ORLANDO, Fla. — It has been a tough almost three months for Gail Reed. The mother of 33-year-old Antonio Scippio has been trying to move forward while dealing with the loss of her son.
“It’s like a piece of a puzzle that’s now missing. It’s gone,” she said. “All we have left is the emptiness.”
Scippio was a veteran. After spending time in the Air Force, he started developing mental health issues, Reed said. The man was even in a mental health facility for about a month before he moved in with her while he continued his treatment.
“He would just go in [to the mental health facility], like every month to take his injections. But after then, he would not stay in a room all day like he used to,” Reed said. “He would come out, conversate, go with the family to different places.”
On the night of Feb. 21, however, things took a turn. A 911 call, which was released by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, details how Scippio was threatening to kill himself when law enforcement was dispatched to his home.
At the time of the call, the man was going through a psychotic episode, according to his mother.
When deputies arrived, they found him in his room, holding a knife. Deputies fatally shot him as he approached with the knife.
His interaction with deputies was caught on camera, which was just released. Reed watched the footage for the first time as she continued to deal with her grief.
“It’s so traumatic and disturbing,” she said. “I will never forget what happened from the beginning to the end, from the time the officers came to the garage, from the time they entered the house, and from how it escalated from zero to 100, is very vivid in my head.”
At the time of the shooting, Orange County Sheriff John Mina said law enforcement had no other option because Scippio did not drop his knife. Reed, however, says the reaction was inadequate because her son wasn’t a threat.
“Antonio steadily walked slowly with his hands down. He never charged that them raising his hand,” she said. “He was scared. I feel that he was in a psychotic stage when the officers did not understand. This is why they need to be trained.”
Mental health advocates have also weighed in on the case, including members of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI.
“Our main priority overall is to educate the whole community from the law enforcement side, from the individual who was impacted by its side to the provider,” said NAMI Executive Director Freddy Morello. “The education piece becomes so important because. When someone is aware of the signs and the symptoms, and you know someone may be acting in a certain way, they then recognize it’s really fear, not aggression.”
NAMI has consistently pushed for required Crisis Intervention Training for law enforcement officers in Florida. In the training, law enforcement officers can learn how to deescalate interactions with people living with a mental health condition and even take preemptive measures to increase positive outcomes.
“If an officer is pulling up to a scene, for example, if possible, they should shut sirens off because the sirens can be a trigger for someone,” Morello said. “If you’re interacting with someone who’s living with a mental health challenge, maybe a heightened voice will scare someone into acting aggressively. We try to get into those nitty gritty details while also educating the officers.”
While Crisis Intervention Certification is mandatory at the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, just about 1,000 deputies have been trained so far, while the agency continues to actively work on getting more officers certified.
Reed blames the lack of training for her son’s death.
“That 911 call and that dispatch call is unprofessional. They need to be trained to not just dispatch anyone to a suicidal residence,” she said. “Every officer needs to be trained across the board, so therefore this situation does not occur again. If they were trained, my son would be alive today.”
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