Widow looks for answers year after Hiawatha shootout

HIAWATHA — It has been a little more than a year since her husband was killed in a shootout at a Hiawatha mobile home park and Sarah Lathrop said she and her family are still looking for answers.

“It’s been very hard,” she said. “You know, my kids lost their father — they have to grow up now without their father — and I lost my husband.”

Joshua Lathrop was killed May 30, 2020, at the Sunset Village mobile home park when an argument involving five individuals including Lathrop escalated to a shootout.

After months of investigation, Linn County Attorney Jerry Vander Sanden announced in February that no one would be criminally charged in Lathrop's death, given Iowa's Stand Your Ground self-defense law. Vander Sanden ruled that Lathrop was the main aggressor in the fatal fight.

“Josh was the only one without a gun,” Sarah Lathrop said about that finding. “He was the only one that was killed. It doesn’t make sense that he’s the only person getting blamed for what happened.”

Following the release of the county attorney’s findings, she told The Gazette that she could not accept the decision, instead vowing to clear her husband’s name.

In the months that followed, Sarah Lathrop said she has filed multiple public records requests with the agencies that responded to the shooting scene that night — including the Hiawatha Police Department, the Cedar Rapids Police Department and the Iowa Department of Public Safety — to gather as many pieces of the investigation as possible.

“I just want to find out the truth,” she said. “Charging someone isn’t going to bring Josh back, but it would be nice to have the truth — especially since Jerry has blamed Josh this whole time, solely because of his blood alcohol level that night.”

The county attorney’s report, which also cited other evidence and witness accounts, indicated Lathrop’s blood alcohol level was 0.21 at the time he was killed.

The shootout

According to the County Attorney’s findings, officers were dispatched at 11:40 p.m. that day to the mobile home park, at 530 Robins Road, in response to more than 20 emergency calls.

In his findings, Vander Sanden indicated the altercation may have stemmed from Tyler and Terrone Bell — twin brothers — searching the mobile home park for two unknown men who allegedly attacked Tyler Bell's girlfriend. Witnesses said the brothers were searching the park, yelling they were “gonna get somebody” and Terrone Bell was visibly armed.

That night, Sarah said the couple was grilling in their driveway, maybe three lots from where her husband would later die, when Josh got a call from a neighbor letting him know about the Bell brothers. Sarah said her husband did maintenance around the park so it was not unusual for neighbors to call him for help.

In his report, Vander Sanden said witnesses described Lathrop as drunk and “in the mood for a fight” when he confronted Terrone Bell. The report stated Josh blocked Bell’s path, demanded to know what he was doing and why he was armed and ordered him to leave.

By then, a small crowd — including park residents Chad Harris and Truman Harris, both armed — had gathered. Josh Lathrop then allegedly punched Terrone Bell in the face, knocking him backward, and the shooting started, according to the report.

Lathrop was pronounced dead at the scene, the report said, while Terrone Bell, Tyler Bell and Chad Harris each suffered multiple gunshot wounds. In his report, Vander Sanden said Lathrop's actions “ignited a larger conflict.”

“He deliberately confronted a person he knew to be armed, prevented that person from peacefully leaving the scene of the conflict and assaulted him by striking him in the face,” the county attorney ruled.

Reports from the scene

Sarah Lathrop said police reports contradict that.

In an incident report written by Hiawatha Police Officer Chad Breidinger, who was one of the first dispatched to the scene that night, he writes that Truman Harris told him Josh Lathrop was unarmed and “trying to make (Terrone Bell) leave.”

Harris told the officer that Bell “got in Josh Lathrop’s face,” and the two men “got into scrap,” according to the report. That’s when Tyler Bell came running up and “Terrone Bell pulled out his gun and shot Lathrop,” Harris said, according to the police report.

Another witness, who was identified in the report as the “original caller to 911,” told Breidinger that “Joshua went up to Terrone Bell and asked what the problem was, then Terrone ‘unloads it on Josh.’”

Sarah Lathrop said those two accounts indicate her husband was not the main aggressor.

“These two brothers come into the trailer court, and they are walking around with guns and yelling very loudly — to the point that neighbors a half a block away are concerned — that they were going to get someone,” She said. “ … How is that not seen as aggression?”

The couple’s 16-year-old daughter, who was with Josh until moments before he was shot, was one of the witnesses but investigators never spoke to her, the widow said.

Missing Josh

The emotional wounds of the loss still feel fresh.

“Days like today, when it’s sunny and warm outside, get me,” Sarah Lathrop said. “That’s when I start thinking about what we’d be doing — how we’d probably be riding his motorcycle or hiking with the kids.”

Sarah said she and Josh had been together roughly 20 years.

“We got together the summer before I went into ninth grade and he was going into eighth grade,” she said. “I didn’t know he was going into eighth grade or maybe we wouldn’t have gotten together, because at that age, a high schooler dating a middle-schooler, that’s just not cool at all.”

They grew up together, she said.

“He lived across the street, so our whole families knew each other. His big brother and my big brother were, and still are, like best friends.”

Life without her husband is a struggle for her and their four kids — ages 4, 7, 16 and 17 — she said.

“It's hard on me, but I worry mostly of the kids and how hard this is for them,” she said. “And the youngest ones don’t really understand, they just know their dad is gone, and they miss him. They just want their dad.”

Comments: (319) 398-8238; kat.russell@thegazette.com.