On his last day alive, Romen Phelps crashed his company van through a locked gate at his old high school, rammed a golf cart and slammed into a palm tree before skipping and dancing his way across campus.
Teachers shouted, âCode red!â Students fled. Police swarmed. Cameras recorded nearly every move.
But just two people and no cameras were in the schoolâs theater when the 33-year-old Dreyfoos High School of the Arts graduate was shot to death on May 13, 2022. One of them, off-duty West Palm Beach police Sgt. Christopher Nagel, killed Phelps with a single gunshot to the chest, police documents reveal.
Officers who had rushed to the scene were stopped by the theaterâs locked main door, awaiting a key. The school police officer who had tracked Phelps since he arrived on campus left to get help â at the insistence of the off-duty sergeant.
, the sergeant would shoot Phelps. He would be pronounced dead seven minutes after that.
Those details gleaned from nearly 400 pages of investigative reports offer the first full public accounting of the shooting death of Phelps, an electrician acting erratically in the throes of mania fueled by marijuana and with traces of ketamine in his bloodstream.
State Attorney Dave Aronberg announced in May 2023 that against the sergeant.
The name of the sergeant had been withheld until last month, after the Florida Supreme Court threw out a portion of a state law that had been used to withhold the names of crime victims, including police officers who use force.
The sergeant who shot Phelps, Nagel, 41, had been involved in six use of force incidents since he came to the force in 2007. He was lauded for his actions, receiving the Palm Beach County Police Chiefs Officer of the Year Award.
Nagelâs performance evaluation cited how he âcalmly and professionally carried out his duties as a police officer while under extreme stressâ that day at Dreyfoos. Aronbergâs investigative unit produced , examining video from dozens of cameras elsewhere on campus and reports written by the Medical Examinerâs Office, the and West Palm Beach police.
Stet Palm Beach paid the State Attorneyâs Office $450 to obtain those investigative reports, a price that covered the cost of redacting exempt information, including the names of the shooter and the school district police officer and results of DNA testing.
To piece together the final two minutes in the theater, investigators relied on an interview with Dreyfoos School of the Arts Principal Blake Bennett and DNA evidence. Nagel, represented by attorney Michael Salnick, or provide a videotaped walk-through of the shooting, as is Salnickâs advice in such situations.
But investigators had one key comment from Nagel, captured on the body cam footage of officers who entered the theater seconds after the shooting.
"Where's the gun? Hey, Sarge, was there a gun at all on him?â .
"Nah, he took mine âŚâ Nagel replied. âHe tried to take mine."
âI will put my gun awayâ
Minutes earlier, while still in the theater, school police officer Ellen Bango had ordered Phelps to the ground at gunpoint. Phelps complied. But soon after, he became irate, the report said, and he screamed at her about having her gun out.
âListen, if you can stay calm and stay on the ground, ,â Bango told him. She holstered her weapon and moved back, jumping from the stage to the floor below.
Principal Bennett later told investigators she thought she had a better rapport with Phelps, who had been acting erratically, because she was âdressed downâ while the school police officer was in uniform.
During an unpredictable series of exchanges over several minutes, she said Phelps calmed down as she asked him to â of that song for meâ or told him, âHey, there is nothing to get upset about.â
That changed when the school police officer left, replaced by Nagel dressed in clothes clearly marking him as police.
Phelps and Nagel faced one another on the stage and Phelps charged, Bennett said.
"It looked to me like the officer was trying to take out his handcuffs," she said.Phelps, who was 5-feet-11, 207 pounds, "went at the officer with closed fists" as they struggled and went to the ground, she told investigators.
Phelps landed on top. The sergeant "," Bennett said.
Taken to Gardens hospital the night before
Phelps had been alternating between rage and exuberance since the night before, when a friend who had attended Dreyfoos with Phelps 15 years earlier needed police help to get Phelps to leave his home.
The call, the first of two about Phelps to police that night, came at 6:09 p.m. from the Palm Beach Gardens home of Skyler Meany.
When police arrived, Phelps and Meany were outside. Phelps told police he had been smoking marijuana but that he had a medical marijuana card.
