Confronting a killer: Prosecutors rule Washtenaw County deputy justified in fatal shooting

They ordered him to drop a gun, but he refused and pointed it toward them, records show.

That’s when Marocco, who had never fired his weapon in the line of duty, shot Bevins in the back and face.

Washtenaw County prosecutors ruled the shooting was justified.

“The deputy gave Bevins an opportunity to surrender, but he did not and instead took aggressive action by pointing the gun,” said a memo to Prosecutor Brian Mackie from Chief Assistant Prosecutor Joseph Burke. “The deputy took the only reasonable action available.”

The memo was included in nearly 250 pages of documents obtained by AnnArbor.com from the Michigan State Police under the Freedom of Information Act. An internal sheriff's department investigation also cleared the deputies of any wrongdoing.

The documents shed new light on what happened that night. State police detectives investigated both deaths at the request of the sheriff's department.

“The facts bore out that (the deputies) acted within our policies and procedures and that the shooting was justified,” said Sheriff Jerry Clayton.

Both deputies returned to duty after being placed on paid administrative leave for a short time, which is routine in an officer-involved shooting.

"They acted in the best interest of the community and to keep themselves safe," said Derrick Jackson, director of community engagement for the sheriff’s department. "The deputies really are here to protect life, so when they have to take a life, that's not an easy thing to do."

Bevins’ sister, Sandra Haubrich, questioned why Marocco fired a second shot.

“Knowing the man was down, they shot him in the face,” she said. “I can’t get over that. Does that sound like a logical thing to happen?”

A deputy opens fire

Marocco and Teets declined through their attorney to be interviewed by state police detectives about the shooting, documents show.

However, both provided similar accounts in reports they were required to submit to the sheriff’s department that morning.

The deputies were working in the MacArthur Boulevard neighborhood in Superior Township when they responded to a report of a suspicious garage fire at Byron and Pageant avenues in Ypsilanti Township at 12:11 a.m. Dispatchers informed them a man seen leaving the fire may have mental issues and apparently barricaded himself in the house with a gun a year earlier.

A woman who called 911 said the man was carrying a gun and plastic bag. Deputies found a man matching the description at the intersection of Wendell Avenue and Red Leaf Lane, they wrote in their accounts.

Marocco stopped his unmarked blue Chevrolet Impala at the intersection, which was illuminated by a streetlight.

The plainclothes deputies - wearing shirts with a sheriff’s badge on the front and “SHERIFF” on the back - exited the car.

The man, who was 10 yards away, was carrying a plastic bag in his left hand, walking west toward the southwest corner of the intersection where they parked. Deputies ordered him to stop.

“Police! Freeze!” they yelled, Teets wrote.

The man took a revolver out of the bag and held it in his right hand, when both deputies gave him multiple "loud and clear verbal commands to drop the gun," Teets wrote.

“I’m not dropping no f---ing gun,” Bevins replied, according to Teets.

Marocco used the driver’s side door as cover, and Teets was behind the rear bumper on the passenger side. Both unholstered their firearms.

“Bevins began to turn his upper torso in a clockwise movement toward my position with the handgun in his right hand,” Teets wrote.

Marocco fired his department-issued Glock .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun. Bevins went to the ground, Marocco wrote.

