Former Interim Chief Jason Eschert spoke before Wadesboro town council
*Story updated to reflect three corrections; 1) a typo of FBI instead of the intended SBI, 2) Lynn Clodfelter is district attorney over Stanly and Montgomery Counties, 3) a typo, Blitz was approved for apprehension
WADESBORO — “I typed up a three-page statement [when] I got to the point [that] I wanted to release it, I wasn’t allowed to. I believe truth is truth and facts are facts. To tell me I can’t say something that is truthful is just not right,” said former Interim Chief Jason Eschert in an undercover recording given to the Anson Record and taken without Eschert’s knowledge or consent. The former interim police chief retired from the WPD in the wake of the murder of K-9 Officer Blitz by a fellow WPD officer in the line of duty. A causality of the resulting fallout, in addition to Eschert’s departure, Blitz’s former handler Kayla Wright and Sgt. Logan Ruocco were also terminated from the department.
All three were relatively new hires for the WPD.
He continued, “I just wanted to be a police officer protecting the community and trying to do good things in this community.”
Addressing the Wadesboro town council and Wadesboro Town Manager Wiley Ross Jr., Eschert requested, “Please don’t repeat this because nobody knows this. OK, all this happened, and nobody knows what I went through that night. Sometimes I get emotional because I get tired of hearing people say, ‘It’s just a dog, why are you worrying about it?’ I say, ‘Well, to me it’s not because I was a handler for three years, and I owned both of my dogs, and I don’t look at it as just a dog.”
The former interim chief went on to lay out a version of events vastly different from much of what has been widely reported by various media outlets and social media platforms.
He described being awakened in the middle of the night by a call from one of his officers reporting that K-9 Blitz, a dog he had personally cared for and worked with himself, lay dying in a backyard somewhere in Mount Gilead following a high-speed chase from Wadesboro into Montgomery County. When the suspect attempted to flee the scene, Sgt. Ruocco ordered Wright to release K-9 Blitz on the suspect.
“[Blitz] actually did the job he was trained to do, which I know there’s been confusion to that, but the dog was apprehension, I had the documentation to prove that,” explained Eschert. He indicated Sgt. Ruocco was aware of this information when he gave the command for Wright to release Blitz on the suspect.
After K-9 Blitz released the suspect, he inadvertently bit the hand of his handler when she attempted to calm and distract him with his toy. K-9 Blitz was then tazed by his fellow officers, and shot twice by former Sgt. Ruocco.
Eschert said, “He wouldn’t come off the kong, they got the toy, they gave it to you [Wright]. In my mind that dog did not bite you, he bit the toy in his mind, and that’s what he had a hold of. He didn’t know better.”
After he arrived at the scene, Eschert says he met with Wright and offered her the choice in what to do with K-9 Blitz because he was suffering and nowhere near an emergency animal clinic. Speaking before a town council meeting herself, Wright says she knew Blitz was dying and in pain, so she made the difficult decision to request Blitz be shot.
Admitting the events from April 2 haunt his mind, Eschert said, “I will say this, I can’t watch the video [body cam footage] anymore, it kills me. Literally I have cried probably for four or five days straight. I [can’t] sleep at night. I spoke to that other officer, [Ruocco] I looked him straight in the face, and said, ‘I wanted to charge you for murdering that dog. I wanted to get the warrant that morning, and I wanted to come to you with my handcuffs, and I wanted to handcuff you and take you myself. But unfortunately, the law won’t allow me to so here we are. While you [Wright] are getting bashed, I’m getting bashed and everybody thinks that this one story that’s being presented is the truth, and it’s not, but we’re not allowed to speak.’”
Touching on issues advanced by WPD officers before a recent fiery town council meeting, Eschert said, “To have (explicate) men stand there for exactly 50 seconds while you [Wright] plead for help and tell them what to do, and this includes Wadesboro, Anson County deputies, and a Mount Gilead officer, holding flashlights for 50 seconds while an officer pleads for help and do nothing is a whole other issue. I had the video that shows exactly what happened. Not only do they not help an officer in distress, the decision was made by you [Wright] that was tough, which was to say, ‘Shoot my dog.’ Nobody pepper sprayed, nobody out there carried pepper spray.”
