Witnesses: Alleged gunman in Monroe County deputy’s slaying said ‘shoot me’ and wanted to die

Moments after a gunbattle left a sheriff’s deputy dead nearly two years ago, the man now accused of killing him lay handcuffed, yelling and screaming in a south Monroe County driveway, all but begging anyone within earshot to kill him.

“Shoot me. Put me out of my misery. I can’t stand the pain any longer,” witnesses recall suspect Christopher Keith Calmer saying.

On Friday, a volunteer firefighter who’d rushed to the scene that September day in 2014 spoke of Calmer’s words during testimony at a motions hearing in the death penalty case against Calmer.

Calmer, a 48-year-old former computer worker, is expected to go on trial next year.

The volunteer firefighter, a former UPS man named Jim Mickle, on Friday remembered the 2014 rescue call about a suicidal person.

Soon after he arrived at a house just east of Interstate 75 on Haley Lane near Bolingbroke, where Calmer lived with his parents, gunfire broke out.

Deputy Michael Norris had gone in to check on Calmer, who is said to have been despondent and armed with a pistol. Norris was killed and another deputy, Jeff Wilson, was seriously wounded in the episode. Calmer, shot in the leg, was lying in the driveway at the house handcuffed when Mickle walked up.

“I had my knee on him,” Mickle said of Calmer and how Mickle did it to keep the suspect from going anywhere.

While Mickle was there, another first responder, county EMA Director Matthew Perry, who also testified Friday about Calmer’s statements in the minutes after the deputies were shot, said Calmer was hollering and “saying he did it because he wanted to die.”

Friday’s proceedings in Monroe Superior Court included more courtroom antics from Calmer, who in court on Thursday, claiming to be in severe pain, interrupted with groans, mutterings and other audible outbursts.

Friday, Calmer, who in the past has complained of chronic back and neck pain, was far more subdued.

He sat beside his defense team in a recliner.

To make him more comfortable, a $199 chocolate-brown recliner was trucked in from Farmers Home Furnishings on North Bennett Street a few blocks from the venerable courthouse on the town square here.

At one point, though, Calmer, wearing a dark suit, sprang from the chair and sprawled out on the floor. After returning to the recliner, he later muttered in front of a nurse who’d come to give him a pain pill, “Jesus (expletive) Christ.”

After court adjourned, Monroe District Attorney Richard Milam called Calmer’s behavior an “outrageous” act that Milam believes is a stalling tactic.

Testimony on Friday was part of what will likely be monthly hearings in the run-up to next year’s trial.

At issue were the admissibility of potential evidence, statements and computer and medical records seized by the GBI using search warrants. A judge did not rule on those measures raised by Calmer’s defense team.

His lawyers also filed motions contending that Calmer is not mentally or physically competent enough for the case to proceed.

But over defense objections to halt matters, proceed it did. At least for now.

At times Calmer appeared as relaxed as a man in a living room easy chair. Other times he slumped over, his head in his hands.

After lunch, a man who had been the lead investigator in the case, former GBI agent Charles Woodall, testified about obtaining one of the search warrants in the case. Woodall is no longer on the case due to his resignation last year when he was charged with child molestation in neighboring Bibb County. The allegations against Woodall or how they might factor into the Calmer case were not brought up Friday.

About 2 o’clock Friday afternoon, during Woodall’s testimony, one of Calmer’s lawyers, Gabrielle Amber Pittman, got Judge Tommy Wilson’s attention to inform the judge of Calmer’s behavior.

“My client,” Pittman said, motioning to Calmer in the recliner to her left, “is starting to moan.”

The sound was barely audible and the hearing continued with little interruption until later when Calmer rose and flopped out on the floor.

One courtroom observer, referring to the spectacle and the at-times circuslike nature of the recent days’ proceedings, told a reporter afterward, “Wonder when they’re gonna bring the elephants in.”

This story was originally published May 13, 2016 at 11:01 AM with the headline "Witnesses: Alleged gunman in Monroe County deputy’s slaying said ‘shoot me’ and wanted to die."