A woman, traveling in the opposite direction, talking on her cell phone, was intoxicated and impaired by drugs. It was believed she had passed out or had fallen asleep, going across two lanes of traffic. She then hit the median, went airborne, and landed on the driver’s side of Schiess’s vehicle. The woman survived the crash and subsequently went to jail.
Barbara and Schiess both suffered serious injuries and spent quite some time in the hospital. Barbara was taken to DeKalb Hospital in Atlanta, and Schiess was sent to Gwinnett Medical Center in Gwinnett, Georgia, where he was affiliated. Barbara’s left arm and wrist were broken, along with her right foot and big toe. Most of her ribs on both sides were broken, there were other related problems with crushing injuries to her lungs, and she required surgery on her neck and arm. She was in the intensive-care unit (ICU) for almost two weeks, then spent another couple of weeks on a ward.
The accident took off the entire top of the car and pinned Schiess inside. He sustained a blowout fracture of his right eye socket and fractured his left femur. As a result, he had a rod inserted in his left femur from the hip to the knee. His right ankle had to be totally reconstructed, and he, too, had some lung injuries, along with other related problems. The injury that harmed him the most, however, was the permanent tremor in his hands, which marked the end of his neurosurgery practice. He could no longer operate, and it came as a crushing blow to him.
Both Schiess and Barbara experienced much long-term pain following their accident, and their recuperation was slow and difficult. Barbara said that she didn’t remember much about the accident and didn’t recall seeing the other car; she only remembered hearing a huge explosion, the car stopped, and everything went dark.
“Ever since then, if I hear a loud noise, like [thunder], I go into a panic attack,” Barbara said. “It’s truly terrifying, like everything is happening all over again, and I can’t breathe. It’s horrible.”
On their release from the hospital, Schiess hired a private-duty nurse to care for him at home around the clock, and since Barbara could not take care of herself, and could not be alone, he took her in and the nurse cared for her, too.
Barbara would require many more surgeries as time passed, and Schiess eventually closed his private practice in Conyers and began to suffer from a deep depression. He could no longer do what meant the most to him, and it had a tremendous effect on him.
“That accident drastically changed both our lives,” Barbara later said.
14
On November 10, 2005, slightly less than five months prior to Darlene Roberts’s death, Barbara and Schiess were involved in a bizarre incident with a Georgia State Patrol (GSP) trooper. As a result, they found themselves in handcuffs, taken to the Bartow County Jail.
The traffic stop eventually became so involved that the arresting officer’s narrative of the incident took two pages of single-spaced, fine-print type.
That afternoon, as the officer was headed home from the GSP hangar in Kennesaw, Georgia, he was wearing his issued flight suit and had his weapon in a shoulder harness. He was driving his blue-and-gray marked patrol car, but since he was in his flight suit, he had no protective vest and was carrying no handcuffs or radio on his person. He had only his car radio and a pair of handcuffs in his patrol car.
As he traveled west on Georgia 20, he saw a black Mercedes-Benz parked on the opposite side of the median with its passengers—a man and a woman—standing outside the left rear of the vehicle. The officer was immediately alerted to a possible problem by the man’s behavior; he had hold of the woman’s waistline from the rear and was shaking her back and forth. He thought the woman might be in danger, so he turned around and went back to investigate. When he neared the Mercedes, he called the Georgia State Patrol headquarters in Cartersville, Georgia, and notified the radio operator of his location.
As the patrolman approached, he saw that the woman had gotten into the driver’s seat of the Mercedes and the man was sitting in the passenger seat. He had noticed a lot of moving around while he had been talking on the radio, with both people reaching behind the front seats.
“I asked the male subject to step out of the car, and when he got out of the car, I immediately smelled a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from him,” the officer described.
“I wanted to separate the male and female subjects so I could ask the female in private if she was with the male by her own free will.”
As soon as Robert John Schiess III got out of the car, he began cursing the officer and asking him for his name and badge number.
“He demanded to see my identification as I asked him for his. I asked him to step to the rear of the car, and I again asked him for his identification. He advised angrily that it was in the car, and once again demanded my badge number.”
The patrolman went back to the Mercedes and asked the female driver, Barbara Ann Roberts, for her identification and for Schiess’s. She reached over in the car and got a small black case, but Schiess began yelling to her not to show the officer any identification. She stopped and looked back at him, and the officer could see the ID in her hand. He asked once again to let him look at it. She very reluctantly produced her Georgia driver’s license, then Schiess’s, then stated, “But I was driving.”
The patrolman told her that he simply wanted to know to whom he was speaking, but Barbara repeated, “But I was driving,” with Schiess yelling the entire time for her not to show any IDs or give any information. He had noticed earlier, when he had stepped behind the Mercedes, that the car was registered in Rockdale County, Georgia.
At the time of this roadside fracas, Bartow County, Georgia, authorities were using all available personnel in an ongoing search of the nearby area for an escaped felon. Now that he finally had their IDs, the officer went back to his patrol car and called the Cartersville headquarters to let them know that Schiess was becoming increasingly agitated and Barbara was yelling something at him and pointing her finger at him. There was an extra pair of handcuffs in the driver’s side of the patrol car, and the trooper decided it would be a good idea to get them. He saw Barbara was getting more and more upset as she was yelling back to Schiess and talking to someone on her cell phone.