Since he could be considered inebriated, police told Phelps, they couldnât just let him drive away.
Body cam footage of the conversation showed Phelps standing for several minutes with and a set of keys outstretched in the other hand, investigators wrote. Phelps dropped the keys, but held his empty hand outstretched.
The officer asked Phelps why he dropped the keys.
âPhelps responds â,â a reference to a 1990s show about life in prison, the investigator reviewing body cam footage wrote.The officer called for medics.
Over the course of an hour, police persuaded Phelps to go with the medics, leaving his companyâs van at Meanyâs house. But the medics needed police help because
âPhelps asks the officer if he (the officer) is going to blow his brains out,â the body cam video revealed. âThe officer replies, âNo.ââ In audio from another officer, an investigator writes, âPhelps says he will not lay back (on the gurney) because everyone will think he is crazy. Phelps then says he is a genius.â
Before leaving the scene, one officer asked Meany if Phelps had made threats to harm himself or others, a key factor in determining whether Phelps could be held involuntarily under the stateâs Baker Act. Meany said no.
Phelps combative in ER; police called
The second call from Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center. Police were called about a combative patient in the emergency room â Phelps.
Phelps saw one officer activate the audio of his partnerâs body cam. Phelps uses a pejorative to refer to the officer and adds: âIâm everything, the sword and the gun are one in the same. Thatâs the answer.â
One of the officersâ body cameras picked up a conversation between the ER staff and officers that medics had given Phelps ketamine and âhe should be out but he has been up the entire time.â
While ketamine is known as a street drug that produces a hallucinogenic high, medics use it in lower doses as a sedative. But studies have shown it can induce psychosis in people with schizophrenia, which means it could have the same effect on someone suffering from psychosis, like Phelps, Delray Beach psychiatrist Dr. Irl Extein said.
âThe simplest explanation is that he was psychotic and stayed psychotic as opposed to ketamine being a factor,â Extein said.There is no evidence in the reports that medical staff considered transferring Phelps, who had bipolar disorder, to a mental health facility.
At one point at the hospital, investigators wrote, Phelps said, â and others,â referring to an incident at a bar. But no comments are recorded about whether he considered himself a threat at that time.
The hospital released Phelps at 11:30 p.m. to his brother. They went to Meanyâs house, where Phelps picked up the company van, a 2020 Chevrolet Express.
For Phelpsâ mother, Robbin Jackman, the failure of the hospital to admit her son is where it all began to unravel.
âRomen needed help. He went to seek help. He didnât get help. I think he was having a psychotic break,â said Jackman, who is pursuing a license as a mental health counselor.âWhenever Romen had something on his mind, he didnât sleep. Whenever he didnât sleep, he would go into a manic episode. Heâd be super energized,â she said. âHe was never mean. He was just full of energy.âPhotos posted to social media showed Phelps out partying later that night on Clematis Street.
He came home to his motherâs house at 2:30 a.m., his mother said, but didnât sleep, posting photos on his phone.
âHe called me and asked if he could spend the night,â she said, because he didnât have the key to his apartment and didnât want to wake his roommate.
Meany said he got a text from Phelps at 4:52 a.m. âI would never harm you, you molded me into a phoenix crystal and for that I'd be forever grateful,â he wrote.
Clash with co-worker
Phelps left for work around 7 or 7:30, Jackman said.
She was in another room. âNo hug or anything,â she said. âHe just said âMom, Iâm going. I love you.âââLove you, too,ââ she replied. ââIâll see you later.ââ He returned to Meanyâs house, where he had forgotten his wallet.
â,â Meany said. âHe said, âThe whole thing seemed like a blackout to me.â He didnât remember dealing with the police at my house.âPhelps reported to his job as an electrician at . He picked up a co-worker, whom he had never worked with before.
They stopped at a convenience store for rolling papers, the co-worker, later identified as Yeovanny Taveras, told police. Phelps rolled a joint and smoked it, Taveras said.
â,ââ police quoted Taveras as saying.
They were on Belvedere Road near Florida Mango Road stopped at a red light.
âPhelps âfreaked outâ and began punching YT in the head,â the investigator wrote. Taveras got out of the van about 10:30 a.m. He told police he was uninjured despite receiving about 10 blows.
