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Deputy's Pals Think There's More To Wheelchair Story

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 15, 2008

TAMPA -- When Charlette Marshall-Jones was a teenager, she and her sister were home alone and someone broke into their house, her former neighbor says.

"She took the man head-on," said Daisy Ulmer, who couldn't recall details. "I just remember the man was glad to get out of there."

Ulmer, 75, considers Marshall-Jones her unofficial adopted daughter. And when the teen confronted the burglar, Ulmer said, she told the girl she should be in law enforcement.

"When that happened, I kept saying to her, 'That's what you need to be,'" Ulmer said. "I told her, 'That must be your calling, how you handled that situation.'"

Ulmer and others say Marshall-Jones is perfectly suited to her job as a Hillsborough County detention deputy. The Marshall-Jones they know is not the same person seen in a widely broadcast video showing her dumping Brian Sterner, a paralyzed man, out of his wheelchair when she was booking him at Orient Road Jail.

The video has sparked outrage across the country and is the subject of a civil rights investigation by the state attorney general's office as well as a criminal probe by the sheriff's office. Marshall-Jones has been suspended from her job without pay and has said virtually nothing publicly.

But those who know the deputy say something extreme must have happened to trigger the incident. They say Marshall-Jones is a caring, funny, even-tempered woman who often navigated difficult situations with humor.

"I've never seen her flare up," Ulmer said.

Ulmer, who said she hasn't seen the video, said that even if an inmate was extremely abusive and upset Marshall-Jones, the deputy would remove herself from the situation.

"She probably would say, 'OK, you stay there.' And then say, 'Somebody else go in there. I can't handle it anymore.' If it got real bad, … she's a thinker. Some people do things impulsively. She's a thinker."

Ulmer said she has known the deputy since Marshall-Jones was in elementary school. Her father was an airman at MacDill Air Force Base and became a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, Ulmer said.

Marshall-Jones and her sisters were teenagers when their parents divorced, Ulmer said, but their father saw them often after the split.

Ulmer thinks someone must have ordered Marshall-Jones to do what she did.

"She's just not that unfeeling for people," Ulmer said. "She has feelings for people. She really does." Ulmer said that when her husband was dying in a hospital, Marshall-Jones would bring her clothes so she didn't have to leave his side.

"She has always been real mannerable," Ulmer said. "It's always sir and ma'am to everybody on this block. She never got so big and important that she talked ugly. Never. never. …That's just not her way. … Somebody did something they weren't supposed to or said something to her. …She wouldn't dump somebody out of their chair."

Judge Barbara Fleisher agreed that Marshall-Jones is even-tempered. "She is a very bright woman, and, I tell you, she did defuse many situations," said the judge, who had Marshall-Jones work in her courtroom until 2001. "People in jail can be very testy."

Fleisher never saw Marshall-Jones do anything inappropriate or treat anyone inappropriately.

"If I had, she wouldn't have been working for me."

She was always upbeat and very professional. Fleischer could tell that she liked her job very much and took it seriously.

Bob Smith, another neighbor of Marshall-Jones from when she grew up in Progress Village, said, "She's not that type of person to do something mean and evil like that. She's a very caring and affectionate person. I just can't visualize it, her doing something like that. There's something else going on. I'm not saying she didn't do it. Pictures don't lie. …You got to see what kicked it off first."

Denise McElwee, a nurse who said she worked in the Orient Road Jail with Marshall-Jones from 2004 to 2006, said the deputy is well-regarded. "I can tell you she is compassionate, mild-mannered," McElwee said. "I couldn't even believe that was her. She is a highly respected deputy."

McElwee is horrified by the comments being made on the Internet by people who don't know Marshall-Jones. "When inmates get agitated, she was always able to calm them down with humor," she said. "She's run a pod, and her pod is always well maintained. … It's hard for a deputy to run a pod with 50 inmates. I've never ever seen her unprofessional."

McElwee said the integrity of the staff at the jail is high, despite difficult conditions of working with inmates who can be abusive.

"Even as a nurse, you get spit on, feces thrown on you, exposed to bodily fluids. They sexually expose theirselves," she said.

Noting Marshall-Jones has worked for the sheriff's office for 22 years, McElwee said, "I'd invite anyone to work there two weeks. I guarantee you, [Sterner] wasn't, 'Yes, ma'am.' … She's so compassionate, if he really couldn't stand, she would have picked him up and carried him. There's more circumstances than what people are being led to believe. That's not her character."

Reporter Thomas W. Krause contributed to this report. Reporter Elaine Silvestrini can be reached at (813) 259-7837 or esilvestrini@tampatrib.com.

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