“I was unaware who she might be talking to, but over the yelling of the male, I could hear her yelling for help on the phone.”
The situation had reached a point where the officer felt that he needed to place Schiess into custody quickly so that he could de-escalate the situation, securing him so that he could safely speak to Barbara. As he got out of his patrol car with the handcuffs, he decided that, considering Schiess’s intoxicated state and his refusal to cooperate or follow any of his instructions, the best thing to do would be to place the doctor under arrest for obstruction of a law enforcement officer.
“I went to the man and asked him to place his hands on the hood of my patrol car. He put his right hand on the hood of my car, and as he was about to place his left hand on the hood, he quickly brought it back. I grabbed his arm and asked him to place it on the hood of the car, and he jerked away and yelled at me to take my hands off of him.”
The officer told Schiess two more times to place his hands on the hood of the car, but Schiess continued to yell and began calling the officer a fascist, a Nazi, and shouting several other inflammatory remarks. He started to repeatedly yell, “Name and badge number!”
The patrolman grabbed Schiess, and after a struggle, he cuffed both hands behind his back and attempted to lead him to the front of the patrol car, where he would be able to search him in front of the camera. Schiess was having none of that, and started to pull away. To prevent an escape attempt, the officer grabbed him and took him down to the ground, while Barbara continued to scream for help on the cell phone.
“Once on the ground, I felt he was somewhat secure. I felt he would not be able to get up on his own. I went to the radio to advise Cartersville to have any responding units to slow down because I now had the male subject in custody. While I
was on the radio, an eighteen-wheeler pulled in behind me, and the driver asked me if I was all right or if I needed any help. I thanked him and told him I had the man under control now.”
The officer then learned that Barbara was talking to the Cartersville station on her cell phone. The Cartersville operator radioed the other personnel that the trooper now had the male subject under control and told them that he was now talking to the female on the phone.
“I went to her and advised her to calm down and to have a seat in the car,” the trooper said. “I asked her for the keys to the car, and when she gave them to me, I placed them on the roof of the car. When I asked her where she was coming from, she said, ‘Rome.’ I asked her if she had been drinking alcohol, and she said she had not. When I asked if she would provide a sample of her breath for a preliminary breath test, she said she would try.”
While the officer was attempting to talk to Barbara, Schiess continued yelling insults and yelling at Barbara, telling her not to cooperate. After attempting to get a sample a couple of times with no results, the officer decided Barbara was not going to cooperate with the evaluation.
“I now went back to place the male into the backseat of the patrol car. I opened the back door and asked him to stand up, and he refused. I then grabbed him to get him up and put him into the backseat. In doing this, I looked over my shoulder and saw the female reaching for something inside the trunk of the car. I could not see her hands, so I let go of the male and immediately went to the female and grabbed her and put her into the backseat of the patrol car. Then I went back to the male and tried again to get him to his feet. I had to pick him up to get him to the front of my patrol car to finish searching him.”
The officer looked up to see Barbara halfway out the right-hand backseat window of his patrol car. The window lock was obviously unlocked, and she was not handcuffed.
“I hurried back to the back of the car and grabbed her. I got her out of the window and onto the ground. I opened the back door and told her to get into the car.”
Barbara resisted, so the officer placed her into the backseat. At that time, a Bartow County sheriff’s deputy pulled up behind the patrol car, and the patrolman asked the deputy to watch Barbara while he went to the driver’s door and engaged the window lock and rolled up the window.
“I then spoke to the female and informed her why she was in the backseat. She verbally gave her consent to a search of the Mercedes, and the male continued his yelling and ranting as we looked through the trunk of the car. On reviewing the video of the incident, the male was yelling to the female, ‘Call the police on your cell phone!’ and she was yelling back, ‘I don’t have it!’”
Since both officers were in the assigned uniforms of their departments and were in marked patrol cars, the trooper stated later, he felt this was indicative of their condition at the time, since they obviously were the police.
After the officers searched the trunk of the Mercedes, the trooper noticed Schiess almost fall off the hood of the patrol car and into traffic.
“I went to him and pulled him to his feet and helped him to his knees in front of my car. In reviewing the video of this incident, the female makes a cell phone call to what I believe to be Bartow County 911. In talking, she gives her location as Georgia 20/US 411, right before the exit to get on I-75. That is seven-point-five miles from where this incident actually happened.”
An investigator with the Floyd County District Attorney’s Office stopped then and asked the trooper if he needed any help. When the officer explained the situation to him, the investigator made a recommendation as to the charge of reckless conduct for the female for going into the trunk while the officer struggled with her boyfriend.
“In reviewing the video, the female yells to the male, ‘You shut up!’ Then she asks him, ‘What’s the name of that road?’ Then the investigator takes the male off to the side to see if he can obtain any information from him, and another trooper arrives at the scene.”
