Escambia County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Jeremy Cassady, 50, passed away last week, after a long battle with cancer that his family and colleagues believe was connected to his line-of-duty injuries and subsequent medical complications.
Background: On Oct. 29, 2010, Deputies Jeremy Cassady, Chad Brown and Sam Parker responded to the home invasion call in a neighborhood off Scenic Highway about Interstate 10. Upon arrival, they heard screaming. Forcing their way into the home, they discovered Phillip Monier, who immediately opened fire, using his ex-girlfriend, Jackie Rosenbloom, as a shield.
During the close-range gunfire exchange, the deputies and the hostage suffered gunshot wounds. Monier dragged Rosenbloom into the bathroom and turned on the faucets to flood the home. Cassady was critically wounded. Deputy Josh Hendershott entered the home after hearing the shots, without knowing where the gunman was located, and pulled the deputy outside. The SWAT Team arrived, and a hostage negotiator convinced Monier to put the gun down. The man dropped the gun in the toilet and turned himself in.
After being guilty of four counts of attempted murder, along with aggravated assault and other related charges, Monier was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences. He is confined in the Maddison Correctional Institute.
- Cassady underwent a kidney and pancreas transplant. He later suffered kidney failure again, requiring dialysis at home. Cassady took a medical retirement from the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office in October 2012. His family has stated that the oral throat cancer that claimed his life in 2025 was linked to the anti-rejection medication he had needed after his transplant.
Dan McFaul, the managing partner of Ballard Partners’ Washington, D.C. office and the chief of staff of former Congressman Jeff Miller, was a lifelong friend of Jeremy Cassidy. He met Jeremy when his family moved to Pensacola in the seventies. Both dads were in law enforcement—Dan’s father an FBI agent, Jeremy’s father a Pensacola Police sergeant —and the families became friends.
“I met Jeremy and his two sisters in the late seventies, and I spent a good portion of my childhood and my teenage years before Jeremy and I went off to college,” Dan shared. “We spent a lot of time together with our families and individually, so we continued our friendship throughout our lives. We became text buddies when that technology came around, but he was a true friend, and I really miss him. It was a really sad day when I learned he passed.”
He said, “Jeremy loved the outdoors. He was a big hunter, fisherman, camper, hiker, swimmer, you name it. If it was outside, he was on board.”
Dan admired his friend’s fearlessness. “Fear was just not in Jeremy’s vernacular. I can remember several occasions where, like, ‘Hey, let’s jump off this cliff.’ And then, before anybody looks, Jeremy’s splash, there he is. He’s jumped off the cliff already, and it wasn’t in this reckless, ‘Hey, hold my beer type of situation.’ He just had no fear. He was just a very brave person. Always was from when he was a kid.”
- He shared another story about Jeremy. “I can remember a little later, we were out fishing in the East Bay for redfish. The tides started going out, and we came up on a bed of oysters. I remember stopping and bending over and looking and say, ‘Hey, you think these are safe to eat?’ And I look up, and he’s already slurping one out of the half shell. And he looked at me after he finished; he said, ‘You mean without a cocktail sauce?’ And I said, ‘No, that’s not what I meant. But yeah, I guess it’s safe to eat.'”
Dan said that Jeremy never talked about the October 2010 incident, but Dan did ask him about it a couple of years ago:
