Nightmare Never Ends, Victim Says -- High Court Considers Lawsuit Against Everett In Domestic Shooting

EVERETT - In the dream, Sheila Roy wakes up to see him standing over her with a gun. And this time, he means to kill her.

The nightmare is always with her - like the pain from the bullet still lodged close to her spine, a constant reminder of the shooting nearly seven years ago.

On the morning of Oct. 5, 1984, Roy's estranged boyfriend, Milton Glenn, 27, broke into her Everett apartment and shot her four times before killing himself. The shooting was the chilling finale to a yearlong crescendo of violence that brought police to her apartment at least seven times.

The future of Roy's lawsuit against the city of Everett, the Police Department and four of its members is in the hands of the state Supreme Court. The court is considering a defense motion to dismiss the suit. The decision, which is expected soon, could affect whether domestic-violence victims have the right to sue police.

Roy, 29, believes police indifference to Glenn's repeated attacks contributed to the shooting. On Sept. 3, a trial in Snohomish County Superior Court is scheduled on the lawsuit she filed in 1986. Also named in the suit are four members of the Everett Police Department: former Police Chief Al Shelstad, Sgt. K.G. Thiessen, Assistant Chief Mike Campbell and Lt. Peter Hegge.

Police had seized Glenn's .25-caliber pistol twice before the shooting, once after he slammed Roy's head into a cabinet and held the gun to her head, squeezing the trigger three times on an empty chamber. Both times, police returned the gun to him.

Everett City Attorney Mark Patterson Sr. argued before the state Supreme Court last November that one section of the state Domestic Violence Act protects police from such lawsuits: An officer is not liable for "any . . . action or omission in good faith . . . arising from an alleged incident of domestic violence."

One of the few things both sides agree on is that the case boils down to how the word "omission" is defined.

"It would take an army of lawyers to represent police" if not for the immunity clause, Patterson said. "Police have to be protected . . . in order to do their job right."

But Kate Pflaumer, Roy's Seattle attorney, said that position "turns upside down the intent of the Legislature," which passed the Domestic Violence Act to encourage special police protection of domestic-violence victims. She argued that the suit stems from the Police Department's pattern of ignoring Roy's situation and not enforcing the act, and therefore is not protected by the immunity clause.

Roy, a mother of three, now lives in Sumter, S.C., where she moved in January 1990 to "try to find some healing after the shooting." But it's been slow mending. She is unable to work most of the time because of lingering pain.

In 1981, Roy met Glenn, a neighbor in her Everett apartment complex and an employee at The Boeing Co. They started dating, and later he moved in.

The relationship started to unravel the first time Glenn hit her and her daughter, LaKara, about a year before the shooting. "It was something I had never experienced before, and I couldn't understand why. I just wanted him out of my life and out of my house."

The next year was punctuated by terrifying incidents when he would break into her home and beat her, even when she was pregnant with his son. She kicked him out, but there were times when she allowed Glenn to come back because she was afraid of not knowing where he was.

Once, officers allegedly let Glenn stay in her house and took Roy and her 6-year-old daughter to her mother's home after Glenn broke in and beat her. Another time, when Glenn had battered Roy so badly that she needed to go to the hospital, the police allegedly left her daughter in Glenn's care, according to court papers.

"It was like you're screaming, and nobody can hear you," she recalled.

Shortly before the shooting, Glenn was arrested for the first time after another beating incident, apparently because of a new mandatory arrest requirement added by state lawmakers to the Domestic Violence Act. He was later released on bail.

Roy then obtained a temporary-protection order prohibiting all contact by Glenn, but police allegedly told her they couldn't do anything when Glenn later appeared at the baby-sitter's house because the order did not specifically cover that residence. For a time, she and her children moved into a women's shelter but returned to the apartment a few weeks before the shooting.

Patterson paints a different picture of police response in the Roy case. Roy would not cooperate with police or prosecutors, didn't return phone calls and would not provide information for officers trying to build a case against Glenn, he said. After one beating, Roy filled out a statement saying she did not wish to press charges because Glenn told her he would seek help and not return to her house.

"She was contributing to her own problems" by going back to Glenn, he said. "The question is: Does the state owe people who won't protect themselves protection?"

He believes police acted properly in each incident, with the exception of returning Glenn's gun to him, which he attributes to "some kind of screw up."

If the Supreme Court grants Roy the right to sue, there may be a chilling effect among police officers who could be reluctant to take action in domestic-violence cases for fear of future liability, said attorney David Kahn of the Washington State Association of Municipal Attorneys. The group filed a court brief supporting the city of Everett.

But Christine Lamson, representing the Northwest Women's Law Center in another court brief supporting Roy, argued that police should not worry about that if they're doing their job.

"If police are enforcing the laws equally, is that a burden?" she asked.