Body camera footage from the night of April 2 can only be released by the order of a Superior Court Judge and has been requested by several media outlets.
Getting through his emotional recounting of events, Eschert next described the morning after the death of K-9 Blitz.
He recounts, “The second night I emailed the DA because I wanted to file charges on an officer. I didn’t get a response to that e-mail, so I went to the magistrate’s office the next morning to get my warrant. I was told I have to call the district attorney’s office. She calls me back and says you need to call the SBI. I called the SBI. SBI goes well we’re technically not over Montgomery County; you would need to call another SAC [Special Agent in Charge].”
A SAC is the district head of the State Bureau of Investigation.
Eschert says he was told next the only thing he could do was call the DA for Montgomery County, Lynn Clodfelter, who is also over Stanly County. Requesting a meeting, Eschert says Clodfelter agreed, and the pair met at the courthouse in Albemarle.
He continued, “I wanted the officer charged and I wanted him [Clodfelter] to actually watch the video, so I brought my computer and made him watch it. [He said] ‘Well, outside of stupid, what do you want me to do?’ I said, “Well, charge him.”
When Clodfelter asked him with what, Eschert claims to have suggested a statute Clodfelter said he didn’t feel apply to the life of a dog and he just couldn’t see how he could charge the officer [Ruocco].
Eschert says he countered, “If somebody shoots someone and kills them, they’re charged with murder. If an officer has a bad shoot, they’re charged with killing someone. The guy that assaulted Blitz was charged. Why can’t we charge the officer for killing the dog?”
According to Eschert, Clodfelter explained, “That’s not how this law is interpreted.”
Eschert next requested Clodfelter provide him with a statement detailing his reasons for declining to press charges against Ruocco for the murder of K-9 Blitz. He claims Clodfelter agreed, but when no such statement was forthcoming, Eschert again followed up with the district attorney.
He says he was told by Clodfelter that other DAs in his office felt it was in his best interest with elections coming up not to provide a letter.
Eschert next turned and addressed former WPD Officer Wright.
Eschert pointed out there are no cops that have not at one time or another bent the rules. He pointed out he did fight for her to keep her job with the WPD because he felt one mistake did not make her irredeemable. Instead, Eschert said he recommended she serve a week’s suspension and receive more training. He admitted she violated policy by using Blitz for apprehension, but reiterated he did not feel that made her irredeemable as an officer or handler. Eschert said his recommendations were overruled.
Speaking in an interview conducted by the Anson Record prior to his retirement, Eschert said the budget for the WPD K-9 program was not $500 as previously claimed by Wright, but was actually $5,000.
He said when it comes to choosing a kennel, Wright purchased one recommended by Blitz’s previous owner, Josh Harrington. In the wake of the death of Officer K-9 Blitz, Harrington has launched a new career in the form of a podcast on social media dedicated to exposing alleged wrongdoing and corruption.
Eschert added he found out the WPD had a kennel already purchased by the town in storage at a local supply company. When he contacted the company, he was told by representatives they tried for eight months straight to reach someone with the town of Wadesboro regarding what they would like done with the kennel. A response was never received.
After describing the events following the death of Officer K-9 Blitz, Eschert touched on other worrying concerns he had regarding the functionality of the Wadesboro Police Department; evidence not logged, drugs and money strewn about the office and inside desk drawers.
Detailing a department weighed down by systemic, catastrophic, and long-term disarray, Eschert says “It’s pretty bad. I mean you go through drawers and you find random drugs, you find money, you find stuff not documented, evidence not documented.”
He insists, “That’s got nothing to do with me. I had no want or will to be in these boots. I didn’t want this. I was pushed into this because what they thought the plan was going to be for the succession fell through.”
Eschert added, “I go into an evidence room that looks like an Amazon warehouse got hit by a tornado. There’s evidence in there not logged, money, $40, some $1,000 cash, that the money had already been disposed to the school system to pay people’s home fees 20 years ago. We still have it. That’s not me, that’s not my problem, but I gotta fix it because they put me here.”
