Officials: Domestic violence lethality assessment could help victims

Mere weeks before Cory Godbolt allegedly went on a shooting rampage that killed eight people in May, he encountered McComb police after his wife Sheena called 911 to say he was following her down I-55.

When police met her in a local hotel parking lot to take her statement, Godbolt pulled in right behind her. Neither party wanted to make a report, according to McComb police, and both left in separate directions.

After his arrest following the shootings, Godbolt told The Clarion-Ledger it “had to happen,” allegedly because Sheena Godbolt was leaving and taking their children.

"When you have stalking behavior, red flags need to go up. You may be dealing with an obsessive personality, and they don't take no for an answer, and we don't know how far they'll go to get back to this person," said Paula Broome, special assistant to the attorney general and chief of the AG's Bureau of Victims' Assistance. "At some point when they realize this person isn't coming back, the 'I want you back' mentality changes to 'If I can't have them, no one else can,' and that's when we see the homicides."

Officials say when police receive a domestic violence call, it's very rarely the first time there's been violence. With most domestic violence offenders, violence is a pattern. Godbolt was an example of that. Around Brookhaven and Lincoln County, authorities and family members said police were called on him for such offenses multiple times.

Those repeat cases are where a tool that many law enforcement agencies have yet to utilize could help. The domestic violence lethality assessment, a list of 12 questions, can help police determine at the time of a call if there is need to get a victim to safety.

"It's extremely easy, as easy as carrying a notepad to ask the questions," said Lincoln County Sheriff's Department Investigator Leslie Falvey. "You’re being a protector, you’re trying to be a comforter, and trying to get the information that you need. An officer wears so many hats on a call like that, and the interviewer part of you, little questions can slip your mind and you get in your car and remember you forgot something. The lethality assessment is good because it’s a good foundational interview sheet to help the officer."

A "yes" answer to the top three questions or four "yes" answers to the remaining questions can immediately trigger an officer to offer the victim assistance through a domestic violence program or shelter. Those questions:

Has he/she ever used a weapon against you or threatened you with a weapon? Has he/she threatened to kill you or your children? Do you think he/she might try to kill you?

The same system has helped drastically reduce domestic violence deaths in Maryland, officials said.

In Godbolt's case, records and family say he showed a lot of the signs. He did not kill his wife, but he allegedly killed seven family members and a deputy.

A witness who was hiding in a closet at the scene of the last two of the shooting victims said she overheard Godbolt on the phone.

"See, I told you I’d do anything in the world for you. Now please take care of my son because he’s not like me," Shonda May said she overheard Godbolt say.

As he talked to deputies on the scene of his arrest, he said, "My deepest sincerity to everybody’s family. It had to be done for y’all to be aware. I apologize. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Only God can judge me."

Byram Police Chief Luke Thompson, who has been working with the AG's office and the Department of Health to create policy and implement it in hopes it could serve as a model, said 87 percent of domestic violence victims have had previous contact with law enforcement. Many of them have never been put in touch with resources that could help them. If the victim meets the criteria of the questionnaire, the officer on scene offers to put the victim on the phone with help right away.

"Even if we’re only helping create an escape plan," Thompson said. "We’re not about ripping families apart. There’s a difference between a guy who’s financially stressed and loses his cool once and a guy who’s an offender."

Police are proactive on stopping other crimes before they happen, Thompson said, and while it's hard to say with certainty whether someone will kill, it's true that certain signs don't bode well for a couple's peaceful future.

"When an offender is looking at the most intimate person in their life and saying, 'I’m going to kill you,' the first time, you shouldn’t talk that way, but it’s been said," Thompson said. "Next time, he says (it) and points a gun at her. Then six months down the road, we have a dead victim. The lethality assessment looks at those indicators and says, 'let’s do this now.'"

Statewide, few agencies are utilizing the lethality assessment, officials said, but it's easy to work into an initial interview with a victim. Then not only is there some record for the victim's sake, but also for responding law enforcement who may be called to the residence in the future.

"Because if the victim refuses to get outside resource help, that’s absolutely their decision. But officers don’t have a choice. We get the call and God’s called us to this service, so we have a duty to protect and we do that," Falvey said. "We do our duty to the fullest of our ability. No matter how many times we go, no matter how many times we go through this bad situation and the victim and the suspect make up and we still go back and do our jobs like it’s the last time."

Falvey speaks from experience, because William Durr, the deputy killed in the shooting rampage attributed to Godbolt, was his friend and coworker.

The resulting database, Broome said, is only as good as the information, but it can be accessed by officers and dispatchers when a call comes in. The challenge now is to get more agencies involved with the program, and to get them to report the crimes as completely as possible.

It's not unheard of for agencies to report domestic assault as a simple assault because it circumvents the paperwork. For that reason, the form has drop-down boxes to make it as user-friendly as possible.

"It’s a domestic crime, the state statute dictates that the Uniform Offense Report be used, and that’s a statewide database, so now we’re able to collect information that’s searchable statewide," Broome said.

"If an agency charges simple assault instead of simple domestic violence, and they’re not doing the offense report because a simple assault crime is not one of the crimes we do it on, we’ve got an incident that never makes it into the database so we don’t have a full history on this person, and that could be very significant in the long run for the next officer who is dispatched to the house with these same parties."

Contact Therese Apel at 601-961-7236 or tapel@gannett.com. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.