On the rainy afternoon of March 14, 2008, Sarah Ludemann was out with Joshua in her mom’s car on Forty-ninth Street in the southbound curb lane. Streets were wet and slippery, and they were rear-ended hard. It was Sarah’s second car accident in four months.
The driver of the other car was David C. Tracy, who was cited by the responding officer with “careless driving.” Both Joshua and Sarah were taken to Bayfront Medical Center, complaining of neck injuries. They were checked out and released.
On April 1, 2008, Officer Dean LoBianco, who would win that year’s PPPD Officer of the Year Award, answered a complaint of domestic disturbance. A couple sounded like they were beating the crap out of one another on Sixty-third Lane.
It was early for this sort of call, only six-thirty in the evening. On his way to the address, Officer LoBianco was informed by dispatch that the woman involved, Rachel Wade, had left the residence on foot. The cop found her only a couple of blocks away, upset and crying, explaining that she and her off-and-on boyfriend, Nick, had just had a fight.
“Why did you go see Nick today?” LoBianco asked.
Rachel explained she wanted to discuss some ongoing difficulties that she and Nick were having with their relationship. They were in the bedroom when the argument started.
“What was the argument about?”
“Nick said he didn’t like some of the people I’d been hanging out with.” Rachel admitted that she was the first to get physical. She pushed him and hit him. He pushed her back.
Nick grabbed Rachel’s cell phone and walked right out of the house with it. She followed, right outside and into the street, where she grabbed him by the back of his shirt and ripped it. Once the shirt started ripping, she couldn’t stop ripping it, and she didn’t stop until the shirt ripped off Nick’s back.
“The only reason I even touched his shirt was to get my cell phone back!” Rachel said.
Nick called 911 and she split.
That brought LoBianco up to date. The officer took some pictures of Rachel’s injuries.
Rachel waited in the cop car while the cop spoke to Nick, who gave the same story: Rachel struck first, and she tore his shirt. Since Rachel was the aggressor, the cop arrested Rachel and transported her to the Pinellas County Jail.
The case was promptly sent to the state attorney’s office, which rapidly ruled that charges against Rachel be dropped because there was “no reasonable likelihood of a successful prosecution.”
At seven-thirty in the evening, on June 13, 2008, Officer Shaun Grantham answered a call from Ashley Lovelady. Her car had been vandalized. Ashley said her best friend, Sarah Ludemann, had borrowed her car, a 1995 blue Honda Accord. Sarah needed the car to go to the Camacho house and talk with Joshua. While she was there, the side mirrors had been kicked off the Accord. Sarah said Jay Camacho did it—Jay being Ashley’s ex-boyfriend.
Officer Grantham located and interviewed Sarah, who said she’d gone to visit Joshua because she needed to have a talk about their relationship. What she got was a visit with both Joshua and Jay on the front lawn. An argument ensued, and Jay was already feeling hostile when he noticed that it was Ashley’s car parked in his driveway. He went over to the car to see if Ashley was in it. When he found it empty, he kicked off the mirrors, allowing them to hang.
“Who else saw this?” Officer Grantham asked.
“Joshua Camacho and his mother,” Sarah replied.
The cop returned to Ashley Lovelady.
“What do you want to do about this?” he asked.
“I want to file charges and get my mirrors fixed,” Ashley replied.
The cop handed Ashley a booklet entitled “Victims’ Rights.” He advised her to halt all contact with the brothers Camacho. She said she would.
Grantham’s next stop was the Camacho house, where Joshua remained, but Jay had split. As a police photographer snapped images of the dangling mirrors, Grantham wanted to know where Jay was.
Joshua shrugged. “He moves from place to place,” he said.
Grantham was a little persistent and Joshua admitted he’d seen Jay kick the mirrors.
Joshua explained that Jay was pissed at Ashley because she bitched about Jay doing other girls, like Ashley was his girlfriend, when “she wasn’t nothing and had no right to complain about nothing.”
Grantham handed Joshua a business card.
“Have Jay call me,” the cop said.
Joshua said he would be sure to do that.
Even without Joshua’s assistance, Jay was eventually located, but he escaped serious trouble when the state attorney’s office, after its own investigation, concluded that the “facts and the circumstance as presented do not warrant prosecution.”
By June 17, Rachel was again in a new phase of her life, taking a great step sideways in life, going from an on-and-off relationship with Nick Reynolds, to having a stormy on-and-off relationship with Joshua Camacho.
She wrote to Joshua on Myspace. In a blog entitled “Over You,” she accused him again of hitting her, insulting her, cheating on her. Each time she caught him, he would say, “I’m sorry, I’ll never do it again!” He lied, until it just got old; finally she looked at reality, and, well, reality said she deserved so much better! He was a boy. She needed a man! He had nothing to offer her. He was irresponsible, unreliable, unstable, immature, and nothing special to look at. And, most important, he didn’t have the love and affection or the respect for her that she wanted! And since she left him, she saw that there were plenty of other guys who would offer her “at least 90 percent” of that!
So sorry buddy but you can take your bullshit somewhere else! she posted.
Sarah could do math. Ninety percent wasn’t as good as 100 percent.
Sarah sat at the computer and attached a statement: And you think you found better?
At just past midnight, in the early morning of July 2, Officer Scott Galley answered a call from a female.
“I’ve been assaulted in a parking lot,” reported the alleged victim.
When the cop arrived at the scene, he observed two vehicles in the parking lot. A young woman sat on the hood of a car, and two were sitting in a minivan.
Sarah Ludemann told Officer Galley, “I was parked in my parents’ 2000 Mercury minivan, sitting in the northwest corner of a parking lot off U.S. Route 19. My window was rolled down.” Erin Slothower was in the car with her.
“We were following my ex-boyfriend, Joshua Camacho, around because we’re mad at him because he was sleeping with us both at the same time without us knowing about each other,” Sarah explained.
Ludemann said they were arguing back and forth, and then Camacho reached in the window and punched the left side of her face. She was uninjured, however, and required no medical attention. She didn’t want to press charges; but since she was a minor, that call wasn’t hers.
“What did Joshua do after he punched you?” Galley inquired.
“He went to the other side of the van and started yelling at Erin.” Erin, unafraid, got out of the van and the argument continued, face-to-face.
Galley talked to Erin next, whose baby was in an infant seat in the back of Sarah’s minivan. Erin said she saw Joshua reach in the driver’s window, but she didn’t exactly see Sarah being punched. Still, the incident angered