A funeral service turned chaotic when Lee County deputies unexpectedly showed up, detaining the wrong man and upsetting the family.
The deputies aimed to arrest a suspect in the 1995 murder of Rodney Cotten, acting on tips that Willard Smith might be at the funeral. The murder took place in Sanford 30 years ago.
Though deputies did take someone into custody, it wasn’t the suspect they were looking for.
As the crowd moved from the cemetery to the parking lot, family members confronted deputies, demanding answers about the incident.
“It was the most unreal thing I’ve ever seen,” said Bryant McKinney, a family friend of the man detained.
Sheriff Brian Estes explained, “It’s not a common practice of ours to do that but this was very exigent because we’ve never had a physical location of our suspect before.”
He noted that Smith and his brother are close in age and share similar physical descriptions.
“We’ve had people say that we’ve picked up the wrong person, but no one has made a statement that Willard Eugene Smith was not at the service, which makes me feel like he’s still in the area,” Estes added.
While it’s unusual to try arresting suspects at funerals, Estes said this was a rare chance to make progress on a decades-old case.
“We never want to upset a family or do anything to disrespect anyone, but we had to go check that out to see if we could locate him,” he said. “I kind of feel like it was our only opportunity.”
The detained brother spent eight hours at the sheriff’s office before his release. The funeral honored Kabem Smith.
According to a sheriff’s office social media post, Willard Smith has used multiple aliases, including family members’ names, such as Willard Partridge, which appeared in the obituary as a surviving brother. Tips also say he has returned to the area before to visit family.
The office emphasized that there was never an intention to disrupt the service.
A $10,000 reward is being offered for information leading to an arrest.
