When 25-year veteran Sheriff’s Deputy Terri Mashkow was sent to a home in the Bermuda Club development on the northern part of the island last Friday morning to serve an eviction notice, Sheriff Eric Flowers said it was supposed to have been a routine call and no one had any reason to expect trouble.
And yet, minutes after a locksmith engaged by the Sheriff’s Department had forced open the door to the house at 1137 Governors Way, the sole occupant, Michael Halberstam, 37, an evidently disturbed man who had scared former co-workers with threats to kill them, started shooting indiscriminately at the Sheriff’s Department team on the eviction detail.
Mashkow, a 47-year-old mother of three and owner of three dogs, was killed instantly in the doorway of the home. The locksmith accompanying the eviction team, David Long, 76, was also cut down by the shooter, and died Sunday night of his wounds. Halberstam, the shooter, was struck by return fire and died a day after emergency surgery.
A second deputy, Florentino “Tino” Arizpe, another 25-year veteran of the force, was shot in the shoulder and retreated to the home’s garage as he tried to get out of the line of fire. A third deputy who had stayed behind on the sidewalk as per normal procedures, Sgt. Gary Farless, was not hit and sounded the alarm.
The mother of the shooter, Bradley Halberstam, who had requested her son’s eviction, also stood outside on the sidewalk at the time of the shooting and was not hurt.
All the injured were taken to HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital in Fort Pierce, which has the best-equipped trauma unit along the Treasure Coast.
Long and the shooter died at Lawnwood after surgery; Arizpe was released on Sunday to continue his recovery at home.
In a hastily convened press conference three hours after the incident in the town council chambers of the Indian River Shores administration complex five miles to the south, Flowers called the shooting “an awful tragedy” and said he had worked with Mashkow and known her for her entire career. She had started as a dispatcher, later moved to patrol duty and had transferred in 2023 to the legal process civil division which involved serving papers like eviction notices.
Flowers said having to inform Mashkow’s mother and husband of the death was the saddest duty he ever had to undertake as a law enforcement leader.
Flowers said evictions carried out by the Sheriff’s Department are usually “commonplace,” although sometimes sheriff’s deputies on those missions encounter “people in distress.”
Flowers said neither he nor anyone else in the department had expected anything like a shooting last Friday, even though Sheriff’s deputies had already gone to the same home seven previous times this month on 9-1-1 calls initiated by Halberstam’s mother, Bradley, 64, who had signed the eviction papers on Nov. 5.
Flowers said Michael Halberstam had a criminal record in Virginia, where he used to live, for a narcotics conviction in 2006 and an assault misdemeanor charge in 2015, but he was not barred from owning a firearm.
“He was not on our radar screen,” Flowers said of Halberstam.
Yet, a search of his social media activity would have revealed increasingly bizarre behavior.
Among seemingly “normal” messages between him and his mother as to who would heat up his dinner, there were other posts in which he seemed to taunt and insult the Sheriff’s Department after their previous visits to the home, and several posts critical of UPS, where he said he had worked but alleged he had been bullied by co-workers. “I am being bullied at work and nobody likes me,” one post read.
Some of those posts worried some of his former co-workers to the extreme. “You just scared the s..t out of me,” read one message a former co-worker sent to Halberstam last year. “I was sent a song you posted today. I do not want to die at work because your (sic) pissed. Those things you post are f’n scary. Let’s talk.”
Sheriff’s deputies descended on the main UPS facility in Vero Beach along 41st Street just beyond 43rd Avenue Friday afternoon to check into his background as part of the sprawling investigation, but refused to comment when they left the premises. UPS supervisors on site would not even confirm that Halberstam had worked there.
The first distress calls after the shooting were heard on the entire local emergency network, and among the first rescuers on the scene were teams from the Indian River Shores Public Safety Department led by Assistant Chief Ed Ryer, who said he found “chaos” when he arrived at the home just a few miles north of his station. In total, nine members of the Indian River Shores Public Safety Department, “everyone available at the time,” assisted with the initial rescue and securing the scene.
Ryer said that when he arrived, deputy Mashkow and the shooter were lying in the entryway to the house – the shooter face down and a gun on the floor by his side – and Public Service Officer (PSO) William Gomez, a trained EMT who accompanied him, attended to the other deputy with the shoulder wound who had tried to escape to the garage.
Gomez tried to apply a tourniquet, but that didn’t work because of the location of the gunshot wound, so he tried to stop the bleeding in other ways, until an Indian River Shores ambulance driven by Lt. Al Iovino could transport the victim to Lawnwood Hospital while Sgt. Kip Benham and PSO Joseph Trevisol tried to stabilize the victim in the rear of the vehicle.
An Indian River Shores fire truck driven by Fire Medic Kenneth Blanton and staffed by Cpl. James Zaremba and PSO Corey Harding also arrived on the scene and assisted with other victims until a huge fleet of Sheriff’s Department vehicles swarmed into the area – which is just north of the town in an area known as the unincorporated county – and took over the investigation.
The main exit from the Bermuda Club development of 93 West Indies-style homes onto State Road A1A diagonally across from the Disney resort remained closed all day as Sheriff’s deputies cordoned off the whole area as a crime scene for their investigations, but residents were able to leave and re-enter through a rear entrance.
Many residents had not heard the shots and were unaware of what had happened until they saw the police mobilization. One snowbird resident, who said he did not know the family of the shooter, said he was stunned by the incident in the usually quiet neighborhood.
The Bermuda Club gated community, built between 2001 and 2005, is just south of the Wabasso Causeway and just north of the Sea Oaks development. It is often mistakenly confused with Bermuda Bay, an upscale development five miles south in Indian River Shores.
Among those making that error was Gannett, which had a huge headline on its TCPalm website most of Friday adding to the confusion by reporting the shooting had taken place in Bermuda Bay. Saturday morning, Gannett – whose new reporters apparently still don’t know the area – continued to have a mistaken reference to Bermuda Bay in its Press Journal story on the incident.
As of last week, nine homes were for sale in the less pricey Bermuda Club including the one at 1137 Governors Way where the tragedy occurred. It had been listed by Halberstam’s mother for $860,000 through the Jacksonville-based real estate firm of Watson Realty. However, the listing for the 3-bedroom, 2 ½ bath pool home with 2,277 square feet was abruptly taken down last week.
Through a law firm that wished to remain anonymous, Halberstam’s mother Friday evening issued a statement to the 32963 newspaper saying the family of the shooter is “heartbroken by the tragic events.”
Through the law firm, the family extended its “deepest condolences” to Mashkow’s family, friends and colleagues and expressed sincere wishes for the healing of Arizpe, the other injured deputy, and the locksmith. “We can’t adequately express our profound sorrow for the pain and devastation this incident has caused,” the statement added. The family then asked for “privacy during this time of healing and grieving.”
Last Friday’s fatal shooting was only the second time in the 100-year history of the Indian County Sheriff’s Department that a member of the local enforcement agency had been killed in the line of duty. The previous fatal shooting occurred in 1986 when a deputy got shot outside a convenience store.
Friday’s incident drew the attention of TV news crews from the three main network affiliate stations in West Palm Beach, which all made the shooting the lead story on their evening newscasts. Standup reporters did live feeds from multiple locations around the Treasure Coast including the scene of the crime, the Sheriff’s Department, HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital in Fort Pierce and the medical examiner’s office at the campus of Indian River State College.
A lengthy procession of sheriff’s department vehicles escorted the body of the slain deputy from the site of the shooting to the medical examiner’s office at dusk Friday evening, going north on A1A, across the Wabasso bridge and then over to I-95.
Photos by Joshua Kodis
