SUNDAY, MAY 15 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
In July 20 13, Cantrell promot-
ed 35 -year-old Sloan to the head
of the narcotics unit. Shortly
after, the sheriff severed ties with
the North Mississippi Narcotics
Unit, the regional law enforce-
ment group that worked together
to make drug busts. This meant
that the sheriff’s office got to
keep the money, drugs and prop-
erty seized during raids, rather
than turn them over to the re-
gional unit.
The sheriff’s office was still
focused on drugs when they got a
call in August 2015 from a woman
reporting that armed intruders
had stolen $235,000 from her
home. She thought her friend
Stephanie Herring might be in-
volved.
Cantrell and Sloan paid Her-
ring a visit. A 24-year-old single
mom, Herring denied any wrong-
doing and turned over her cell-
phone to prove it. But then Sloan
found messages about drugs, and
the conversation changed.
“We’re going to take you to jail,”
Sloan said, “or you can tell me
something and we can try to
make this right.”
Herring directed deputies to a
meth lab she knew about — back
at the house that had just been
robbed. But Sloan wasn’t finished
with her. Over several days, he
gave Herring a tour of the sheriff’s
office and drove her around at
night — alone. She was his newly
minted confidential informant.
Sloan tasked her with finding
the robbery money — and, she
said, getting $10,000 so he could
take his kids to Disney World.
One night, she came home crying
and told her mother that Sloan
had sexually assaulted her.^8
Her mother pleaded with Her-
ring to report Sloan, but Herring
just wanted to clear her name.
She eventually found out that
some of the stolen money had
been stashed in a trailer in Nettle-
ton, a town to the north near the
county line. So she told Sloan.
Hours later, the local news
reported that the head narcotics
officer had been shot after pulling
over a Black man on a motorcycle
at 3 a.m. State investigators didn’t
see any noticeable injuries —
Sloan had been wearing a bullet-
proof vest.
Herring reached him on the
phone. “Please tell me that you
were not shot about that informa-
tion that I gave you that night,”
she said.
“I plead the Fifth,” he said.
Sloan later told her he’d be on
leave until at least November.^9
Days after the shooting, Her-
ring was arrested in connection
with the $235,000 robbery.
When Monroe County depu-
ties questioned her, Herring im-
mediately began talking about
Sloan. The $10,000. Disney
World. The assault. The trailer in
Nettleton.
They brought her to Chief Dep-
uty Curtis Knight, the second-in-
command. Lt. Kenny Bailey with
the Mississippi Bureau of Investi-
gation was also in the office, taking
notes. He asked her to take a
polygraph test — and she passed.^10
In late September 2015, Knight
and Bailey met in Oxford, Miss.,
with officials from the district
attorney’s office and the U.S. Jus-
tice Department to talk about
Herring’s allegations. Investiga-
tors had discovered about 75
phone calls and texts between
Sloan and Herring.
The FBI planned to investigate
the corruption allegations and
discussed having Herring offer
Sloan $5,000 in exchange for
dropping her case.
But the next day, state and
county law enforcement told the
FBI that Sloan had found out he
was being investigated and that
Herring was cooperating with
law enforcement.^11
One official involved in the dis-
cussion, who spoke on the condi-
tion of anonymity because they
weren’t allowed to talk publicly,
couldn’t believe how quickly it
ended: “That one just unfortunate-
ly was burned in the beginning.”
A familiar target
Cantrell knew Sloan was facing
allegations of misconduct, but the
sheriff was focused on the upcom-
ing election in the fall of 2015. By
then, Cantrell had established
himself as a fixture on the news,
showing up some days seemingly
as often as the weather forecast.
In one local news report that
year, Cantrell touted a historic
roundup of alleged drug offend-
ers, saying the sheriff’s office was
seeking to arrest more than 400
people.
“That’s one reason our county’s
gotten much safer, because we are
after the drug dealers,” he told a
reporter. “If you fool with drugs
in Monroe County, you’re gonna
pay the penalty of it.”
MONROE COUNTY FROM A
That year, the sheriff’s office
would report to the state 45 drug-
related arrests.^12
Tanya Willems, who handled
public relations for the sheriff’s
office, said she believed “less than
half of whatever” Cantrell said on
the news. The sheriff didn’t care
about cleaning up the county,
Willems said: “It was for a vote.
That’s all it was. So he could get
reelected.”
As the election neared, Sloan
returned from leave and the nar-
cotics unit focused on a familiar
target: Ricky Keeton. The sheriff
and Keeton went way back — they
had attended the same church
when they were children. Cant-
rell and his deputies knew Keeton
had a felony conviction for selling
marijuana in the 1990s.
