He was charged with attacking police, who shot him on his Key West boat. A jury cleared him
In October 2019, state wildlife police shot a man inside his houseboat docked off Key West because they said he doused himself with gasoline — then threatened to blow up himself and officers aboard his vessel with the flick of a cigarette lighter.
After he survived three Glock 9mm bullet wounds from a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer’s service gun, Monroe County prosecutors charged Adam Bounds with attempted arson and aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer.
A Key West jury took about three hours and 20 minutes Wednesday to find Bounds not guilty on those charges.
“I’m grateful that justice was done and the jury did the right thing seeing through the officer’s lies,” the 45-year-old told the Miami Herald/FLKeysnews.com Wednesday evening.
FWC Capt. David Dipre, the officer who pulled the trigger, and his agency declined to comment on the verdict.
In the end, Monroe County State Attorney Dennis Ward said the jurors “thought this guy wasn’t going to kill the cop, but was going to kill himself.”
Bounds denies that he was suicidal the day of the shooting — which was the reason the FWC officers and Monroe sheriff’s deputies said they rode out to his houseboat in Cow Key Channel, a body of water separating Key West from Stock Island. They said they were conducting a welfare check on Bounds.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated the Oct. 15, 2019, shooting and cleared Dipre in June 2020. The State Attorney’s Office also concluded that the shooting was justified.
“The evidence, including video and audio from body-worn cameras, indicates that Mr. Bounds’ conduct posed an immediate threat to the life and safety of law enforcement officers who were present for a wellness check,” a spokesman said in a statement at the time.
Police say Bounds called FWC’s Tallahassee office earlier in the day and made suicidal threats after he received a citation from the agency regarding his boat. Many of those living on their boats in the Keys, known locally as “liveaboards,” have a contentious relationship with police and the Coast Guard because the vessels are often unseaworthy, become hazards to navigation and pollute nearshore waters.
Dipre told FDLE investigators that Bounds said on the phone call to Tallahassee that he’d throw himself in front of a bus and that he’d rather die than go back to jail.
Dipre and six other officers went out to the houseboat and pried open the boat’s sliding glass door after hearing no response from him, they told the FDLE.
Once inside, the officers said they discovered the cabin was covered in gasoline. Bounds shouted to them, “I’m going to blow us all up. You’re trespassing on my boat. I’m taking you all with me,” Deputy Freddy Rodriguez, one of the officers on the boarding party, told the FDLE.
Not only was Bounds covered in gasoline, the officers said, he was also holding a lighter in one hand and a 6-gallon fuel container in the other. The other officers told FDLE investigators that Dipre repeatedly told Bounds to drop the lighter.
“I yelled at the guys to get out. I only thought of one thing: The lighter has to go out. If he put the lighter out, then we won’t be in harm’s way,” Dipre said in a sworn statement to FDLE. “There was no time to go in and grab the lighter out of his hand, So, I drew my weapon and I shot him three times.”
Bounds maintains he had no intention of killing himself nor the officers that day. He said he not only wants a federal investigation into the shooting, but also a probe into “why officers believe that they have the right to shoot unarmed individuals in their home after they break in.”
This story was originally published October 19, 2022 at 6:38 PM.
