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Woman's Friends Say There Must Be More To Story

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 16, 2008

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

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

After 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, now 75, considers Marshall-Jones her unofficial adopted daughter.
Ulmer and others say Marshall-Jones is perfectly suited to her job as a Hillsborough County detention deputy. The deputy 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 at the Orient Road Jail.

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.

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

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.

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

Donna Oakleaf, Fleisher's judicial assistant, said this incident is completely out of character.

"I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes," she said.

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.

"There's more circumstances than what people are being led to believe," she said. "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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