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Interview with Towanna Ruffin, mom of Andrew Coffee, 23.
Wochit
VERO BEACH — Andrew Coffee IV’s mom is angry about a Indian River County Sheriff’s Office drug raid on her son’s home early Sunday.
“Everyone’s lives matter,” Towanna Ruffin pronounced during a Indian River County Courthouse on Monday. She had only left a courtroom where County Judge Joe Wild set her son’s bail during $307,000 on mixed charges, including attempted murder of one of a deputies who converged on his home early Sunday in Gifford.
“They went there to kill,” Ruffin pronounced of a drug raid. “The Coffees have a history. But we (law enforcement) have to do a improved job.”
She rebuked Indian River County Sheriff Deryl Loar, who said Coffee used a woman, who was in bed in a house, to defense himself from gunfire from deputies outward a house. The woman, Alteria Woods, 21, was fatally shot.
“He would never do that (use her as a shield).She was profound with her initial child,” she said. “He desired her.”
“You are a coward,” she pronounced of a deputies’ gunfire that hit Woods. “They didn’t need to kill her. She had zero to do with this.”
“You need to get it right. You need to get it right,” she pronounced in a rising voice, as she forked her arm.
“Blue lives matter. Black lives matter,” she said. But, “I do see harassment.”
She contends that her son primarily suspicion robbers, rather than deputies, were concentration on a residence during 5:45 a.m.
He was perplexing to strengthen his family, she said.
In a house at a time was Coffee; his father, Andrew Coffee III, 37; and Woods. There were several women in a house, too, including Coffee IV’s grandmother, Vivian Scott, 52. Ruffin quoted her son as observant he systematic Scott to get down when a gunfire erupted.
According to Sheriff’s Office statements, deputies converged on a home and primarily came face-to-face with Coffee III, who was subdued. Then deputies pennyless a window to the bedroom where Woods was in bed. From inside a house, shots were dismissed toward deputies, attack one, Deputy Kelsey Zorc, in a shoulder, Loar said. Deputies answered with their possess gunfire, that shot Woods, he said.
Sheriff’s orator Lt. Eric Flowers pronounced his group doesn’t nonetheless know how many times Woods was shot or how many shots deputies fired. Investigators could have that information by week’s end. An autopsy will be conducted.
“You can’t clear (the sharpened of Woods). I feel a pain for her momma,” Ruffin said.
Sheriff’s officials pronounced grief counselors are working with Woods’ relatives.
Ruffin explained how, behind in 2015, Andrew Coffee II, 54, shot Deputy Chris Lester in a leg on Dec. 18, 2015, after Lester stopped him while he was roving home on a scooter during 3 a.m. It didn’t have a tag. Coffee II snapped because he had been regularly stopped, she said.
He strike a deputy, afterwards pulled a gun. The emissary dismissed back. At a time, Loar described Coffee II “as a famous drug dealer.”
That was a year after Coffee II was expelled after portion dual decades in state jail for attempted murder.
“My son was perplexing to do things his grandfather never did. He kept annals and reports of what happened to him. (Law enforcement) didn’t like that,” she said.