Hancock deputy resigns after domestic violence arrest. Here’s what the report says.
A Hancock County sheriff’s deputy has resigned after his arrest for allegedly assaulting a live-in girlfriend in a domestic violence case.
Deputy Colin Freeman, 38, of Perkinston, submitted a resignation letter last week after the Sun Herald started collecting records and conducting interviews about his Aug. 8 arrest on a misdemeanor charge of domestic violence by simple assault, Sheriff Ricky Adam said.
Freeman had served as a K-9 handler, narcotics deputy and patrol officer.
“He was a good guy, but we don’t put up with that,” Adam said. “If they are going to do stuff like that, they are not going to work for us. They are going to be terminated or resign or whatever.”
The sheriff said that Freeman had been suspended the day of his arrest but was still collecting pay from his accrued time off.
“Personally, I liked him, but when it comes to business, it’s business,” Adam said.
Freeman’s arrest happened after deputies responded to a 911 cal shortly before 10 p.m. at the home he shared at the time with the victim, identified in the reports as a sheriff’s employee.
When 911 dispatchers got the call, they could hear the veteran deputy allegedly yelling at the woman to “get the (expletive) out of his house,” the report says.
Freeman had left home by the time deputies got there.
He took off after the woman told him she had gotten through to 911, the reports say.
He thought she was cheating on him
The victim told deputies the assault happened when a drunk Freeman got mad at her because he thought she was cheating on him.
It all started, the report said, in the hours after the woman left her job early to get everything ready for a birthday party the couple would later attend that day for one of her children, ages 3 and 4.
After the woman got everything ready for the party, the reports say, she met Freeman at McLeod Park. She told deputies he was already drunk when she met him there.
Afterward, the pair attended the child’s birthday party, but Freeman was mad because he had seen a text she had sent to a male friend saying she loved him.
The woman said she tried to explain that the man she had messaged was a friend, but Freeman didn’t believe her, the report says.
She got back to the home first with her two daughters and told deputies she was in the process of trying to bathe one of the girls, who had gotten sick to her stomach, when Freeman got back to the house.
The woman was on the phone with her aunt and still in the bathroom with her daughters when Freeman allegedly started banging on the bathroom door and yelling for her to get her belongings and get out of his house.
The woman’s aunt told her to dial 911.
Kicking in a bathroom door
The woman told deputies she was attempting to make a 911 call when Freeman allegedly kicked in the bathroom door and batted the phone out of her hand.
At that point, the report said, Freeman allegedly “shoved her backward in what she believed was an attempt to shove her into the bathtub,” the report said.
She fell backward and hit the corner of a countertop, “leaving a large red mark on the lower right side of her back,” the report said.
Freeman, she told deputies, went back outside at that point and started throwing her belongings out of a pickup truck he had bought for her.
She said she took that time to dial 911 and was on the phone when she saw Freeman start to head back inside and she locked herself in a bedroom.
She told deputies Freeman forced his way into the bedroom but then left home after she told him she had gotten a call through to 911.
Charging at a deputy, and a Taser
Freeman wasn’t home when deputies got to the scene.
One of the deputies, identified in the report as Deputy J. Zugg, called Freeman’s phone, but he didn’t answer at first.
The second time Zugg called, an angry Freeman answered to ask the deputy what he wanted.
The deputy told Freeman he needed to talk to him about what had happened to get his version of events.
“She’s cheating on me,” Freeman said. “I confronted her about it, and she began acting like a b----,”
The deputy asked Freeman to tell him where he was, but Freeman said he wasn’t telling him, and again asked the deputy why he was calling.
Again, the deputy told Freeman he needed to get his version of events.
Freeman told the deputy he had nothing more to say, but the deputy told Freeman that his commander was on the way to his home and that he needed to come back. Freeman, the report said, hung up.
When the commander arrived, Zugg and another deputy were talking to the woman about the alleged assault when Freeman walked in through a side door.
“Are y’all done? Can you get the (expletive) out of the residence now?” Freeman asked before heading back outside.
Two deputies followed Freeman outside to talk to him, but Freeman got “more irate,” refused to talk, and started walking away.
Deputies ordered Freeman to stop, but he ignored the commands, and one of the responding deputies pulled out his Taser.
Freeman then started to charge at the deputy with the Taser, the report said, before another deputy intervened and managed to stop Freeman.
Deputies repeatedly tried to get Freeman’s side of the story, the report said, but he just kept saying, “it didn’t matter; he was going to lose everything.”
Freeman refused to follow commands when the responding deputies told him to put his hands behind his back because he was under arrest, the report said.
In the end, it took three deputies to wrestle Freeman to the ground to get him into handcuffs.
Freeman was booked at the Hancock County jail at 10:13 p.m. Aug. 8 and released on a $500 signature bond.
A veteran officer and K-9 handler
In February 2016, the Sun Herald featured a report on Freeman after a pit bull attacked him and his then K-9 partner, Ringo.
The attack happened after Freeman and Ringo served an arrest warrant at a home in the White Cypress community, east of Picayune.
Freeman ended up shooting and injuring the pit bull after it had bitten him on the leg and later latched onto Ringo’s neck.
The Sheriff’s Department’s website still features Freeman as one of its K-9 handlers.
Freeman has a Dec. 7 trial date in Hancock County Justice Court.
If convicted, he could face a fine of up to $500 and or up to six months in jail or both.
This story was originally published October 14, 2021 at 5:50 AM.