Almost two decades later, nar-
cotics agents had been hearing
that Keeton was “messing up,”
and a confidential informant told
Deputy Tony Coxey at least nine
months earlier that Keeton was
selling drugs.
On Oct. 27, 2015, Sloan and
Coxey drove to the gravel dead-
end road where Keeton lived and
crept into a neighbor’s yard with
night-vision goggles to conductsurveillance.
They recognized a green pick-
up truck in Keeton’s driveway. It
belonged to the man who’d given
Coxey the tip. Sloan ordered his
deputies on patrol to stop and
search the truck at their first
opportunity.
Keeton was a big guy with an
easy laugh, and everyone called
him Round Man. He was White,
with a long black and silver pony-
tail that hung down his back.
Keeton and his longtime girl-
friend, Wanda Stegall, usually
lived paycheck to paycheck. They
hung a white poster board on the
wall of their trailer with “Family
Rules” written in marker: “Think
of others before yourself! Always
tell the truth!”
At 57, Keeton had smoked mar-
ijuana for decades, and had re-
cently started using meth. Stegall
said they smoked meth a couple
of times a week but that they
didn’t sell it.
Keeton spent most of his time
in a red workshop next to their
trailer, fixing cars and doing odd
projects like converting a wash-
ing machine into a pea huller. He
put up several game cameras
outside after someone stole acouple of vehicles from the yard.
Keeton often had people help-
ing him out around the property.
Terry Parker was one of them.
That evening, Parker showed
up in his green truck around
dinnertime as Keeton and Stegall
were sharing a barbecue chicken
pizza. Parker said Keeton gave
him some meth — but he didn’t
pay Keeton any money.^13
After Parker left, Stegall and
Keeton smoked meth and even-
tually headed to bed.
They fell asleep around 10 p.m.
with the television on.
About a half-hour later, Mon-
roe County deputies pulled over
Parker on the side of the highway.
They found a few grams of
meth wrapped in electrical tape
in his truck. When narcotics
agents arrived, Parker said he got
the drugs from Keeton and that
there was more at his home.^14
That was enough for Sloan to
order up a raid. He called Cant-
rell, the sheriff, and alerted the
SWAT team to meet at midnight
in a government parking lot.
Coxey went to find Judge Rob-
ert Fowlkes. He was supportive of
no-knock raids, believing the el-
ement of surprise was necessaryfor these drug busts.^15
Fowlkes had never attended
law school. He had served as a
justice court judge since 1999 and
had become the go-to judge for
search warrants, sleeping with a
phone by his bed so he could field
requests from officers at all
hours. He even signed off on
warrants at the local steakhouse
and a church parking lot where
he had a side gig as a pastor.
On this October night, Coxey
brought along an affidavit for a
search warrant. It had the wrong
town and Zip code for Keeton’s
address. There was no justifica-
tion for why it needed to be a
no-knock, and it included only a
sparse statement summarizing
the investigation: A confidential
source had seen Keeton in the
past 72 hours with a crystal-like
substance that he said was meth-
amphetamine.
Coxey told him the raid could
be dangerous because Keeton
had dogs, and there was a possi-
bility that he had weapons. Fowl-
kes signed off on it.
By the time Coxey returned to
the parking lot, about a dozen
people had gathered, including
Cantrell. The SWAT teamwrapped up the raid preparation,
and then the men gathered in a
circle and prayed.A late-night raid
Shortly before 1 a.m., the sher-
iff and his deputies pulled onto
the road where Keeton lived.
Cantrell stayed in his truck
while the SWAT team, clad in
bulletproof vests, climbed over a
gate onto Keeton’s muddy drive-
way. They moved quickly in a
single line along the side of the
trailer to a small wooden porch in
the back.
One deputy heaved a battering
ram into the door, but it didn’t
budge. Deputy Sam Mitchell
grabbed another tool to try to pry
it open.
Inside, Keeton woke Stegall up
and told her someone was out-
side. She could hear banging.
Keeton grabbed a small black
pellet pistol, similar to a BB gun.
She saw Keeton open the door.
Outside, Mitchell hollered, “Gun.”
The SWAT team later claimed
that Keeton shot first — and that
they didn’t realize he was holding
a pellet pistol.
Five officers sprayed dozens of
bullets across the trailer. Mitchell
threw himself over the porch
railing for cover after he said
shrapnel hit his arm and face.^16
Inside, Stegall dove under the
bed. Terrified, she tried dialing
911.
When the gunfire finally
stopped, she heard Keeton call
from across the room, “Wanda,
they got me.”
