Scott Camil

[Keith Millea]

FREEDOM FIGHTER
BY DAVID RHEA Scott Camil lay bleeding on a Gainesville Street. He was telling someone his blood-type while a man who'd just shot him in the back identified himself as an officer of the law.


"My blood-type is A negative," Camil said. "I am having trouble breathing. I am a disabled vet. Take me to the V.A."


A bullet from Dennis Fitzgerald's .380 Llama pistol collapsed Camil's left lung and damaged his liver and kidneys. Camil, who had been twice wounded in the Vietnam War, once again felt the bite of metal in his flesh.
Fitzgerald and another agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency had been introduced to Camil through a girlfriend, Barbara Davis. It was later revealed she was working as an informant for the DEA. Camil says they were driving to get some cocaine. It was March 31, 1975.
"One of them was driving," Camil says. "I was sitting in the shotgun seat, and one of them was behind me. The one behind me grabbed me around the neck, pulled my head to the headrest and shoved a gun to my head behind my right ear."
Camil says he didn't know they were agents. He thought they were trying to rob him.
"I grabbed his wrist and pinned it to the headrest of the car," Camil says. "I unlocked the door, and I was going to jump out into traffic. I figured if they tried to shoot me in front of people, they would get into trouble, so they wouldn't do it."
He figured wrong. Fitzgerald shot him in the back as he opened the door.
"The impact left my shoes in the car but put me out in the street," Camil says. "I was wearing five-lace Converse tennis shoes. You are talking about a lot of force to just pick you up so fast that your shoes stay in the car." Camil was hospitalized for a month before going to trial in a federal court. Forensic evidence supported his version of the events, and he was acquitted of the charges brought against him. On the morning following the trial, Camil says the jury foreman "went to the state attorney's office and told the state attorney that the jury felt the shooting was deliberate and the federal agents should be indicted for attempted murder." But the government agents were never tried for the shooting.

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http://www.jou.ufl.edu/pubs/onb/f98/freedom.htm