A routine eviction call turned into a nightmare Friday morning in Indian River County, Fla., when bullets flew inside a quiet gated neighborhood. Deputy Terri Sweeting-Mashkow, a 25-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Office, was fatally shot while serving an eviction notice. Two others—a second deputy and a locksmith—were also wounded, and the man they were evicting is now in critical condition in surgery.
The confrontation happened at 1137 Governor’s Way in the Bermuda Club community near Vero Beach. Deputies and a locksmith had entered the home of 37-year-old Michael Halberstam, at the request of his mother, when he suddenly pulled a gun and opened fire, according to Indian River County Sheriff Eric Flowers.
Deputy Mashkow, 47, was struck and died inside the entryway. Sheriff Flowers described her as “an amazing deputy, she had a beautiful heart,” and said her loss will be deeply felt by everyone she served with.
Another deputy, Florentino “Tino” Arizpe, was shot in the shoulder and taken to HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital in Fort Pierce, where he is expected to recover. A locksmith — whose name has not been released — was also critically injured and is undergoing surgery.
According to Sheriff Flowers, deputies returned fire, striking Halberstam multiple times. He, too, is in surgery and listed in critical condition. Despite the violence, Flowers said he never saw this coming — Halberstam “was not someone on our radar” and there was nothing about the eviction service that indicated an elevated threat.
Still, the situation had been tense: over the past month, the Sheriff’s Office says they received seven calls from the home, nearly all from Halberstam’s mother. And while the suspect legally possessed a firearm, his past raised red flags: he’d recently been fired from UPS, had a 2006 narcotics charge and a 2015 misdemeanor assault on his record, and allegedly made troubling posts online about the Sheriff’s Office.
Deputy Mashkow began her career decades ago as a dispatcher and then moved to patrol before joining the civil-legal process unit in 2023. Her death marks the second line-of-duty death in the 100-year history of the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office.
The tragedy sent shockwaves through the community. Local and state law enforcement agencies offered condolences, calling Mashkow’s sacrifice heartbreaking. For Sheriff Flowers, the hardest part was breaking the news to colleagues and family: “Having to call her mom today, having to let her husband know … absolutely the worst part of being a law enforcement leader.”
Investigators from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have joined the probe, and the Sheriff’s Office says they’ll release more information as it becomes available.