The apartment building at 360 St. Andrews Dr. at the Royal Oak Apartments complex, where Wade Winn barricaded himself in, and eventually, during the incident, a fire started. This picture was taken the morning after the Feb. 2, 2019 incident on Feb. 3, 2019. In the two years since, various actions have been threatened against the complex to bring it into compliance. Last week, the county prosecutor brought suit against the owners of the complex.

Winn thought the cops were ‘fake’

By Brett Milam
Editor

“Apartment C. I think there’s somebody in my house.”

When Wade Winn first made contact with a Clermont County dispatcher on Feb. 2, he couldn’t even remember his phone number. He muttered the area code and then, “Oh god, this one is an emergency phone call, I’m serious.”

The time of that first communication and others is unclear in the 911 calls acquired by The Clermont Sun.

What was clear was that after all the 911 calls and police chatter, Deputy Bill Brewer with the Clermont County Sheriff’s Office was dead, and Lt. Nick DeRose was injured after trying to make entry into Winn’s Apartment C, located at the Royal Oaks Apartment complex at 360 Saint Andrews in Pierce Township.

Winn said he heard noises and all the apartments around his were empty “for some reason.” There was also the matter of the “dead body stink” in the apartment next to him.

“It smells like something died in the apartment right next to mine,” he said. “There’s somebody in here, though, I’m almost certain of it.”

After giving the dispatcher his name, Winn volunteered, “I am very armed. Safely. I’m being very safe.”

The dispatcher replied, “Do you have any weapons?”

Winn, “I do, I’m not firing them at anybody.”

When the dispatcher asked him what kinds of weapons he had, Winn said an assault rifle and Glock pistol. As he told the dispatcher that, Winn had the assault rifle trained on the wall where he thought someone “might be behind.”

The Glock pistol was pointed at another wall, Winn added.

“Please hurry, I do not want to do anything that I am going to regret,” he said.

At that point, the dispatcher asked if Winn could lay the guns down next to him.

“No,” he said. “Not until the officers get here. I’m interested in keeping my self safe and that is it, and the officers safe, too. Obviously.”

Apparently, there were a number of friends with Winn prior to the 911 call.

If there are perpetrators behind the walls he had the guns trained on, Winn said he was prepared to put “two in the chest.”

Winn asked the dispatcher, “What police officers should I do be looking for?”

Union Township and Pierce Township officers were on the way, she said.

After a couple minutes passed, where the dispatcher was relaying information to the Union Township officer, Winn said he was beginning to realize that he “blacks out” when bad things happen to him, physically.

When the officers arrived in the parking lot, the dispatcher asked Winn to put his guns down and unload them.

But Winn said he would do so once the officer came through the door and announced himself as, “Union Township Police.”

Winn then apparently put the assault rifle down, but still had the Glock pistol “double fisted.”

An officer knocked on the door, according to the dispatcher.

“That was him for sure?” Winn asked her.

After getting the officer, who was from Pierce Township, to announce himself to Winn, the dispatcher asked, “Can you hear him talking to you?”

“No,” Winn said.

Winn wouldn’t put his Glock down, so the Union and Pierce Township officers left. So Winn called the police again, this time, he asked for Sheriff’s Office deputies or the Ohio State Highway Patrol.

“Those were not police officers,” Winn said.

He said he wanted to speak to the “Clermont County Sheriff’s Department [sic]” about how he’s feeling because he can’t “feel himself.”

The dispatcher then asked, “And you’re feeling suicidal now?”

“No, I am not,” Winn said.

He just wanted them to take him to the hospital because he didn’t feel good, he said.

By that point, according to Winn, the assault rifle and Glock were unloaded and on the ground.

Two deputies with the Sheriff’s Office were on the way, the dispatcher said, from Bach Buxton Road. Two Pierce Township officers were still stationed outside as well.

“Okay, I’m just scared,” Winn said, explaining that he didn’t trust the Pierce Township police. “Fake cops.”

When the deputies arrived, Winn was transferred from the dispatcher to a Union Township officer. The officer said the deputy was willing to talk to Winn.

“You got the best deputy in the county,” the officer told Winn.

That deputy was Brigham Jones, who is with the Sheriff’s Office Special Response Team (SRT). The SRT specializes in barricaded subjects, among other things.

“I’m safe, you’re safe, we’re all safe,” Winn said.

Jones wanted Winn to come to the door, so they could talk face-to-face. He asked where the weapons were. Winn said “in the walls.”

“I ain’t dumb,” Winn replied.

Then he stopped talking and responding to Jones.

The 911 call given to The Sun then goes radio silent for the next three and a half minutes. At the end, a deputy came back on the line with dispatch to ask about what Winn said regarding a suicide attempt. Dispatch said Winn was feeling suicidal, although earlier Winn had said he was not.

Winn called in again. In the recording, dispatch explained that he wanted to talk only to Union Township, so dispatch was trying to downplay to Winn that Pierce officers were there.

“So hopefully that’ll help,” one dispatcher said. “I just hope this doesn’t end badly.”

Dispatch was worried they could hear Winn loading a gun in the background and Winn explained it was his food.

Winn’s brother then called dispatch. Winn was talking to someone on Facebook, apparently, who then reached out to the brother.

The brother confirmed to the dispatcher that Winn had guns, or he did in the past. The brothers had not been talking to each other much prior to this incident because Winn thought his brother was a “Jesus freak.”

Dispatch transferred the brother to an officer at the scene, who told him that Winn “decided he wants to harm himself and won’t come to the door.”

A few hours earlier in the day, Winn had actually called his brother.

“Since then he invited me over to his house. I chose not to because I knew he was probably not in the right state of mind,” the brother said.

Their parents were at Apartment C for a short period of time earlier in the day, the brother added.

Another person then called in, a friend of Winn’s, who was texting and Snapchatting with him. Winn asked the friend to call 911 for him. After that, Winn wouldn’t respond to the friend, either.

Wade’s father also called into dispatch. The father was at the back of the scene, watching as it unfolded. He let the dispatcher know he’d be willing to go and try to talk Winn out.

The next call was unclear. The dispatcher thought it was Winn.

“The officers shot me, I’ve been hit,” the caller said. “Oh, I’m down. I’m hit, I’m dying. I’m hit. Oh God.”

The dispatcher kept asking where the caller was located.

“It’s low and right. Low and right. Oh god,” the caller said again.

“Who am I speaking to?” the dispatcher said.

“It came right through my wall, oh God,” the caller said. “I’m dying. Is it Vietnam? The morphine’s kicking back in.”

The dispatcher asked numerous more times if it was Winn calling.

“Wade, can you hear me?” she asked.

The caller stopped responding for the next several minutes.

Toward the end of the call: “I’m hearing an SRT unit down,” the dispatcher said. “Oh my God.”

On a police radio recording also obtained by The Sun, an unknown officer relayed over the radio that they had “one down.”

“We have one deputy shot; he’s lost consciousness, severe bleeding,” the officer said. “We need to get the medics to him now; AirCare on standby.”

The officer said the deputy was shot in the right back, near his kidney and right ankle.

“We need that helicopter to fly,” the officer said.