P/O Kevon M. Gavin Sr.

His intended targets ran for cover as the gun made reports loud enough to alert a nearby team of plain-close police; the muzzle flash and smoke barely evaporating from the air as the ground was being littered with his empty brass (shell casings). It’s easy to shoot at the unarmed, weak, unprepared, or unsuspecting, but when four trained, armed, and ready Baltimore Police Officers, all members of a crime-suppression team out on detail that night who just happened to have been nearby in an unmarked car, followed the sound of the gunfire, arriving on scene in time to see the shooter, they quickly pulled in behind his Bronco as he fired his last few rounds of ammunition while making his way back to the driver side of his Bronco.

The officers had already whipped in behind that truck. But as they bailed out of their car to arrest the gunman, the Bronco pulled off. Within parts of a second, police had already radioed every car in the area a description of that 1985, Tan Ford Bronco and its heavily armed driver. Squad cars began converging on the area known to officers of the Southwest as Sector 2. Within minutes of the first radio transmission, a procession of cruisers followed the Bronco in the direction of Officer Kevon Gavin. Little did anyone know this wouldn’t be the last time we would have a procession or police headed in the direction of or behind young Officer Kevon Gavin, but in this first procession and along in its wake, the Bronco tore through red light after red light, narrowly missing passing cars as he barreled across grass medians on Martin Luther King Boulevard and veered westbound onto Lombard Street.

Officers say they glanced at their speedometers, only briefly seeing speeds of 80, 90, and 100, and some say as much as 105 miles per hour. Yet they still heard officers calling out on their radios, “He's pulling away from us like we're standing still." Seconds later, two senior officers—a sergeant and a lieutenant—rolled into position on a cross street a few blocks away, timing their next move to the location reports pouring in over their radio. When the Bronco was a block away, Sgt. David Wimmer gunned his patrol car left onto Lombard to take up a position in front of the approaching truck. No sooner had Sgt. Wimmer made his turn, then the Bronco shot past, still building speed. In a split second, it pulled away from 100 miles an hour... to 105 on city streets. Everyone is running on pure adrenaline. They are thinking faster, seeing faster, and acting faster. you have to, or you’ll lose total control, the police are drawing on experience, streets they have patrolled for years, turns they have made 100’s if not 1000’s of times before, they know where pot holes are, bumps in the road that could throw their car from side to side or even airborne, and while this is never safe, it isn’t as dangerous for a trained police officer as it is for a 16/17-year-old kid, which became terrible obvious in the next few blocks, and was witnessed and seen coming by Lieutenant Mary Eilerman who was seated next to Sergeant Wimmer and described the events that will follow as suddenly getting a sick feeling in her stomach. Two blocks ahead, she saw a disaster in the making. At that moment, Officer Kevon Gavin, 27—and a six-year veteran of the Baltimore Police Department, husband, and father of three small children—was pulling his 1995 Chevy Caprice cruiser into the intersection at Gilmor Street as if to block the road from the Ford in hopes of ending the chase while protecting the people in the neighborhood.

"He came around that corner in what seemed to be an almost slow motion," Eilerman would later testify, then turned left onto Lombard, directly into the path of the truck. In his car trailing the Bronco, Sgt. Wimmer had time to see the emergency lights swirling on the roof of Gavin's car up ahead. He heard Gavin's siren and thought he saw the Bronco sideswipe a parked car as it raced toward Gilmor Street. Then, in the blink of an eye, the Bronco rocketed into the left-front side of Gavin's patrol car and burst into flames. As it forced the police cruiser along Lombard in a vortex of shattered glass, sheered chrome, and twisting steel, there was a strong scent of burning rubber more than 100 feet before it all came to rest. The ball of smoke and metal, with the burning Bronco piled up on the hood of Gavin's cruiser and the officer trapped in the wreckage, will be forever in the minds of not only those that were there—those that saw it, felt it, and smelled the smoke, rubber, blood, and tears—but also those that knew everyone involved or experienced similar accidents where the loss of a brother or sister officer was the final outcome. Here we had a sergeant, a lieutenant in Wimmer, and Eilerman, along with a dozen or more officers, rush to their injured brother. Trapped inside the squad car, they found Officer Kevon Malik Gavin pinned under the dashboard, unconscious, bloody, and barely breathing. The officers threw their shoulders into the demolished Bronco in a hopeless attempt to lift it off their friend.

Suddenly someone yelled, "Signal 13! Signal 13! Officer down!" into their radio as officers reached inside the demolished patrol car, desperately ripping at Gavin's clothing and bulletproof vest, trying to administer first aid, CPR, and other first responder needs, including someone having to kick in a rear window and Officer Frank Jarrell squirming inside, clawing his way over the cruiser's torn upholstery, before realizing that the situation was hopeless. Lieutenant Eilerman would eventually testify that "It was the most desperate, frustrating situation I have ever witnessed." The street would eventually become clogged with patrol cars, lights whirling, sirens screaming, and more police in the area than was actually needed, but knowing the public and how quickly things could get out of hand, we bring in every available unit in situations like this. Lieutenant Eilerman went from officer to officer, grabbing them by the shoulders and asking them to make sure they moved their cruisers and cleared the way for incoming fire emergency units and equipment. Within minutes, paramedics and firefighters were climbing all over the wreckage, clamping air on the injured officer’s face, and maneuvering heavy rescue gear into place to make it safe for the jaws of life to come in and tear the roof off that patrol car. It would take an hour to safely extract Officer Gavin from his car, and then another 20 hours of our brother fighting for his life, before the actions of a selfish little boy would take the life of that officer. As all this was going on and police and medics were working feverously to save the life of Officer Gavin, there were other officers approaching the Bronco, inside of which they found a box of ammunition, a Smith & Wesson 10 mm semiautomatic pistol, a blue baseball cap bearing the logo of the Indianapolis Pacers basketball team, and that scrawny little 17-year-old punk named Eric D. Stennett. Stennett’s record of drug arrests and gun violence would trace back to his 13th birthday, a record that, when printed out, would reach further than Stennett could toward the ceiling. There was no one else in the Bronco, no chance of mistaken identity, and not a shadow of doubt that it was him, and he was only that night seen shooting his pistol into a crowd, driving recklessly throughout the city, reaching speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, and causing the loss of life in that of Baltimore Police Officer Kevon Malik Gavin, yet when it came time for a Baltimore Jury to punish someone for killing one of their own, they dropped the ball. But like Robert F. Kennedy said, “Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on." Look at Baltimore now. This doesn’t happen in our neighborhoods because we demand better; we demand more… When someone breaks into the house of our neighbors, we stop them, have them arrested, or chase them off, because when we don’t, we end up with this kind of crime in our neighborhood. Dwight Pettit was able to blind a jury.

Thousands mourn loss of police officer
Kevon Gavin recalled as a man devoted to family, friends, and the city
April 28, 2000 | By Peter Hermann

January 25, 2001|By Caitlin Francke | Caitlin Francke,SUN STAFF