Prineville woman talks of being on phone with ‘best friend,’ hearing his deadly encounter with deputy

'I heard my best friend scream, and I had to walk away from it. It was really traumatizing.'

PRINEVILLE, Ore. (KTVZ) – Prineville resident Jennifer Hill says Nicholas Rodin “was my best friend for 20 years now” – but she also knew he was wanted on an arrest warrant. So when she heard his name on her police scanner Friday afternoon, she called to warn him – and ended up listening in on his fateful, fatal encounter with a Crook County sheriff’s deputy.

The deputy had ordered the 35-year-old Rodin to the ground, she learned, and he refused. Within minutes, Rodin was shot and killed, apparently by the deputy, who is now on administrative leave as the investigation gets underway.

“He had called me an hour before this incident started, on his way to my house” from a property on Maphet Road in the Juniper Canyon south of town where he’d been staying with his expectant wife, due next month, Hill recalled Sunday in a talk with NewsChannel 21. “He was just waiting for his ride,” walking down a dirt road to the mailboxes.

“About an hour had passed, I was sitting in my bedroom, heard ‘Rodin’ (roe-din) go over my police scanner (it’s pronounced “rod-in,” she said, “but they missay his last name like everybody else.”)

Rodin, who said stands nearly 7 feet tall, is a kind “teddy bear,” Hill said – but he’s had plenty of problems with the law over the years, and a criminal record to show for it.

“He did have a warrant for his arrest,” she said. So she went to call him and warn him, “If you’re around police, heads up.”

“By the time he answered my Facebook Messenger (audio call), the officer was already out of his vehicle, I believe, and had him at gunpoint, I believe, telling him to get his hands out of his pockets -- I presume to get the cellphone out ... and get his two hands on the ground.”

“And then he said, ‘I know, Jen, the cops are on me. The cop is harassing me. He has no reason to pull me over, no reason to stop me. … The cop is already telling me to get on the ground,’” and she heard the deputy's shouted command repeated several times.

“Nick responded, ‘For what? I didn’t do anything! You don’t have any reason to be around me now!’” Hill said she heard. “'You have no reason to approach me. I don’t know why you’re harassing me! Leave me alone!'” He also told the deputy he had a baby on the way.

At one point, she said, the deputy told him: “’I’m serious, dude. If you don’t get the ---- on the ground, I will blow your ------- head off your ------- shoulders. And I will not hesitate.’”

Hill said she heard the deputy call in for an “identifying character about him for the warrant – the deputy didn’t know Nick – to confirm the warrant.”

Rodin, whose parents live in Madras and Metolius, went to prison in 2014 for assaulting a fellow Jefferson County Jail inmate with a mop wringer. And there have been a list other crimes, dating back to 2008, when he was convicted of a car theft when he was 21, online court records show

Hill said she understood that as a result of some of the troublesome past run-ins, Rodin “has a ‘do not approach’ protocol type thing on his record. He got stabbed a year ago in Prineville, and when it went over the scanner he was at the hospital, they told officers not to approach him, because he was a dangerous subject.”

“So that officer should have never even had him at gunpoint when (Rodin) answered that phone to me,” she said. “He should have stayed back and waited for backup.”

“That’s what concerns me the most about that situation, that my best friend’s life was taken with me on the phone. He told me he loved me, and … he stuck the phone in his sweatshirt pocket, for me to hear and listen. Because we’ve had issues with police.”

Hill said she heard one gunshot. And much silence afterward, other than the scanner traffic.

“I heard the (deputy on the) scanner say ‘shots fired,’ and I heard silence in between it all. I heard my best friend scream, and I had to walk away from it. It was really traumatizing.”

“It was one of the hardest things I ever went through in my life. We’ve been through a lot together.”

“A lot of people know Nick, know he was a really nice guy – heart of gold. He’d take his shirt off his back and hand it to anybody. He had a huge heart. Somebody you can’t replace, that’s for sure.”