Deputies rushed inside the
trailer. Stegall heard them yell
over and over: “They’ve got cam-
eras, they’ve got cameras, they’ve
got cameras.”
One deputy handcuffed Stegall
and tried moving her out of the
bedroom. But Keeton’s body was
blocking the doorway. She re-
fused to walk over him.
Someone grabbed a tan blan-
ket and placed it over his body.
Sloan called for an ambulance
at 1 a.m.
When paramedics got to Kee-
ton’s side at 1:17 a.m., Keeton was
dead with six gunshot wounds.
Knight, the chief deputy, called
Bailey, of the Mississippi Bureau
of Investigation, the agency that
typically investigates police
shootings. He was the same offi-
cial who had been looking into
Herring’s accusations against
Sloan just weeks earlier.
When Bailey arrived, he start-
ed asking Stegall questions under
the harsh fluorescent lights by
Keeton’s workshop.
“Did he think it was the police
coming?”
“No, didn’t have any idea,” Ste-
gall said, sobbing.
Then he took the deputies
aside. Coxey seemed concerned
that Keeton hadn’t understood
what was going on.
“When I heard Sam holler ‘gun’
I screamed out ‘sheriff’s depart-
ment’ to make sure that this guy
knew that it was, you know, the
sheriff’s department that was
here and not somebody just
breaking into his house on him,”
Coxey told Bailey.
Sloan and the four deputies
who fired their weapons wouldn’t
answer any questions from state
investigators. Instead, they called
a lawyer.^17‘It was not done
i n a dirty way’
Hours later, the sheriff ap-
peared on the local news to an-
nounce the raid. He said that
Keeton had opened fire on offi-
cers — and that they found drugs,
which he suggested were linked
to a Mexican drug cartel.
“We do know that these drugs
is hooked up with a Mexican
cartel,” Cantrell said.
Keeton’s family didn’t buy that
story. His daughter Robbie Geiger
and four other relatives crammed
into the sheriff’s office on Oct. 29,
the day after the deadly raid, to
get some answers. One of them
secretly recorded the conversa-
tion on a cellphone.
They wanted to know why Kee-
ton’s home had been raided late at
night. “We want to know why it
had to be done in a dirty way like
that?” one asked.
“It was not done in a dirty way,”
Cantrell said. “It was done in a
lawful way. ... The accusations
you’re making are not true.”
Keeton’s relatives kept pelting
him with questions. Why weren’t
police wearing body cameras?
Why was the sheriff talking about
a Mexican drug cartel?
“I just don’t want his name put
on TV saying anything else ugly
about him — about him being
with a drug cartel or anything
else, just out of pure respect for
me,” Geiger pleaded.
“Believe me, I respect him a lot
more than you even know,” Cant-
rell said.
SEE MONROE COUNTY ON AMARVIN JOSEPH/THE WASHINGTON POST
Stephanie Herring, above, said she was pressured to become a confidential
informant for Deputy Eric Sloan, at far left, who was head of the Monroe
County Sheriff’s Office narcotics unit. Herring accused him of extortion
and sexual assault; in a deposition, Sloan denied her accusations.
THE MONROE JOURNALMARVIN JOSEPH/THE WASHINGTON POSTMARVIN JOSEPH/THE WASHINGTON POSTFAMILY PHOTO
Ricky Keeton and his girlfriend Wanda Stegall,
above, made a home in Monroe County. Keeton
was killed in a no-knock raid in 2015; Stegall
survived. The affidavit for the raid, left, has the
wrong town and Zip code for Keeton’s address.
Judge Robert Fowlkes, above left, signed off on
many warrants in Monroe County, including the
one for Keeton’s home.
OBTAINED BY THE WASHINGTON POST8. Herring recounted these events in statements to law enforcement and in a deposition. The Post interviewed Herring and her mother. 9. These conversations are described in state investigative reports and court records obtained
by The Post. Sloan, in a deposition, denied Herring’s accusations of extortion and sexual assault, saying: “I don’t know why she would make those claims against me.” 10. The Post reviewed copies of the polygraph records. 11. The
Post reviewed documents, including a memo from the sheriff’s office, about this meeting and communication the following day. The FBI and Bailey declined to comment. 12. The sheriff’s office did not report crime data to the FBI, and
the district attorney’s office did not provide data on drug convictions. 13. The Post reviewed depositions from Parker and Stegall. 14. Deputies described this traffic stop in depositions and written statements. 15. The Post interviewed
Fowlkes about his views on no-knock warrants. 16. Mitchell and other deputies described the raid in written statements and depositions. 17. Stegall and Coxey recounted the raid in recorded interviews with a state investigator that
night. Another state investigator noted that the deputies contacted a lawyer.