Crashes van, dances âa little jigâ
from a Palm Beach County Sheriffâs deputy who called a friend on the West Palm Beach police force just before noon to see if they were looking for a white van with a ladder on the roof, a description of Phelpsâ van.
The deputy had seen it driving the wrong way on Banyan Boulevard and blowing through a red light to turn south onto Tamarind Avenue â toward Dreyfoos School of the Arts.
Two minutes later, the first calls came in from the school.
The van smashed through the locked gate on the west side of campus at Tamarind Avenue on the last day of school. It demolished a golf cart and toppled a 40-foot royal palm. , saying the engine âroaredâ before hitting the tree.
Teacher Ryan Toth told police Phelps got out of the van, dusted himself off and began to ââ
Phelps reached into his pocket for a cigarette, appearing "completely out of it," Toth told police.
Toth told Phelps to step away from the van, worried that lighting a cigarette could spark a fire.Phelps replied: "Or what?"As Toth warned students to sound the code red alarm calling for a lockdown, Phelps wandered off, dancing and skipping his way onto campus, Toth told investigators.
School officer tries to cuff Phelps
School police officer Bango, on campus as a substitute, heard the crash and saw students fleeing. She ran toward the crash. She found the van, the wrecked golf cart and the broken tree. She radioed for medics.
Bango was filling in for a school police officer who knew Phelps from his years on campus. But that officer was out of town, attending his sonâs graduation.
Bango, a school police officer for four years, caught up with Phelps at the student services building. He was talking to the staff. Students later told The Post he appeared calm.
She asked if he was driving the van and, she told investigators, he âkind of ignored my question.â
Phelps began to leave, saying he was âgoing outside to smoke a cigarette.â
Bango . She guided him toward the student services front desk. It didnât work. Phelps made his way outside, toward students in a courtyard.
He skipped down the walkway while unbuttoning his shirt, Bango told investigators. Bango radioed for backup, calling Phelps Signal 20, code for a mentally disturbed person. She yelled for students to get into a classroom.
Witnesses told police and cameras confirmed that Phelps jumped up, grabbed a metal bar supporting the overhang and did three pull-ups.
A sophomore told The Post that Phelps asked her about her major. When she refused to answer, he continued walking.
.
âHe pulled so hard and almost flung himself on the ground,â she told investigators. She couldnât control him.Sandra Bullock, the schoolâs treasurer, said she came face to face with Phelps and he hit her left shoulder as he passed. Phelps said. Bullock told Phelps she did not hit him.
Phelps responded, âNo you didnât touch me. She did,â pointing to someone else.
Phelps told Bullock he was ânot here to hurt anybody.â While Bullock tried to steer him toward the parking lot, he moved toward the theater building.
He âpushed me aside a little bit,â she told police.
Phelps had been a theater major at Dreyfoos, where he became interested in electrical work. Even after he graduated, friends said he had worked as an electrician on theater projects and may have viewed the theater as a refuge.
âIt was probably the place that meant more to him than any place in the whole world,â Meany said after the shooting. âIf he had to choose to depart this world from any place, it would have been there.âPhelps flung open the doors to the building that contained the theater and classrooms. He banged on lockers as he walked along the hallway toward the backstage entrance.
Two students took shelter in a bathroom. One said Phelps shouted, â I need my strings!"
Phelps flipped âto a different personâ
Phelps entered the theater through a rear door.
He went on stage and sat down to play the piano. Bullock told police she thought âOK. Play the piano if that is what you want to do because nobody is in here and we are good.â
When Bango and Bennett arrived, Bullock left.
Phelps "," Bango told police. He went on stage and talked about what his life could have been like. He mentioned famous people. He appeared to be talking to an audience, she said.
Phelps sang âWhat I Did For Love,â which starts, âKiss today goodbye,â a song from âA Chorus Line,â Principal Bennett told investigators.
He yelled at someone who was not there, saying âWho the fâ do you think you are, why did you do this?â
He asked inappropriate questions, she told police.
