WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Palm Beach County court records reveal that an encounter that ended with gunfire in a high school parking lot Monday morning is the culmination of a series of troubling encounters between Delroy Thomas, law enforcement and area hospitals.
Thomas, 29, faces charges of battery on law enforcement and trespassing on school grounds, among other counts, stemming from Monday’s incident in the parking lot of Suncoast High School in Riviera Beach, while students were being dropped off.
According to the probable cause affidavit in the case, Riviera Beach police Officer Nodane Cherisma approached Thomas when he walked onto school grounds and she did not recognize him as a student. The document described Thomas as becoming physically "aggressive" with Cherisma in an "unprovoked attack."
Cherisma shot Thomas twice. The affidavit said the officer was "forced to use deadly force to stop the immediate threat to herself and any possible threat to the students and staff on campus."
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Thomas is now in the hospital.
This was not Thomas' first violent encounter with law enforcement, according to Palm Beach County court records.
A 2014 affidavit detailing charges of battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting with violence alleges Thomas "forcefully squeezed" a corrections officer’s fingers, and threatened to kill him. Thomas was in jail at the time facing theft charges. The battery charges were dropped by prosecutors.
Another affidavit from 2018, while Thomas was being held on burglary charges, states that he elbowed and kicked corrections officers who were trying to take him to a medical evaluation. He was found guilty and sentenced to time served amid a five-year sentence stemming from other charges related to the burglary.
More recently, Thomas’ criminal record shows a string of less violent charges.
Court records of five separate trespassing arrests this year:
- Jan. 13 at HCA Florida JFK Hospital
- Jan. 31 at Saint Mary’s Medical Center. The arrest affidavit showed Thomas was told not to return for a year.
- Feb. 15 at JFK Hospital. The affidavit said Thomas had just received treatment there and refused to leave.
- March 15 at JFK Hospital. Once again, the affidavit states Thomas had refused to leave following treatment. This encounter resulted in a ban from the hospital.
- April 10 at an Intown Suites hotel in Riviera Beach. According to the affidavit, the hotel’s night manager told officers Thomas was an unregistered guest, lying in the hallway.
"My brother got a mental problem. They actually let him out and can see he's not in his right mind," Calvin Nance, referring to multiple hospital admissions for his brother Thomas under the Baker Act, said.
"When a person is deemed to be a danger to themselves or another person, then the Baker Act may be initiated by their clinician, or even by a police officer," said Dr. Jasset Smith, a licensed clinical psychologist who is not connected to Monday's case and has never treated Thomas. "Within 72 hours, the hospital staff, the individual would be evaluated by a clinical psychologist, a licensed mental health practitioner to determine what their diagnoses is, their state of mind, if they're safe to leave the hospital."
Privacy laws prohibit hospitals from releasing patient information, but in a recording of a 911 call released by the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, a woman identifying herself as Thomas’ sister told a dispatcher Saturday afternoon that her brother was wandering outside naked and needed to be admitted to a hospital under the Baker Act.
"Saturday (Thomas) had an episode," Nance said during an interview with WPTV Monday. "(The hospital) took him in. They let him out Sunday. He showed up right here on the front porch inside with hospital clothes."
Smith said not all Baker Act admissions result in a 72-hour mandatory hold, and sometimes it can be difficult for hospitals to keep a Baker Act patient in their care following the 72-hour hold.
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"If (the patient is) not unsafe -- if they're not deemed to be unsafe, the hospital -- especially if they don't have space for them, they are not required to hold them," Smith said. "So, they are released back out of the hospital, because they don't meet criteria to be involuntarily hospitalized."
A spokesperson for HCA Florida JFK Hospital told WPTV she is working to get more information on Thomas' ban from the premises.
The public defender assigned to Thomas' case did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The woman who answered the phone at the law firm where the attorney is listed as an associate said she’d never heard that attorney's name before.
Thomas is scheduled for a first appearance before a Palm Beach County judge Wednesday morning via Zoom.
