MANTEO — The recently released autopsy for a Manteo man who died Oct. 2 after a Dare County Sheriff’s Office deputy shot him lists the cause of his death as a stab wound.
Sylvester Demetrius Selby’s manner of death was a homicide due to a “stab wound of the anterior left chest” by a 3-inch folding pocketknife, with two gunshot wounds to the torso listed as “contributing conditions,” according to the four-page “report of investigation” by the North Carolina Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME).
A .40-caliber handgun and a pocketknife are both listed as the “means of death” in that report.
The OCME’s autopsy report — a separate, 12-page document — lists the stab wound as Selby’s cause of death. It lists two gunshot wounds of the torso and recent cocaine and methamphetamine use as “other significant conditions.”
Selby’s family disagrees with the conclusion of the autopsy records.
“It feels like it’s planted,” Selby’s sister, Ebony Selby, said in a text message. “Because in the video we saw, he walked out of the apartment normal and speaking. He did not stop movement or breathing until the 3rd shot was fired. So none of us believe the knife wound was the cause of death.”
She said both Deputy Edward Francis Glaser III and “John Simms, the man who stabbed him [Demetrius Selby] in our families’ home…should be charged and locked up right now!”
“Deputy Glaser’s bullets killed Sylvester Demetrius Selby, not the knife,” a July 5 statement from the family’s attorneys asserted. “The body camera video of the shooting speaks for itself. The Dare County Sheriff’s Office could put this argument to rest right now by releasing it.”
While immediate family members viewed the law enforcement video footage of the incident, the Dare County Sheriff’s Office has not publicly released its video footage. In North Carolina, the media and members of the public can only obtain law enforcement video footage with a judge’s order.
The family’s and law enforcement’s accounts of the incident differ greatly.
After seeing the footage, Selby’s family filed a $5 million-plus federal lawsuit on Dec. 7 naming Glaser and Dare County Sheriff Doug Doughtie as defendants and requesting a trial by jury.
A court date has not been set for the case, nor has any ruling taken place as of press deadline, according to the online case information.
Christopher Geis, a Winston-Salem based attorney representing both Glaser and Doughtie in the case, said he filed the autopsy report with the court this week.
“Cause of death is pretty important in a wrongful death case,” Geis said.
Doughtie did not respond by press deadline to questions The Pilot sent Tuesday by email, including if there were plans to release the footage or if charges had been filed against Simms or anyone else in the case since the autopsy reported Selby’s death was a homicide by pocketknife.
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The autopsy
The autopsy details that Selby’s stab wound was 3 to 4 inches deep in the direction of “front to back with minimal right-to-left or vertical deviation” and caused six types of injuries, including to the heart and left lung.
The autopsy details injuries from three gunshot wounds, one of which is described as “penetrating” and two of which are described as “perforating.” It also lists two “graze gunshot wounds” as “additional traumatic injuries.”
Entrances and exits are listed for each of the three detailed gunshot wounds, but only one bullet was listed as recovered.
The penetrating gunshot wound was described as entering in Selby’s “left upper back” and exiting his “anterior left chest.”
Injuries from that shot included lacerations of his left lung lobes “left posterior 5th rib with fracture,” left anterior 5th rib, among others.
“Recovered: One large-caliber, deformed, copper-jacketed projectile,” the autopsy said for that gunshot wound.
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Much unknown
The OCME publicly released documents pertaining to Selby’s death on July 3, nearly nine months after the Oct. 10-dated autopsy exam took place in Greenville. A medical doctor with a different name from the medical examiner digitally signed that “the facts stated herein are correct to the best of my knowledge and belief” on the autopsy exam report April 11.
The “report of investigation” by the medical examiner was dated Oct. 7.
It is unclear why the dates differ and why two different dates are listed on the autopsy report.
The special prosecutor assigned to the case cited the autopsy in his February decision, but his statement seemed to attribute Selby’s death to Glaser’s bullets.
Glaser will not face charges for shooting Selby, Charles “Chuck” Spahos, a Cary-based prosecutor assigned to the case, announced on Feb. 21.
“Deputy Glaser was justified under North Carolina law in that it appeared that it was necessary to kill in order to save himself or others from death or great bodily harm,” Spahos said in the statement.
The same release also noted that the autopsy performed in Greenville “discovered that Mr. Selby also had a knife wound to his chest that contributed to his death.”
The only surviving witnesses of the incident were Glaser, Sgt. DuWayne Gibbs and John Simms, the resident of the trailer outside of which Selby was killed, according to the prosecutor’s release.
According to an Oct. 3 Sheriff’s Office press release, two deputies were responding to a “trespassing in progress” call when Selby “came at them with a knife.”
A deputy fired their weapon and struck the individual, who died on scene, according to the release.
In the account shared by Selby’s family’s attorneys in December, Selby was bleeding from a chest wound and “stumbling in the opposite direction” when Glaser first shot him, then was unarmed on his hands and knees the second and third times Glaser shot him.
“Deputies could see the blood dripping from Selby’s wound and the fact that he was holding a kitchen knife in one hand, in a nonthreatening manner, and an apple in the other as he was exiting the home,” according to a Dec. 8 press release from the Law Offices of Harry M. Daniels, LLC, announcing the family’s lawsuit filing.
Two knives and three .40-caliber shell casings from the deputy’s weapon were found on the scene, according to the medical examiner’s four-page investigative report.
One knife was a 4-inch kitchen knife and one was a “three-inch folding knife, which was noted to have blood on the blade,” the report said.
In the July 5 statement pushing back on the autopsy’s conclusion, the attorneys said Selby even after being stabbed was able to follow the deputy’s orders to exit the house and put his hands up.
“In fact, Mr Selby was so coherent even after Deputy Glaser shot him once, that he felt the need to shoot him two more times and it was only then that Mr. Selby died laying on the ground choking on his own blood,” the release from Daniels’ office said.
In the redacted 911 call transcript the Sheriff’s Office released Oct. 16, the caller asked for an ambulance and confirmed three times that an ambulance was needed before asking for both ambulance and police.
