"This is absolutely the stupidest move I've ever seen in law enforcement," says Weeks. "We have nationally accredited policies that govern everything we do. What we think happened is that we have a particular supervisor who made a very unwise decision. This is not the fault of those two, younger officers. They did what they were told."

The department has offered to pay for counseling for officers Day and Shedran should they request it.

Weeks would not give the name of the supervisor who gave the final authorization for the raid, but said that that person is also on paid administrative leave and will likely be severely reprimanded -- possibly fired -- once TBI finishes its investigation, probably by the end of this month.

The police contend that Adams shot at officers first. Investigators cut out a large chunk from one of the walls of the home as proof that bullets were fired from a sawed-off shotgun.

"We are not trying to make excuses for what happened," Weeks said. "But I can tell you that we did I.D. ourselves and maybe they got confused. And I know that we were reacting to him shooting at us. But obviously, this wouldn't have happened if we had not been in the man's home."

The supervisor is largely to blame, says Weeks, for violating a primary rule of keeping surveillance: Never lose sight of your suspect. In this case, the Lebanon police had lost sight of their informant both in person and on camera. The two houses on Joseph Street look very similar, so stringing together snippets of surveillance footage could not guarantee that what the cops had captured on film was in fact their target drug house.

"We should have blown that warrant off and come back later to start the surveillance over," says Weeks. "We lost sight of our informant and that should never ever occur. I don't believe this; we have procedures, precautions we take so that this kind of thing does not happen."

But hindsight offers little comfort to many people who knew Adams. And it means very little to his wife, who has been meeting with lawyers over the past week. Family members have been by her side nonstop while she fields questions from the press and those involved with the incident. Her niece says that Loraine plans to eventually speak to the media, but is too distraught now. The widow has recently gone back to working as a part-time nurse, her niece added, to keep "her mind distracted from all the pain."

Former county commissioner and retired insurance agent Natchell Palmer says he doesn't care what the Lebanon police say about his best friend's death.

"We were closer than close and they murdered my best friend," Palmer said. "And whoever killed him needs to be tried for that."

The day that Adams was killed, both men had spent the morning and evening together talking about the joys of retirement.

"We were just taking it easy, joking about getting old," Palmer recalled. "He was a Christian man, sweet as he could be. Not violent at all. I don't think he even owned a gun, but if he did, then he was protecting his house."

Lebanon District Attorney General Tommy Thompson is waiting for TBI to decide whether to files criminal charges against the police department and individual officers. If the report concludes that Adams fired first at the officers, the officers involved in the raid will not be held criminally liable, says assistant district attorney Bobby Hibbett. However, they could be prosecuted for civil offenses such as breaking and entering.

"We're in frequent communication with the family," Hibbett said. "Obviously, it's a great concern to us that Mr. Adams' wife understand what's happening legally. We're just feeling our way through it. I've worked in the D.A.'s office for 12 years, I know this city pretty well. Nothing like this has ever happened before."

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