Published on Sunday, January 14, 2007
in the Highlands Today

SHOOTING SUSPECTS CAPTURED

LAKE PLACID — Christina Clay can remember the exact moment Friday evening she realized Sgt. Nick Sottile was dead.

“We heard earlier that an officer had been shot,” Clay said. She and her mother, Dottie Lanzel, are waitresses at Schooni’s, an Italian pizza and submarine restaurant on Main Avenue that the Florida Highway Patrol trooper frequented.

Then, the news came it was Sottile, a 24-year veteran, who had been hit.

They heard he had been airlifted to a metro hospital, but just a few minutes later, there was a correction. He was still at Florida Hospital in Lake Placid, and he’d died.

“My poor mom,” Clay said Saturday morning. Her mother had known Sottile for a dozen years. “She went outside and just cried.”

How It Happened

According to FHP director Col. Christopher Knight, Sottile, 48, was southbound on U.S. 27 about 3:22 p.m. Friday when he witnessed a Toyota Camry driven aggressively, nearly tangling with a semi-truck.

About that same time, Lake Placid Town Councilor Debra Worley was also southbound, and saw a Highway Patrol car make a U-turn.

“He was behind me,” Worley said. “I saw he turned around and went back.”

The Toyota stopped. There were two black men inside, Joshua Lee Altersberger, 19, of Sebring, and Quintin Jerome Kinder, 21, of Bainbridge, Ga. According to a criminal history from the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office, Altersberger had been arrested two years ago for battery, aggravated assault with a weapon and possession of cocaine.

Sottile approached on foot. Officers think Kinder lept from the car and fled into the orange groves, a few miles north of Lake Placid.

Altersberger fired at least one shot.

“It was fatal. Right about here,” Knight said, touching a spot above his heart, but below his right shoulder. He wouldn’t say if more than one shot was fired.

Knight held a press conference on the shoulder of U.S. 27, across from the Coldwell Banker real estate office. It was just a mile north of the crime scene.

Roberto Carrillo, an air conditioner installer, was on his way back to Lake Placid when he say Sottile lying on the ground, probably five minutes after the shooting happened.

“He was right in front of his car,” Carrillo said. He surmised that Sottile had returned to his marked unit.

Carrillo slowed down, but there were lots of other cars stopped, so he drove on.

Others Remember

Sottile (soTILLe), according to friends, was a jovial man.

“He was always joking,” Knight remembered. “He loved the people he supervised, and he loved the people who supervised him.”

“He was just a good man,” said Thomas Tillman, who was getting a haircut Saturday morning. Carrillo waited his turn in the chairs across from him.

“I’ve known him just about all his life. He was born and raised here,” said Tillman, who is also a lifetime resident.

“It’s just scary,” said Jeff Wahoo Stanley, a customer in the Cornerstone Barbershop, where Ron Elwell cut hair. “I moved here 10 years ago. I wanted to stay away from the traffic and crime.”

A Miami native, Stanley leads white water rafting excursions to North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia.

“I live north of Lake June, and there wasn’t anytime last night I couldn’t hear the helicopters overhead, buzzing. It was like Manhattan or something.”

At Schooni’s, Highlands County Deputy Robert Campbell was having lunch Saturday with his family. He often met Sottile at the sheriff’s substation in Lake Placid.

“He was always smiling, always on top of the world. He never seemed to be down,” said Campbell. “He was a good family man. They always seemed to be part of his life.”

Sottile’s son, Nicholas, is also a trooper.

Capture

About 4:57 a.m. Saturday, police found Altersberger, who had fled in his car to Sebring. Knight would not say whether he was arrested in his own home.

At 7:23 a.m., Kinder was found, and Knight said a firearm was also located, although cautiously he did not connect the two.

Knight said Sottile’s unit did not have a camera, which would have shown the shooting.

The capture, Knight said, “would not have been possible without help from the local and state agencies.” Hundreds of officers from at least 25 departments responded.

“It’s no surprise to me they were caught very quickly,” Knight said.

Both suspects were taken to the Highlands County Jail. Altersberger was charged with first-degree murder. Kinder had not been arraigned by press time Saturday.

Sottile becomes the 41st trooper who has been killed in the line of duty since 1939.