ST. GEORGE — The last time Dean Gladman talked to his father by phone, he told him he was coming back into town and would take his son, wife and grandchildren to dinner that Friday.
His dad never made it to that dinner. Two days before, on Aug. 3, Raymond Gladman, known as “Ray” by his family and friends, died at the age of 83 after a confrontation with St. George Police and Utah Highway Patrol at the Utah Port of Entry along northbound Interstate 15. As the investigation into the incident continues, Dean Gladman talked to St. George News about his father.
The younger Gladman said his father had been diagnosed with dementia and was in the process of moving back from Sedona, Arizona, to be near him and his family in Bellingham, Washington.
“He was on his way to my house,” he said.
Gladman said he questioned the amount of force used in the confrontation, which included a SWAT team and dozens of police officers after a report that his father was driving erratically and had a gun.
“It just didn’t seem right,” he said. “Everything that happened, I mean, it seemed kind of overboard and very extreme. He wasn’t a violent person. He didn’t have any hostages. There was not public people around.”
Gladman, who manages a Walgreens store in Bellingham, said his father tried calling him about 10 minutes before he died and left a message with a voice that was jovial.
“He didn’t get ahold of me because I was working, but he left a message just kinda joking around saying, ‘Oh, I didn’t want to talk to your cell phone. I wanted to talk to you,’” Gladman said of the message left by his father.
At the time Raymond Gladman was calling his son, video shot by several surveillance cameras at the Port of Entry obtained by St. George News shows SWAT team members moving in. He died minutes later after police said Gladman was seen exiting the vehicle with a gun in hand.
Dean Gladman said he feels his father was deprived of a dignified sunset of a life, which included being a military veteran, a longtime business executive and a husband in a nearly 52-year marriage that ended with his wife’s passing of ovarian cancer in 2016.
“He cared about his family. He loved his wife,” Dean Gladman said of his father.
“He just wanted to finish his time being around his family. He’s not going to have that now. It was a really crappy way to go out.”
Investigation continues
The Washington County Critical Incident Task Force, which looks into incidents involving police officers shooting suspects, is continuing its investigation into whether the shooting by the St. George Police officer was proper.
Washington County Attorney Eric Clarke told St. George News the investigation is expected to conclude within days.
The incident began when a white vehicle was seen driving “up and down” the Port of Entry shortly after 7 a.m., according to the account of St. George Police included in a search warrant of the vehicle granted by the 5th District Court.
Police said Raymond Gladman told port workers he was trying to get to Seattle but would not provide his name because he said, “he didn’t trust anyone.”
When Utah Highway Patrol officers arrived, they said they observed Gladman with a gun in hand – at times pointing it at his head. St. George Police was called as back-up and 12 police vehicles and a SWAT unit were observed arriving shortly after.
A police negotiator was seen negotiating with Gladman for about 45 minutes before Gladman started to exit the vehicle. Police said he had the gun in his hand.
According to the warrant, a St. George Police officer determined the weapon was being pointed at other officers and opened fire.
Raymond Gladman was declared dead at the scene. His son has been told he died of a single wound to the head.
In the ensuing search of the vehicle, a handgun and a rifle were found along with ammunition.
St. George News has since obtained video shot by several surveillance cameras at the Port of Entry during the incident.
Surveillance footage shows the car circling the Port, then stopping and Gladman is seen talking with two port workers who provided Gladman with some kind of informational pamphlet. The workers were seen laughing while in close contact and talking with Gladman.
The video then shows first the highway patrolmen approaching with guns on holsters, then backing off. That was followed by the deployment of dozens of St. George Police officers and SWAT team members. At about 8:30 a.m. Dean Gladman says his father was calling him and left a message.
At 8:39 a.m., Raymond Gladman is seen from a camera at a distance exiting the vehicle. Video from all eight cameras then stops for two to 10 minutes. During that time, the shooting took place.
