Christian Conrad
(From ozarksfirst.com)
A Probable Cause (PC) Statement from Deputy Debi Wade, which was used to bring bogus "cover charges" against Carol, suggests Conrad used such force against Carol that her broken arm required trauma surgery for repair. Given all the inaccurate information in Wade's PC Statement, we're not ready to take her Conrad information to the bank. Plus, we've found photos in the press of Conrad, and we are not sure he's the same guy who assaulted Carol and broke her arm.
That raises this question: Was someone, not named in Wade's PC Statement, actually responsible for Carol's injuries? Is the Greene County Sheriff's Office (GCSO) trying to protect someone, perhaps because he occupies a relatively high position in the department's chain of command?
We don't have answers to those questions at the moment, but we do have this, from the last sentence of Wade's PC Statement. This comes right after Wade had described her fantasy of Carol "barreling" into her and causing her to lose her balance. I was a witness to the event, and nothing like that happened. But something like the following did happen:
At this time, both Lt. Conrad and Deputy Harrison came in from either side to secure Carol's arms and place her in handcuffs.
This, and the preceding sentences, are peculiar for a number of reasons:
(1) Wade conveniently leaves out that one of the officers slammed Carol, butt-first, to the ground so violently that it likely caused (or added to) a concussion;
X-ray of Carol Shuler's broken arm
(2) Wade fails to mention that, upon bursting into our apartment, officers threw open the door, causing Carol to be slammed head-first against a wall. While putting handcuffs on her then, one or more officers banged her head against the wall multiple times. She might have sustained a concussion then, with the body slam outside, adding to it. But Wade claims Carol was the perpetrator of an assault, not the victim of one. Is it any wonder many people have zero trust in law-enforcement?
(3) Lt. Conrad doesn't have a first name, based on Wade's account. Every other person she mentions -- other than the "adviser," who has no name at all -- has both a first and last name. Why is Lt. Conrad's first name left out?
Wade does get one thing right in her PC statement: Carol's encounter with the cop thugs ended with her surrounded by three officers -- Wade, Scott Harrison, and (maybe) Christian Conrad. Here's our rundown on these three "public servants":
* Wade was the only female officer on the scene, we've run her photo several times, and we know she did not body slam Carol and break her arm;
* Harrison is the guy who apparently concocted the scenario that I had called 911 to threaten any cops who might try to evict us. He also was the one who, upon bursting into our apartment, pointed an assault rifle right at my head. He was the one who, after Carol had been placed in handcuffs (broken arm and all), drove her to the county jail. He was the one who, once someone at the jail noticed Carol was in agonizing pain, drove her to nearby Cox North Medical Center, where X-rays showed the bone in her upper left arm had been snapped in two, just above the elbow. Finally, Harrison gave Carol his card and said he was releasing her. That's how we know Harrison has sandy/reddish hair, and while he did bend down to help put her in handcuffs, he did not body slam her and yank on her arms.
Scott Harrison
(From facebook.com)
* Via Web research, we learned the GCSO has a Christian Conrad, apparently the only "Lt. Conrad" in the outfit. He is in the Springfield-area news fairly frequently. (See here, here, here, and here.) In every image we've found of Conrad, he is wearing a hat. The officer who broke Carol's arm was not wearing a hat that day, but he was wearing dark/reflective sunglasses, which made it impossible to see his eyes.
Bottom line: Conrad might be the guy who brutalized Carol, but we aren't 100 percent sure about that. We are dealing here with a thoroughly corrupt department, so it would not beyond them to put Conrad out as a straw man to protect a higher-ranking officer. We will need extensive discovery to sort all of that out.
The following is from Carol's Motion to Dismiss, which (with the PC Statement) is embedded at the end of this post:
Who is the real criminal here, the one who really did assault someone. It’s the unknown male officer who brutalized Carol. In the last sentence of her PC Statement, Wade mentions a “Lt. Conrad” and “Deputy Harrison,” who “came in from either side to secure Carol’s arms and place her in handcuffs. (“Secure” her arms? That must be copspeak for breaking someone’s arm.) The Shulers know Harrison has sandy/redish air, and he was not the one who yanked on Carol’s arm. Based on Wade’s fantastic version of events, that leaves only Lt. Conrad.
Published reports show a Christian Conrad with the GCSO. Is he the one who broke Carol’s arm? The Shulers aren’t certain. Conrad is wearing a hat in all the photos the Shulers have seen. The guy who broke Carol’s arm was not wearing a hat, but he was wearing sunglasses (ones that either were real dark or reflective; you could not see his eyes) and a light blue shirt. (Other officers were wearing black uniforms or civilian clothes.) At this point, it’s unclear to the Shulers if the officer was Conrad or someone else, perhaps someone Debi Wade has been told to protect in her PC Statement.