Timeline June 14 - Ira Bevins Jr., upset about a sexual assault charge against him, asks a man for a pistol, telling him he has to take care of something or go to prison for 20 years. June 19 - Ira Bevins Jr. is kicked out of his mother’s house and stays at the home of a man he knows. He says he should just kill his mother, then himself rather than spend 25 years in prison. June 26 - Uvon Bevins, scared for her safety, reportedly visits the sheriff’s department’s substation on Holmes Road in an attempt to get her son’s bond revoked and is referred to the courts. June 27 - 9:30 a.m. - Uvon Bevins calls her daughter, Rhonda Holder, and asks how to work a microcassette recorder. Bevins wants to tape her son, who has been threatening to kill her. She tells Holder her son was aggravating her all night, and she just can’t take it anymore. 11:30 a.m. - Uvon Bevins and two friends go to lunch. She tells one of them later in the afternoon she’s scared because her son is threatening to kill her. 4:30 p.m. - Uvon Bevins leaves her friend’s house to return home; it's the last time she is believed to be seen alive. 7 p.m. - Ira Bevins Jr. visits the house where he stayed on June 19. He tells the man who lives there he wants to get a “heater” and shoot his accuser, then himself. 7:45 p.m. - Ira Bevins Jr. shows up at another man’s house after he was drinking and starts talking “crazy” about his pending sexual assault charge. He said if “he gets charged, they’re all gonna pay for it and he was not going to prison.” 9 p.m. - A woman driving near the intersection of Byron and Pageant avenues sees Ira Bevins Jr., who appears to be drunk. He is weaving his bicycle and nearly hits her car. 10:30 p.m. - Ira Bevins, Jr., who is suspected to be drunk, tells a woman at a gas station at Ecorse and South Harris roads his accuser ruined his life, and he was going to get even. June 28 - 12:10 a.m. - Ira Bevins Jr., after being alerted by a 15-year-old girl that his garage is on fire, says paramedics are on the way. 12:11 a.m. - Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Department dispatch receives a report from a woman of a garage fire. 12:13 a.m. - The 911 caller, reported to be on Clark Road, tells dispatch she went to alert a man his garage was on fire, and he came outside carrying a gun and a plastic bag. The man was walking from Byron Avenue onto Pageant Avenue, she says. 12:15 a.m. - The caller tells dispatch she believes the man’s mother may still be in the house. A minute later, she tells dispatch police surrounded the man’s house last year because he was said to have a gun. Deputies Michael Marocco and Chad Teets meet with the caller. 12:17 a.m. - The caller tells dispatch she doesn’t know much about the man, but he lives with his mother and was the only one seen leaving the house. 12:19 a.m. - Deputies report a man is down at Wendell Avenue and Red Leaf Lane, two shots are fired and the man still has a gun. 12:20 a.m. - Deputies repeat that two shots were fired, a man is down and a union representative is needed. 12:21 a.m. - Deputies report a man has a gunshot wound to the face. 12:22 a.m. - An ambulance is called. The weapon is reportedly secured. 12:24 a.m. - The man who was shot has no pulse and is not breathing 12:36 a.m. - Ira Bevins is being transported to St. Joseph Mercy Hospital. 12:37 a.m. - Uvon Bevins’ body is found by firefighters in her bedroom. 12:55 a.m. - Ira Bevins arrives at the hospital, where he is pronounced dead. 1:02 a.m. - Uvon Bevins arrives at the hospital, where she is pronounced dead. Source: Michigan State Police reports.

Bevins, who was on his back,"looked back toward me and again pointed the weapon at me," Marocco wrote.

Marocco fired a second shot, striking Bevins in the face.

Bevins held onto the gun “for a short time, then dropped it and rolled to his left slightly before settling on his back,” according to Marocco, who stepped on the gun near Bevins’ head. There were several knives on the ground next to Bevins' left hand.

A suspect is down

Marocco relayed to dispatch that a man was down, and he had fired two rounds. He requested an ambulance and union representative.

Deputy Daniel Buffa, who arrived within two minutes, searched the man and found a cell phone and several .357 caliber bullets in his left pocket.

Buffa saw a "bullet hole" on the right cheekbone area of the man's face, but he wasn’t bleeding.

"I still observed the suspect to be breathing, so I began talking to the suspect, telling him to keep breathing because (an ambulance) was on their way,” Buffa wrote.

Sgt. Marlene Radzik, who is now a lieutenant, arrived shortly after and recognized Bevins because of a scar on his chest from a suicide attempt, she wrote.

Bevins was taken to St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. A funeral service still hasn’t been held, family members said, because his 18-year-old daughter can’t accept what happened.

Confronting a killer

When deputies confronted Bevins at the intersection, he had just beaten his mother, stabbed her, shot her in the face and burned her body, reports said.

He set fire to nine areas of the four-bedroom Pageant Avenue house they shared, using lighter fluid and gasoline to fuel the blaze, records show.

Firefighters found the body of his 66-year-old mother at 12:37 a.m. in her bedroom. It smelled of gasoline. Two shell casings were on the floor of another bedroom.

Uvon Bevins had multiple “suspected knife wounds,” to her head and hands, “severe burns to her body,” and blunt force trauma to her head, documents show.

According to prosecutors, Bevins used his mother's gun to kill her. State police detectives never found the bullet, which exited her body.

Investigators searched the home the morning of the fire, recovering two lighter fluid containers and two gas cans.

A 15-year-old girl who was with the 911 caller told state police she saw Ira Bevins inside the kitchen during the blaze. When he was coming outside, she told him the garage was on fire, records show.

He replied, "Paramedics are on the way."

But Bevins never called 911, investigators said.

The State Police investigation

Bevins, 43, died of his gunshot wounds, an autopsy found. One bullet entered the right side of his lower back and lodged in his left hip. The other pierced his upper right cheek and was recovered from his left shoulder, autopsy results showed.

The 12:19 a.m. shooting wasn’t captured on video because the Impala was not equipped with an in-car camera.

