I-Team: A Hero's Tale - Inside A Deadly Police Shootout
MIAMI (CBS4) - Running toward the gunfire, Miami Dade Police Detective Oscar Plasencia turned the corner of a Liberty City duplex and found himself only a few yards from Johnny Simms – a wanted fugitive who had just shot and killed Plasencia's two partners, Amanda Haworth and Roger Castillo.
"He saw me, I saw him, he fired at me, I fired back," Plasencia explained in his first and only interview since that fateful day four months ago.
In a scene out of a movie, Plasencia and Simms ran toward each other, down a narrow alleyway, firing non stop. Plasencia said he could tell Simms was aiming high – hoping to shoot the detective in the head. Instead, Plasencia said he bobbed and ducked to the left as he ran and returned fire.
"You don't want to stand still, if you stand still you become an easy target," Plasencia told CBS4 News I Team Investigator Jim DeFede.
One of Plasencia's bullets struck Simms. In his 31 years as a cop, it was the first time Plasencia had ever fired his weapon at someone. Standing over Simms' body, Plasencia said he could see Castillo a few yards away.
"He was lying on his back, a pool of blood behind his head, and his face had turned gray," Plasencia recalled. "He had lost all color. I knew he was gone."
Just out of sight was Haworth. Mortally wounded herself, she would die a few hours later while being operated on at Jackson Memorial Hospital.
"Never in a million years did it enter my mind that things were going to happen the way they turned out," said Plasencia, a 31-year police veteran. "We do this day in and day out, in the same fashion. We do this by the numbers. And it just goes to show you how quickly things can go bad."
How quickly? The entire affair – from the first shot to the last – took less than seventeen seconds.
That day, January 20, 2011, began as any other – with the four detectives of the department's career criminal squad meeting to discuss how they would find their latest target.
Simms was wanted for the shooting death of a man last year who had shown disrespect to his sister. Although he was only 22 years old, Simms had been arrested more than a dozen times for charges ranging from armed robbery to auto theft.
Miami detectives tried without success to apprehend Simms. As the New Year came around, Miami Dade cops picked up the assignment. On that particular morning, the squad met in the parking lot of the North Side District Station on 83rd Street. Haworth went through a list of possible locations where Simms might be hiding.
"We had several homes to check to look for that particular person," said Plasencia, who made a point during the hour-long interview never to refer to Simms by his name. "The way that we did it was down to a science. Everybody knew their place. Everyone was vested up with body armor. Short of driving a tank up to the front door, there was nothing else we could do."
Plasencia has heard the criticism that perhaps they should have called SWAT out to raid the various houses. Plasencia laughed and shook his head at the suggestion.
"That's great but it's not reality," he said. "When you don't know that the subject is inside the house you can't call tactical out. You can't call swat out on a maybe."
All of the detectives on the career criminal squad were senior officers with at least twenty years of experience. A close knit group, they all liked each other.
"If there was a jokester it was Roger, Amanda was very serious when it came to her job, Didi was the nice one, and I guess I'm the old grumpy guy," Plasencia said with a smile.
Roger Castillo, Amanda Haworth, Deidre Beecher, and Oscar Plasencia left that morning from the North Side district station not realizing two of them wouldn't be coming home.
"You never know, any day could be the day," Plasencia said. "Any day could be the day you go to work and you don't come back. We all know this. Everyone on the job knows this. You don't dwell on it because if you do dwell on it you can't function."
After striking out at the first few addresses, the team arrived mid morning at a Liberty City duplex on NW 69th Street and NW Sixth Court – just west of I 95.
A narrow pathway ran up the south side of the building. The duplex itself was built like a concrete bunker. Castillo took up a position on the west side of the duplex. Plasencia stood ready at the northeast corner in case Simms tried to flee out a back door or window.
Once Castillo and Plasencia were in place, Haworth and Beecher walked down the narrow pathway to the front door. They spoke to Simms' mother through a window. She told them Simms was inside. As the two detectives entered the duplex, Haworth radioed Castillo and Plasencia.
"Amanda actually got on the radio and said the subject is inside come around," he recalled.
Castillo and Plasencia began moving around the building toward the front door. But as they did, gunfire erupted. Inside the duplex, Simms had burst out of a back bedroom firing a .40 caliber Glock pistol. His first shot hit Haworth in the head. He then fired a second round into Haworth. Next he turned toward Beecher firing several rounds at her. Backing out of the duplex to find cover, she fell into the alley, twisting her knee.
