Pitt officials press sheriff for answers
Officer changed story about death
Jim Nesbitt, Staff Writer
News & Observer
GREENVILLE - Pitt County Sheriff Mac Manning needs to disclose the “plausible explanation” he believes explains why Lt. Michelle Pollard changed her story about her husband’s November 2005 drowning after flunking a State Bureau of Investigation polygraph, elected officials said Friday.
Pitt County Commission Chairwoman Beth Ward said the integrity of Manning’s department is at stake following allegations in a civil lawsuit that two of the sheriff’s top subordinates impeded the initial investigation of Stacey Pollard’s death because of romantic relationships with Michelle Pollard.
Manning held a lengthy news conference this week to deny the allegations and defend Lt. Pollard and his department’s investigation of her husband’s death. But Ward said Manning should explain why he believes his embattled subordinate and say whether he conducted an internal investigation of her two accounts.
“We have a lieutenant in the sheriff’s department who gave two different accounts of what happened that night,” she said. “I don’t know which one is the lie. … I don’t think there was a formal investigation in his own department that questioned her about these two accounts.”
Fellow commission member Eugene James agreed.
“When you change your story, that puts doubts in everybody’s mind,” he said.
Lt. Pollard, who declined comment Friday and referred questions to Pitt County Attorney JoAnne Burgdorff, initially told a sheriff’s investigator she was bringing a cup of hot chocolate to her husband when she found his body floating face down in the deep end of their backyard pool at their Grimesland home, according to the lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court by her husband’s mother, Barbara Pollard.
An epileptic since his early teens, Stacey Pollard wasn’t taking medication to control his seizures, Lt. Pollard said, according to the lawsuit. She said he must have had a seizure and fallen into the pool.
Later, after flunking the SBI polygraph given her in June 2006, she changed her story, telling investigators she had pushed her husband into the pool as a joke, then ran back into their home and locked the doors when he threatened to “get her back,” according to the lawsuit.
In an interview Wednesday, Manning said the SBI’s report on the case contains a “plausible explanation” for Lt. Pollard’s different accounts. The sheriff also said she did not violate department policy despite sections of the Pitt County Sheriff’s Office regulations manual that requires deputies to be “truthful when testifying, making reports and conducting any Sheriff’s Office business.”
Manning and Burgdorff did not return phone calls Friday.
Pitt County District Attorney Clark Everett said that after reviewing the SBI report this year — along with the sheriff’s initial investigation and an autopsy report that ruled Stacey Pollard had drowned — he decided there wasn’t enough evidence to file criminal charges against Michelle Pollard. Everett also said he has asked SBI investigators to run down additional information that he doesn’t expect will change his decision.
The 19-page lawsuit filed by Stacey Pollard’s mother names Manning, two of his top deputies and Lt. Pollard as co-defendants.
Stacey Pollard’s family wonders why Manning didn’t immediately call in the SBI to investigate a case involving one of his deputies. They also wonder why Lt. Pollard was promoted instead of disciplined for telling two different stories.
“We just don’t understand that,” said Lynn Pollard Sutton, Stacey Pollard’s sister.
According to the lawsuit, a top sheriff’s officer three times rejected a request from the department’s lead investigator that the SBI be called in the night of Stacey Pollard’s death. Instead, Manning didn’t request an SBI investigation until after a tense January 2006 meeting with the family and his investigators.
The SBI didn’t open its investigation until late March 2006, an N.C. Department of Justice spokeswoman said.
Calling in the SBI early in cases involving a deputy or other law enforcement officer is a routine call for a sheriff or police chief who wants to make sure an investigation of “one of our own” is impartial, said Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell. Usually, he asks the local district attorney to join him in such requests after consulting with his department’s counsel, he said.
“It takes all of the bias out of it,” said Bizzell, who is the president-elect of the N.C. Sheriffs’ Association. “There is no way of it not being investigated fairly and completely.”
Bizzell, who said Manning is a friend, said he would also launch an internal investigation if he learned that one of his officers had changed a story told to SBI investigators.
“They better be telling the … truth, whether they’re a participant in an investigation or a victim,” Bizzell said. “It’s an integrity concern. Once you lose the integrity of the sheriff’s office, whether it’s what a deputy did or the sheriff did, you’ve got a problem.”
(News researcher Becky Ogburn contributed to this report.)