Detectives say things quickly took a turn for the worse when Marion County Deputies went to the home of 74-year-old Ivan Gotham just off of State Road 200 for a well-being check. K-9 Deputy Brian Robert Litz was first on-scene. But instead of Gotham himself, Litz was met with gunfire.
"Law enforcement officers are called into routine and mundane situations that go from absolute mundane-ness to terror in seconds," says Marion County Sheriff Ed Dean. By the start of a Saturday evening press conference, flags flew at half-staff at the Marion County Sheriff's Opeartions Center while deputies and friends gathered to hear the news.
"Here's a deputy sheriff protecting you," said Dean. "And today, he died protecting you."
Ivan Gotham died in the exchange of fire after he shot Litz -- but detectives won't release if it was a deputy who killed Gotham or if he actually turned the gun on himself. Now as investigators piece things together, they mourn the loss of a seven-year veteran, a husband, father, and a friend.
"We have gathered our troops together because we're a family and we're going to go in here after we're finished here and we're going to talk," says Dean. "We're going to try and console each other."
Dean did say the Sheriff's Office has had problems with ivan gotham before. But he wouldn't ellaborate -- and we couldn't find a criminal record for Gotham on the Marion County Jail or Clerk of Court online records Saturday night.
While investigators are staying tight-lipped about details of the shooting, several neighbors in the Pine Run subdivision saw the entire scene unfold in front of them.
"I could hear the shot, there was a shot, the police officer drops," remembers David Q -- whose family lives across the street. Mary Ann Bradshaw saw what happened next through the window of her kitchen door:
"Two policemen did finally work their way to the door and break the kitchen window and shoot guns in through the kitchen door," remembers Bradshaw. Because of what they saw in the past from Gotham, many neighbors say they weren't surprised by what they saw.
"I sensed he had problems," says neighbor Bob Bleau. "He did have problems. He was kinda, stare off into space a lot. I told my wife, I said 'he's out in left field someplace.'
"He just did strange things that a normal person would not do," Bradshaw remembers. "I just sensed that from little things grow big things. And from all the little things that happened down the road something disasterous would happen, and it did (Saturday)."