The two troopers conducted a more thorough search of the vehicle; then the arresting officer returned to check on Barbara and asked her if she was okay. She claimed the officer had busted her lip, but when he asked her again if she was okay, she said, “Yeah.” The officer explained to her again why she was put into the backseat of the patrol car. He told her that when he was trying to get Schiess into the backseat, her actions by going into the trunk of the car had presented an officer-safety issue.
The investigator who went to talk to Schiess said that Schiess stated, “She was cold, she was very cold. I only pulled over to put the top up.” Then he retracted that statement and said that Barbara was the one who had been driving.
The Floyd County investigator went to talk to Barbara and explained to her that both she and Schiess were being charged with misdemeanor charges and told her that he had gathered all their medications from the Mercedes. Having completed an impound vehicle inventory, the trooper asked Schiess if he had any preferences for a wrecker service, since he was the registered owner of the vehicle. Schiess said that he did not care who towed the car, so the second trooper called the Cartersville headquarters and requested for the next wrecker service on the rotating list, Bulldog Towing.
During this time, Barbara was busy making more phone calls and said to someone that she would “need Mike’s help.” She then gave her location, then made another call, advising someone that she and Schiess had been en route from Rome to Atlanta, and the trooper had stopped because he thought Schiess was possibly assaulting her.
When the officers were ready to transport Barbara and Schiess to jail, Barbara complained that she was injured and needed medical attention, so the second trooper called and made arrangements to have an ambulance meet them at the jail. The arresting officer took Schiess to the Bartow County Jail for booking, and the other trooper took Barbara to jail. Once there, she was not allowed inside because of her complaint of injuries. The trooper then had to take her to the Cartersville Medical Center.
Schiess was evaluated by the jail’s medical representative and was allowed to be booked; then the arresting trooper performed a state test of his breath. Standard field sobriety tests (SFSTs) were not performed because of the condition of Schiess and officer safety. Once the officer received the results, he released Schiess into the custody of the jail personnel. A short time later, Barbara was delivered to the jail, having been cleared by the medical center. She was then booked, as Schiess had been.
What had started as a simple trip home after work for one Georgia state trooper had turned into unexpected hours of hassle involving several officers from different law enforcement agencies.
15
In April 2005, Barbara sought treatment at a sports medicine and orthopedic surgery center in Atlanta for pain and weakness of her left forearm as a result of the Memorial Day, 2004, auto accident in which she fractured her left forearm and wrist. The fracture did not mend, and surgery followed on November 30, 2004. After removal of the surgical hardware, Barbara had spent the next five months in a cast.
In addition, Barbara had undergone two cervical fusions, and as a result of all her injuries, surgeries, and lingering problems, during her visit to the surgery center she reported pain that continually woke her up at night. There was constant nagging pain in her left arm and wrist, she said, with weakness and limitations to her wrist motion.
Her neurologic exam confirmed decreased muscle strength in her left forearm musculature, wrist, and decreased grip strength. There were significant limitations in her wrist motion, and there was atrophy noted in the muscles of her left forearm and left hand.
The examining physician reported to Barbara that there was evidence of left median nerve entrapment in the elbow, and exploratory surgery might be needed, and also reported his findings to her treating surgeon and to the doctor who had originally referred her to the clinic for examination.
Barbara’s chronic pain and the medication it required was likely contributing to her increasingly impaired j
udgment.
16
Barbara Roberts and Bob Schiess were in Bridge City, Texas, to attend Barbara’s mother’s funeral while much of the investigation into Darlene’s murder was beginning to come together. Barbara’s mother had passed away on April 10, 2006, literally dying of a heart attack within minutes of learning that her daughter’s ex-husband’s current wife had been killed, and the Comeaux family had been devastated by such a shocking and unexpected loss. Barbara and Schiess arrived at the funeral home in Bridge City, Texas, and Barbara’s nephew, Jeremy Jay Thomas, noticed that his aunt had shown up in old blue jeans and a T-shirt, which he thought was odd.
“Barbara didn’t go anywhere unless she was dressed up nice,” he said. She and Schiess had a rental car, which her nephew thought they had probably gotten at the Houston Intercontinental Airport when they had arrived in Texas.
“I noticed that Barbara had two black eyes that appeared to be a couple of days old,” Thomas said. “I asked her what happened to her face and she told me she was learning to rollerblade and fell, face-first, into the end of a culvert.”
Thomas didn’t believe that statement for a couple of reasons, he told the authorities. First, the injuries didn’t appear consistent to him with striking a concrete culvert or even a roadway. Second, Barbara had experienced some serious medical problems in the past, in addition to the 2004 car crash when she’d had to be Life-Flighted. Thomas, a deputy sheriff in Texas, based his opinion of the injuries because of his experience on the job as an accident investigator for the Harris County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO). He thought that perhaps Barbara and Schiess had gotten into a fight, but said that he’d mentioned nothing to her about it because there appeared to be no problems at the time. His aunt didn’t seem to be in any danger from Schiess, and they were, after all, gathered for the funeral of Irene Comeaux.
Blood Ambush Page 5