Utah Department of Transportation officials said the video stopped because the cameras stop recording when there is no movement. On some of the cameras that were in rooms empty of any people, there was no movement for several minutes before the video cuts out.
When the video resumes, some people and objects are in different positions on some of the camera views, and Gladman is seen slumped against the center console of his vehicle.
Attempts by St. George News to obtain video from officer body cameras through open records laws have been rejected by St. George Police, citing the ongoing investigation.
Trying to come home
Dean Gladman said his father was on his third back-and-forth trip, 22 hours of driving each way – between Arizona and Northern Washington. He was moving back after a few years in the Grand Canyon state.
“He just sold his house in Sedona, maybe a month or so before this happened,” he said. “And he has a storage unit down in Sedona. So he’s kind of going back and forth to his stuff. He was just too far from all of us and wanted to be around his kids and his grandkids. So he was going to buy a place around up here.”
Gladman said the incident at the Port of Entry also wasn’t his first encounter with authorities during the back-and-forth trips.
The week before his father’s death, when he was going down to Arizona before coming back up, his father was pulled over by the Utah Highway Patrol somewhere in Utah, though he said he doesn’t know where.
“I get a call from the Utah state police saying that they had my father in some town,” he said. “I don’t know what it was, and he was just kinda confused. He didn’t know where he was or anything. They took him to the hospital to check him out and his blood sugar was high. And he was … he was just confused. And then they let him go. And this is the week before.”
As for the weapons police found, Gladman said his father didn’t keep guns in the house when he was growing up, but said his father told him in recent years that he bought a gun for security on the many road trips he liked to take.
“He bought a gun and he kept it in his car for protection,” he said. “He liked to travel around and he would stop at rest stops and sleep. I guess his car was broken into a couple years ago and he lost (the gun). I didn’t know he bought another one.”
From Britain to the states
Gladman said his father had been on the move a lot in his life.
He was born in the London suburb of Greenwich and spent his first five years on Burney Street, a block from the observatory that marks the Prime Meridian and where Greenwich Mean Time is determined, Raymond Gladman wrote in an account on his Facebook page.
Just before he turned 5, Gladman and his family moved about 3 miles south to the London district of Eltham. A few weeks later back on Burney Street, a Nazi Germany V-1 cruise missile destroyed the homes on the street, including the one the Gladmans had moved out of, and killing 12, according to historical records.
In London, sometime after he had enlisted in the military, Gladman met the woman he called a “stunner:” Diane Robinson. She became Mrs. Gladman when the two married in July 1962.
Shortly later, the two emigrated to the United States. They would live from coast to coast, including Florida, Montana, Idaho and Arizona, but much of their years were spent in the Seattle area. They were naturalized American citizens, but both always also maintained their British citizenship.
“They wanted to retain the citizenship and they had that all their whole lives,” Dean Gladman said of his parents.
Joining Diebold Incorporated in 1964, Gladman rose up the ranks in the 1970s when it was mainly a supplier of safes and bank equipment as well as one of the first manufacturers of ATMs. By the end of the decade, he was tasked with managing all Diebold operations in the northwest area of Seattle.
In the late 1980s, after Raymond had briefly retired, the Gladmans moved to Coral Springs, Florida, and according to state of Florida records, started a joint housekeeping business called Gladmans General Cleaning Service Inc. Within two years, the business folded.
In April 2016, Diane Gladman died of ovarian cancer. Three years later, Raymond Gladman continued to express grief for her in social media posts. He is among more than 38,000 defendants, according to the New York Times, who is part of an ongoing lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson claiming their baby powder product was contaminated with asbestos and caused cancer.
“We just lost my mom, what, six years ago?” Dean Gladman said. “So he was kind of by himself. You lose your wife after 50-something years, you’re going to be a little bit distraught. But it was not to the point where it was driving him crazy or anything.”
When asked what he wanted people to know about his dad, Gladman said he wasn’t a bad person.
“He was a good father, good grandfather,” he said. “He cared about all of us and his grandkids.”
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