Lake deputy recalls terror of ambush in Jason Wheeler murder resentencing trial

TAVARES — Jurors on Wednesday listened in rapt horror to recorded radio communications, and the testimony of a sheriff’s deputy who survived the ambush that killed Deputy Wayne Koester and injured another in 2005.

The original jury voted 10-2 for a death sentence for Jason Wheeler, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a jury recommendation must be unanimous and Wheeler's resentencing trial began this week.

He could be sentenced to death again, or to life without the possibility of parole.

“I’m going to f…ing kill you, man,” Assistant State Attorney Rich Buxman quoted Wheeler telling deputies on Feb. 9 of that year.

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'Shots fired! Shots fired! Shots fired!'

Deputies Koester, Tom McKane and Bill Crotty were called to the rural Lake Kathrine neighborhood by Wheeler’s wife, Sarah Heckerman, who said she had been hogtied and assaulted by Wheeler the day before.

Lt. Tom McKane testified he didn’t hear what Wheeler was saying that day, but he recalled the bloody events on Feb. 9 in a rural Lake Kathrine neighborhood.

Deputies looked in an RV and a mobile home but did not see Wheeler. Heckerman expected him to be sleeping.

McKane, who is now a lieutenant, said he was tying off crime scene tape.

“Deputy Koester was behind me," he said. "I heard a commotion that sounded like a shotgun racking, then seeing a lot of debris and smoke.”

McKane ran for cover to a neighbor’s car.

The next time he saw Koester he was lying face down in a pool of blood. He had been shot three times, with the final, fatal blast to the head

McKane’s wife, Andrea, a longtime deputy, but a dispatcher at the time, testified that she took the initial call but had to turn it over to another dispatcher when she heard the men yelling in a desperate fight for their lives, and her husband cry out, “Shots fired! Shots fired! Shots fired! Shots fired!”

She choked back tears at the memory.

'It was very concerning'

Lt. McKane said he saw Wheeler prowling around the patrol cars where Crotty and Heckerman were taking cover, “like he was hunting for something.”

McKane pulled out his .40-caliber handgun and fired one round, ran down the long driveway toward the patrol cars and fired another.

He saw Crotty stand up and take aim with his handgun, despite being shot in the leg.

“I figured he was still in the fight,” McKane said.

Realizing that he was “outgunned” by a man firing a shotgun, McKane said he ran to his car to retrieve his own shotgun.

He came down from the witness stand and demonstrated how he squatted behind a car door to fire at Wheeler. Both men fired simultaneously, but McKane’s leg was hanging out behind the car door, and was hit.

McKane’s shotgun was not working.

His first thought was that he had done something wrong, “that I had not paid enough attention during training.”

Later, McKane realized, a round had struck the ejector of his shotgun.

Assistant State Attorney Ken Nunnelley showed jurors the shotgun, complete with a hole in the stock, where buckshot also penetrated and struck McKane in the shoulder.

McKane grabbed Koester’s shotgun and realized later that it contained traces of Koester’s fatal wound.

In a fight that must have seemed like hours but lasted only minutes, Crotty and McKane heard Wheeler crank up a dirt bike, but they were not relieved.

“It was very concerning. This was his turf and there was a strong possibility that he might double back and flank us,” McKane said.

He had already popped in and out of thick brush to fire at the deputies three times.

'Shoot me! Shoot me!'

They decided to take shelter in a nearby unfinished concrete block building, taking Heckerman with them. Soon, a sheriff’s helicopter was hovering overhead flying extremely low, with a deputy holding a gun out of the cockpit.

Other deputies arrived, taking the two wounded and fatally injured deputy to a nearby staging area set up by EMS.

After a massive manhunt involving hundreds of law enforcement officers, Wheeler was tracked to an island on Blue Lake. He popped up, shouting, “Shoot me! Shoot me!” He bent down, apparently to grab his shotgun, when he was shot by a sheriff’s deputy.

Wheeler was left paralyzed for life.

Defense attorney J. Jervis Wise promised jurors they would hear a lot about Wheeler during his resentencing trial — how he is loved by his family but that he turned to drugs and alcohol while young. He was in a toxic relationship with Heckerman, Wise said, who was taking drugs herself, and Wheeler was working hard, taking methamphetamines and not sleeping when the crime occurred, he said.

“Jason Wheeler is a fellow human being who committed a terrible crime,” Wise said. “He is going to die in prison for his crime, no matter what you decide.”

This article originally appeared on Daily Commercial: Lake deputy recalls ambush, hunt for Jason Wheeler during murder trial