden you've got the sergeant coming out talking and trying to redirect certain things. And like they're talking the way that they are because like i I guarantee Ron Willis believes even to this day that he was justified in doing what he did.
00:44:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, he wasn't. Like, in case people are wondering, like, what I think. He absolutely was not. And the fact that they're trained to do that, that doesn't make it okay. Yeah.
00:44:50
Speaker
Yeah, so just to recap, Janet Marilyn Smith was a 28-year-old woman. She was very small. There's a couple pictures on the Internet of her. Um, she's described as frail.
00:45:01
Speaker
Um, it looks like, and I don't know this for sure. It looks like she may have had a disorder beyond just schizophrenia because like there's some developmental features about her that don't look like she's, she's cute.
00:45:18
Speaker
She looks very young. Even and the photo I found, I think she's 26, but she looks like kind of a small teenager. Um, And like i happen to have known someone who was a little crazy about their cat and also suffered from some mental illness stuff.
00:45:35
Speaker
They're not dangerous. I mean, most of the people that you see that people would consider a danger, it's based on their size. I know a lot of people where I live are very upset when they're homeless people of another color, doesn't matter what color, just non-white, white people are very upset about their presence.
00:45:59
Speaker
And the truth is,
00:46:03
Speaker
95% of those people were never going to harm you under any circumstances. um This is definitely an instance where the police would have been aware that this was not a dangerous situation.
00:46:15
Speaker
and don't care what they say about the knife or the cat can't let them get to the other customers. She was looking to be rescued. Right. you know And essentially what they're saying is like, if you cause a ruckus at the grocery store and we feel threatened, we're going to kill you.
00:46:32
Speaker
That's what they're saying. um And that's not, and it's wrong that they even feel that way at all. Yeah, she had a knife. She was also tiny that you had a lot of things you could have tossed at her. You could have disarmed her. There was no reason to kill her. your But see, that's the robotic response, right? The robotic response is, oh, I'm in danger. let me shoot. Well...
00:46:53
Speaker
That's not really what you're supposed to do. You're supposed be you know willing to protect and serve everybody, even the woman who took her own cat hostage.
00:47:05
Speaker
Yeah. I feel like this illustrates sort of like the the kind of rough, gruff edges of police training like sometimes there are people who are not capable of being trained and also like being human right yeah and that i feel like this guy was a good example of that because he i don't he's never going to back down from his position he was a hundred percent wrong no matter how you try and you know excuse it yeah i mean it's interesting to me like
00:47:41
Speaker
I have to think that it's it's because a lot of police officers who are doing patrol work like this are themselves challenged in some ways.
00:47:51
Speaker
And I mean, if they're still doing this after x amount of time, i can't imagine, like the ability to to wash away somebody like Janet Smith's death is a chore them.
00:48:07
Speaker
No, it should be impossible. Yeah, like it should be something that like they can't brush off. And i've I've heard different things where people kind of bash Janet Smith online and people um have a lot to say about like you know where was the family.
00:48:27
Speaker
ah But the truth is, Officer Ron Willis was not a good officer. And the day that he shot Janet Smith is the day that he should have lost his badge and his gun forever.
00:48:40
Speaker
And that should be true with a large number of these cases. Like there is perfectly respectable work to be done for that man in this world that does not involve being in a situation where you have to use a gun. And I say that because he just shot a woman who'd been pepper sprayed by three officers over a cat and a knife.
00:49:02
Speaker
So what are you going to do when he shoots the next one or worse, when he realizes what he's done? What are you going to do when he can't shoot the next one? You know, training is being trained to do something. So, it you know, there's a reason you do it. And part of the reason and police officers is are trained is so that there's not a lot of thinking involved in the reaction to situations, right? Right. Right.
00:49:29
Speaker
Except that's also like the downfall of the training. Right. Because in reacting to something, it's almost like he was incapable of processing the fact like this isn't what you've been trained for.
00:49:44
Speaker
right Okay, this is like a this is a different situation. And so i do I realize that kind of over and over again, that it's almost like a lot of law enforcement officers that find themselves in the spotlight for this kind of thing. It's that they literally can't distinguish what should be happening. Yeah. Yeah.
00:50:08
Speaker
Yeah, I don't have anything else on this one. Like, it is a lighter-hearted fare. Unfortunately, Janet Smith lost her life. um I think they call this the Gresham cat hostage-taking kind of in jest, but, you know, it's a serious situation. it just a different kind of hostage-taking.
00:50:26
Speaker
like guess it's technically an animal hostage-taking. Well, if she really took the animal hostage, right we don't even know. She was holding the animal hostage. Well, the internet does not want you to mess with cats, and I think that if this happened today, they would be more on Janet Smith's side than we realize.
00:50:46
Speaker
Well, the cat was fine.
00:50:52
Speaker
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00:51:03
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:53:26
Speaker
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