DADE CITY, Fla. — After hearing from expert witnesses and those inside the Wesley Chapel theater at the time of the shooting, the six-member panel jury has found Curtis Reeves not guilty of second-degree murder and aggravated battery.
“This is great, it’s been a long eight years. I couldn’t wait for it to be over with," Reeves stated as he walked out of the courthouse.
Just before Reeves left, the Oulson family walked out visibly upset. Their family told 10 Tampa Bay they wanted privacy.
10 Tampa Bay asked Reeves if there was anything he would say to the Oulson family, who was crying as the verdict was read, to which he replied, “It was a sad day for everybody on both sides. It never should have happened. I never wanted it to happen. I never planned for it. I never, I never even in my wildest dreams thought anything like this would ever happen. Like I say, I feel as touching for them as I do for my own family.”
It took the jurors a little more than three hours to deliberate Friday night.
At the end of it all, jurors determined Reeves was not guilty. Friday night as Reeves left the courthouse 10 Tampa Bay asked him what his reaction was when he heard those words. He said, “I’m not sure anything's gone through it just yet but I’m working on it.”
Reeves' attorneys added this was a victory.
“I think this acquittal, this victory, sends a message out to the community. And that message is, that you can’t abuse the elderly", the attorney said. "We believed all along, that Mr. Reeves that day was attacked in that theater and he did the right thing in defending himself.”
During the trial, we heard from many witnesses, including Reeves himself. In questioning from the prosecution, attorneys pointed out several discrepancies in statements Reeves made versus what he originally told detectives on the day of the shooting.
"I have no explanation," Reeves said after he changed his statement to include he was attacked not once, but twice by Chad Oulson. Reeves frequently mentioned his "perception" of the event.
At one point, the prosecution even asked Reeves if he was tailoring his testimony to what the video shows. Reeves said no.
Reeves says he was attacked by Oulson, having to hold him back and eventually shooting him. Reeves fired after Oulson flipped a bucket of popcorn in his face.
“If I had to do it over again, it would have never happened," Reeves initially told detectives after the shooting.
The defense approached this case portraying Reeves as an elderly man who feared for his life because he is a vulnerable person. Reeves was 71 at the time of the shooting.
However, Reeves is a retired Tampa Police Department captain and leads a very active lifestyle, doing activities like hunting, kayaking and biking. During his time with Tampa police, Reeves was responsible for training officers and even formed the city's first SWAT team.
Throughout the trial, one witness besides Reeves testified to seeing an object or punch thrown at Reeves. The one witness who says she saw an object thrown admits she wasn’t 100 percent sure of what she saw.
Only one witness, Reeves' son, Matthew Reeves, reported hearing Reeves indicate he was being attacked before the shooting. Matthew was also the only witness to say he saw Oulson coming over his seat toward his father. His testimony does not align with any of the other witnesses.
What happened in 2014?
In 2014, Reeves and his wife, Vivian, went to the movies to see “Lone Survivor.” Reeves became upset with a man sitting in front of him, Chad Oulson, for using his phone during the movie previews.
After asking Oulson to turn off his phone, Reeves decided to report Oulson to the manager, Thomas Peck. After Reeves returned to the theater, the two men got into an argument that resulted in Reeves shooting and killing Oulson. Oulson had flipped a bucket of popcorn in Reeves' face and said he was texting his daughter's babysitter.
He also injured Oulson’s wife, Nicole. Her left ring finger was almost entirely shot off when she put her hand in front of her husband.
“I didn’t know what happened and I couldn’t believe it. I had never been more scared in my life,” Vivian said after the shot was fired.
Registered nurse Derek Friedhoff was in the theater at the time of the shooting. Friedhoff says, after the shooting, he went to assess Chad Oulson’s condition. He described blood coming from Oulson’s shirt, with no exit wound on his body. He says Oulson was still breathing and it sounded like he was trying to breathe. Friedhoff says he took off his shirt to apply pressure to the wound, and later felt Oulson’s pulse decline. At some point, he could no longer feel Oulson’s pulse in his wrist.
“If you look at my statement, you can see how shaky my hand was," Jane Roy, a witness inside the movie theater said. She was sitting one seat away from Reeves and calls the entire event "petrifying."
Why did it take 8 years for a trial to start?
It took years to reach the trial. From the moments after the shooting, Reeves has always said he killed Oulson in self-defense.
Several months after the shooting, Reeves was released from the Land O’ Lakes jail on $150,000 bail. However, he was required to be on house arrest, wearing an ankle monitor at all times.
In 2015, Reeves’ attorney, Richard Escobar, filed a motion to dismiss the criminal charges, citing Florida’s Stand Your Ground immunity law.
In 2017, Judge Susan Barthle heard the evidence in a Stand Your Ground hearing to determine if Reeves should be immune from prosecution. After two weeks, the motion is denied, meaning his case would be tried before a jury on charges of second-degree murder and aggravated battery.
That same year, state legislators changed the Stand Your Ground law to shift the burden of proof to prosecutors. Reeves and other defendants argued they deserved a new Stand Your Ground hearing based on that change.
Then in 2018, Reeves' case was put on hold when a judge decided that too much confusion regarding the changes to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law remained for the proceedings to continue, causing devastation for Oulson’s family.
However, in 2019, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that cases are not retroactive, meaning Barthle’s decision would stand, taking the Reeves case to trial.
In 2020, the trial was scheduled to start in January of 2021 but saw a series of delays due to the coronavirus pandemic. That brings us to 2022 when the trial officially began on Feb. 7.