Plasencia could hear the gunshots - a lot of gunshots he said - and knew what it meant.
"In my mind I say, `Oh crap,' and then I go into overdrive because I knew something bad was going on, they were in trouble and I just ran as fast as I could to get to that front door," he said.
By now Castillo had made it from the west side of the building toward the front door himself, but he ran right into Simms, who killed Castillo instantly with a shot to the head.
Investigators believe Simms deliberately targeted the officers' heads because he knew they wore body armor.
After shooting Castillo, Simms raced down the alley. Just then, Plasencia turned the corner. He was the only thing standing between Simms and the street. If he could get passed Plasencia, Simms would be able to escape into the neighborhood.
In a scene out of a movie, the 22 year old killer and 52-year-old cop ran toward each other firing non stop.
"Very surreal, for me things tended to go into a slow motion," Plasencia recalled. "Certain things were very clear. His gun, the slide working on his gun. I never heard the gunfire. On my gun, I could feel the slide working. I couldn't hear my gunshots either."
In a matter of seconds, it was over.
"He was the right guy, in the right place, at a horribly wrong time," said Miami Dade Police Director James Loftus. "It was either he won or he died. There was no surviving it. There was no surrendering. He was faced with being fired at by someone who had killed two of our people."
Neither Roger Castillo nor Amanda Haworth fired a single shot before they gunned down.
Plasencia put out the call of "shots fired" and "officer down." Within a minute the scene was flooded with police cars.
Plasencia said the other officers walked him out to the street, away from where Castillo and Haworth were shot. One of the first calls came from his wife, who had heard about a shooting in which two officers were shot and the suspect was killed.
"I told her it was me, I put him down," Plasencia said.
After holding it together for hours back at the police station, Plasencia said he finally broke down when he got home and saw his wife.
"She knows I'm a street cop and that is all I ever wanted to be," he said. "I can't be behind a desk, she worries, every day she worries."
"That night Plasencia's wife drove him to both Castillo and Haworth's homes so he could pay respect to Castillo's wife Debbie and Haworth's partner Rosie Diaz. He said on the drive to both houses all he could think about were Castillo's three sons and Haworth's boy.
When he reached Castillo's home, he found Debbie on the back patio surrounded by family and other cops.
"Words can't describe," he said choking back tears. "All you can do is offer your support and your love."
He said he doesn't remember what he said to them.
"I think mostly you hug and you cry," he said. "Sometimes you don't need to say any words."
Plasencia said he didn't sleep for days. He said the memorial service at the American Airlines Arena is largely a blur to him.
"I was there, but I wasn't really there," he said.
During the ceremony, Rosie Diaz singled Plasencia out, prompting a standing ovation.
"And I especially, especially want to thank Oscar Plasencia," Diaz said. "Oscar, you are as much our hero as Roger and Amanda."
Asked about that moment recently, Plasencia became very emotional and had difficulty speaking.
"I'm no hero," Plasencia said.
How could he think that?
"I was just doing my job, that's all, I've served with heroes," he said.
In the months since Castillo and Haworth's deaths, Plasencia said he finds constant reminders of his two friends.
"I know that they are gone, but their numbers are still in my phone, their text messages are still on my phone," he said. "I wake up every morning and I put this [wrist band] on. It's got both their names on it and I will do that for the rest of my life."
Some days are easier than others.
"I was driving through an area in the North Side district with a couple of my partners recently and the conversation came up about Roger," Plasencia said, the emotion welling up inside of him. "And I glanced over to the left and the house number on the house that I drove by was his badge number."
Within a week of the shooting, Plasencia was back at work. Every day, he says, it gets easier to walk in the squad room and not see his friends even though reminders of them are everywhere.
Four months after the shooting and Castillo and Haworth's desks remain exactly as they were on the morning they died. Pictures of family and friends adorn their cubicles. Haworth's jacket still rests on her chair. Castillo's model cars remain just where he left them.
Plasencia recalls how he made his peace with the pair at the funeral home the night before they were buried.
"Well Mandy's casket was closed but, I don't know but maybe somebody would find this bizarre, but I kissed Roger goodbye, I would have kissed Mandy goodbye," he said.
And what did he say to Castillo after kissing him on the forehead?
Plasencia paused while gathering the strength to repeat the words he spoke that day. Finally, Plasencia spoke: "One day I'll see you on the other side."
He said he walked by Haworth's casket and told her the same thing as well.