Sheriff’s Cmdr. Dieter Heren pointed state police detectives to two shell casings by the driver’s side of the Impala, records show.

The .357 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver recovered from Bevins “contained six rounds of unfired ammunition,” sheriff’s Lt. Jim Anuszkiewicz told state police.

State police detectives interviewed five witnesses who heard the gunshots, records show, but none had a clear view of the shooting.

Daniel Reynolds was watching television about 12:15 a.m. when he heard some yelling outside that lasted between 30 seconds and one minute, he told state police.

He looked out the window and saw a vehicle in the middle of the intersection with its lights shining into his house. A man was standing by the driver's side door.

"He saw a second individual in front of the car by the curb in the area where Ira was eventually shot," records show. "At the same time, he heard a gunshot."

Ashley Brock told police she heard what she thought were fireworks and looked out the window. Someone in a gray shirt and black pants was standing behind a car, she said.

"Don't move motherf---er," the person said. She then heard a second shot and someone yell: "Stay down."

The warning signs

Ira Bevins Jr., the youngest of six, had a history of mental illness, few close friends and never really held a job, family members said.

He depended on his parents, who retired from the auto industry. His father died in 2005, putting more pressure on his mother. She had hobbies, including cooking and working in her yard, but spent much of her time dealing with her son, family members said.

Ira Bevins Jr. had been getting drunk and threatening to kill his mother for 20 years, his brother, Thomas, told state police.

But in the weeks leading up to the killing, he also was making the threats while he was sober, his brother told investigators. In addition, Bevins was threatening to kill a woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her.

He told relatives he would “shoot it out with the cops” if he carried out those threats, reports said.

Bevins was out on $15,000 bond, charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct in an Aug. 4, 2008, incident. His mother bailed him out, family members said.

As a condition of his bond, he was required to undergo alcohol testing. Washtenaw County Circuit Judge David Swartz lifted that condition in May at the request of Bevins' public defender because Bevins had been passing the tests.

But Bevins started drinking regularly again and reportedly was drunk and looking for a gun the night he killed his mother, records show.

"Ira, when he wasn't drinking, would give you his last dollar for food," said his sister, Rhonda Holder. "When he was drinking, he was a very aggravating person."

Bevins was upset about the charge against him and let his frustration be known. He reportedly had a more than a two-year relationship with his accuser, and his family members were convinced the allegations were false. Bevins wanted his mother to pay for a private attorney.

"He didn't feel he was going to get properly represented by a court-appointed attorney," Holder said.

Two weeks before killing his mother, Bevins visited an acquaintance and told him he was angry about the rape allegation. He asked for a pistol, saying "he needed to take care of something or go away to prison for 20 years," records show.

Uvon Bevins was becoming increasingly fearful of her son, records show.

On June 26, she went to the sheriff's substation on Holmes Road in an attempt to have her son's bond revoked, her friend told state police. Relatives say Uvon Bevins was referred to the courts.

She had obtained a personal protection order against her son in 2000, but asked it be lifted because it put her son out on the street, Holder said. Uvon Bevins would call police to report threats, but was told there was little they could do because her son lived at the home.

"Ira was mentally ill," Holder said. "He had a record that shows that and my mom and dad were in between a rock and a hard spot."

Ira Bevins Jr. belonged in a mental hospital, Holder said.

"It's just terrible," Holder said. "We had two people crying out for help, and nobody did nothing about it and we pay the consequences for it."

Uvon Bevins called Holder the morning of June 27 telling her, "Ira had aggravated her all night long and she just couldn't take it anymore."

She asked Holder how to use a tape recorder Holder gave her on June 6.

Uvon Bevins wanted to show authorities evidence that her son was threatening to kill her, Holder said.

The last time Uvon Bevins was seen alive was when she left a friend's home at 4:30 p.m. on June 27, about seven and a half hours before the fire was reported. After lunch, she told her friend "she was scared and concerned because Ira was threatening to kill her."

State police didn't find the tape recorder when they searched Uvon Bevins' home. A family member’s boyfriend found it the next night near a dresser in her bedroom.

It contained a tape that lasts several minutes. On it is the voice of a man believed to be Ira Bevins Jr.

"Ira Bevins is heard threatening to murder Uvon Bevins approximately five times, and implies he might kill others as well," records show.

Holder has the tape, but hasn't listened to it. She doesn't want to know the details.

"It ain't gonna bring either one of them back."

Lee Higgins covers crime and courts for AnnArbor.com. Reach him at (734) 623-2527 or email at leehiggins@annarbor.com.