When Bango approached, Phelps â, kicked the piano, screaming and yelling, charged at her a couple of times, charged at me a couple of times,â Bennett said.When he calmed, Bennett asked him to sing a little bit more.
School officer pulls gun, Phelps complies
When Bango drew her weapon, Phelps charged. When she commanded him to stop, Phelps responded, "You want to shoot me, don't you?"
When Bango ordered Phelps to the ground at gunpoint, he complied. He soon began yelling at her about having her gun out.
â You are not going to shoot me. You want to fâ me,â she told investigators.
âListen, if you can stay calm and stay on the ground, I will put my gun away,â Bango told him.She holstered her weapon and stepped down to the aisle below the stage.
She said she had experience as a police officer working with people who have a mental illness.
Bango told investigators she was scared âbecause I could feel when I attempted to put him in handcuffs the power he had over me and it was me and the (school principal).â A detective asked her what would have happened if she had fought Phelps.
âIf I didnât use any other means, ,â she told him.
Fear of harm is a key factor in deciding whether lethal force is warranted.
At 12:10:31, Bango told police dispatch but âwill be irate when someone else shows up.â Dispatch responded that a West Palm Beach officer had just arrived.
Sergeant arrives, school officer leaves
When the first calls came in, Sgt. Nagel had been driving nearby after leaving the courthouse. He wore dark blue, uniform-style pants. His shirt had a yellow/gold imprint of a police badge on the chest with the words West Palm Beach police on the sleeves and the back.
He carried a semi-automatic 9 mm handgun. Since he was off-duty, he had no body camera. He also didnât have his department-issued holster, which has a locking mechanism. To pull his gun from his off-duty holster .
Bennett told police the school district at the school but she did not know if any were operating in the theater. Police said they were not.
Nagel radios that he is inside the theater building at 12:10:25. He entered the theater through a backstage door.
Bango saw Nagel enter âat the very back of the stage.â She walked up onto the stage and briefed him. He told her âgo outside, ,â a reference to getting backup.
To Bennett, Phelps appeared more agitated with Nagel in the room.
âThere is ,â she said she heard Phelps say. Phelps charged, Bennett said.
âIt looked to me like the officer was trying to take out his handcuffs,â she told investigators.She said Phelps "went at the officer with closed fists." They fought their way to the floor, Bennett told investigators, weeping as she added: " and keep your kids and teachers safe."
She said Nagel tried to cuff Phelps, but Phelps was âtoo big.â Phelps gained control and was on top with Nagel pinned to the floor, she said. Nagel Less than two minutes had passed since Nagel entered the room.
âShots firedâ
At 12:11:54 p.m., Nagel comes on the radio, the investigation shows. He identifies himself and says: âShots fired, one suspect down in, in the theater."
Thatâs when officers in the lobby, ânot aware of the side entrance used by (Nagel),â got a staffer with a key and entered the theater, the investigation said.
âRandom frustrating circumstances sometimes occur in cases like this,â Aronbergâs deputy chief investigator, former West Palm Beach detective Mark Anderson, wrote. â was the locked doors in the Meyer Hall lobby. âIt is unfair to criticize the officers grouped in the lobby. They had no way of knowing the others mentioned had used side and back entry points,â he wrote. âWhether the first officer or two in the lobby could have made it inside before the shot was fired had those doors been unlocked will never be known for a certainty.â Bango was with the group of officers entering the theater.
School police Lt. Summer Caudio shouted, â.â
West Palm Beach officer Hayley Nine, carrying a rifle, led the way.
They saw Nagel on a knee tending to Phelps.
Caudio asked, âIs he shot?â "Nagel said.Caudio asked him if he was OK. "Yeah, I am all right,â Nagel said. Nine asked for a chest seal, an airtight bandage to be applied over the bullet wound. "Where's the gun,â she said. âHey, Sarge, was there a gun at all on him?â "Nah, he took mine,â Nagel said. â"
Sergeant âvisibly shakenâ
Nagel , Officer Nine told investigators. âNine had never seen him like that before,â they wrote.
He appeared ",â West Palm traffic homicide investigator James Ingrassia said. âI noticed there was blood on his hands from when he was trying, when he tried to do first aid before somebody else, I guess, relieved him before we came in."
