In the gallery, more than 200 Florida residents had arrived from Bayou Pines Estates, Hammock Cove, Cypress Lakes, and the 12 other affected communities. Wilurn Hendrickx's widow was in the front row in a black blouse and a small silver pin shaped like a hummingbird. Theron Aley was beside her in a charcoal suit. Estelle was in the second row in a pale blue dress with May beside her in her Sunday tennis whites. Beck Marston had flown in from Houma the night before and was in the third row in his only suit with his hand on his daughter's shoulder.
The commission chair was a state senator named Loretta Pickering, 68 years old from Pensacola. Three terms on the Dois. She gave the meeting open. She invited the Florida attorney general to present. The AG presented for 48 minutes.
She named every defendant. Spencer Vorhees, Carlen Vorhees, Dr. Garner Vorhees. 31 Sentinel Guards across three counties, seven HOA board members. She presented the federal civil rights indictment. She presented the federal RICO indictment.
She presented the federal mail and wire fraud indictments. She presented the state level felony charges under Florida statute 843.085 for impersonating a law enforcement officer in 15 documented incidents. Then she played the video. The chamber went silent. The footage from the FBI panel van.
The footage from my 12 cameras. The footage from the sprinter's dash cam. The footage from Drusen Crane's body camera. The audio from the directional microphones. 5 and a half minutes of footage edited only for time with the unedited 18-hour version available as exhibit one.
The chamber watched a baton come down on the back of my shoulder. They watched a taser fire. They watched me drop to my back on my own St. Augustine grass. They watched May's freckled face nowhere in the frame because May had been kept three counties away.
They watched 92 seconds of nothing happening and then they watched a federal tactical response that by every measure in modern law enforcement was the cleanest civil rights takedown of a private security firm in Florida history. When the video ended, Senator Pickering invited me to the speaker table. I had not planned to speak. I stood up anyway. Senator, members of the commission, my name is Hayes Tolmage.
I am a retired special agent in charge of the FBI Tampa field office. I spent 28 years investigating men who put on uniforms and decided that the uniforms gave them the right to hurt people. The Sentinel case is the worst version of that pattern I have ever seen. Sentinel was not just a private security firm. Sentinel was a death organization wearing a costume.
Six elderly Floridians have died in the last 3 years in or after Sentinel detentions. Five of those deaths were ruled natural causes by the medical examiner who, as we now know, was the brother of the Sentinel owner. Each of those families is owed justice. Each of those names should be read into the record today. I read the six names.