Officer Nine administered aid for two or three minutes. A sergeant applied what is known as an ambu bag, which helped force air into his lungs.
When medics arrived, they pronounced Phelps
Ingrassia escorted Nagel out of the theater. West Palm Lt. Emily Wiggs escorted him to her patrol car and gave him hand sanitizer to clean the blood from his hands.
âI would never have left the roomâ
Aronberg, whose office successfully prosecuted a Palm Beach Gardens police officer in the 2015 shooting death of motorist Corey Jones, .
Phelpsâ mother has not sued anyone. She said she has run out of legal options after approaching a half-dozen attorneys with none willing to take her case. Itâs harder for a mother to win a civil suit, she explained, than a spouse or a child. Phelps was not married and had no children.
Court rulings have made it extremely difficult to win jury awards in police-involved shooting cases if the officer has âprobable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm.â
, who has gone to court before on behalf of people shot by police, said he wouldnât take this case challenging the officerâs decision to shoot.
âThe likelihood of success is very minimal,â Rodriguez said. âAny great defense lawyer for the cops is going to basically say this cop is a hero. He protected the principal from being killed.âI canât have a jury think, âGeez, if I was in that copâs position, what would I do?ââ and professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, agreed that Nagel had no choice.
But he questioned a key decision leading up to the final two minutes: the school police officerâs decision to leave.
âI would never have left the room,â Giacalone said. âI got the radio, thatâs how I get help. The principal could go open the door. I donât need to do that.
âItâs as simple as that. You got caught up in the moment and the decision you made was not the right decision but that doesnât make it an unfounded shooting.âDNA test results were blacked out in the reports. But the State Attorneyâs Office investigator concluded that the level of Phelpsâ DNA on Nagelâs gun was âso high that no reasonable person could offer a cogent argument to refute (Nagelâs) explanation ⌠that he and Phelps were struggling over the handgun.â
Best practices called for the sergeant to âisolate and containâ while waiting for help, Giacalone said, as long as Phelps was not a threat to anyone.
But Nagel didnât know for sure if Phelps had a weapon or would wield a nearby object, like a music stand.
âIf you try and rush these kinds of things, they never work out well,â Giacalone said. But he noted, âYouâre also dealing with someone who has a mental breakdown. Theyâre not going to follow directions and theyâre going to fight you.âPolice found a baggie with 4.4 grams of marijuana in Phelpsâ truck. His blood contained a high level of a psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, Delta 9 THC, police said.
âHad he been arrested for impaired driving and had his blood tested in Ohio or Nevada, his THC impairment status would have been 12.5 times the legal limit,â investigators wrote.
âThe most dangerous choice he ever madeâ
The February 2023 report from Aronbergâs deputy chief investigator, Anderson, offered his broader take as he recommended to the state attorney whether charges should be filed against Nagel.
âthe bottom-line reality is that law enforcement responders must assume the intruder's intentions are violent, to wreak havoc and cause fear,â Anderson wrote.
âWhy else would an adult man crash through a locked perimeter fence, struggle with a uniformed police officer, and make his way to where vulnerable students and school staffers are gathered? No reasonable person, certainly no reasonable officer, could assume the intruder's intent was anything less than hostile.
â he (Phelps) ever made, but it was not profoundly surprising considering his troubled past. The sad truth of this case comes from the undeniable fact that Romen Phelps was seriously mentally ill and was clearly having a break from reality. âWith the totality of all the case facts explained in this review, the physical evidence being paramount, the decision by the Involved Officer (Nagel) to use deadly force was justified,â Anderson wrote.
âHe was engaged in a violent fight with who gained the advantage in the life-and-death struggle on the floor of the school's stage. The battle's conclusion was about to result in one finality â which man would control the handgun. No other option was available to the officer at that moment in time.â
The report did nothing to ease the pain for Phelpsâ mother, Jackman.
âHe was acting like something was wrong because something was wrong,â she said. âInstead of trying to calm him down, I think, they were just egging him on.â
This story was originally published by , a WLRN News partner, in partnership with the Palm Beach Post.