JEFFERSON COUNTY, Mo. — A Missouri man now in prison for a shooting he committed while under the influence of Ambien may soon become the subject of a research paper in forensic psychiatry.
His defense attorney says Missouri law isn’t written to contemplate cases like this because it is so rare. Attorney Gabe Crocker is acting co-counsel on the case.
It began on Oct. 12, 2019, when Trent Swick of Jefferson County went to bed after taking Zolpidem – the generic form of Ambien – just like he had done hundreds of times during the nine years he took the medication.
“The next thing he knows, he wakes up and he's in an orange jumpsuit in the Jefferson County jail,” said Neil Bruntrager, Swick’s attorney.
At some point after taking the pill and going to bed, Swick drove about 30 miles away from his house and opened fire on two cars along Highway 21, narrowly missing five people.
“He believes that he's being chased by go-carts that are green, go-carts that are being driven by what he describes as furries, meaning aliens who are wearing fur coats,” Bruntrager said.
When it happened, Swick was an insurance executive and father of three with no criminal history. And he wasn’t making sense to the responding officers.
“Their assumption was that he had either had too much to drink or that he had ingested some sort of narcotic,” Bruntrager said.
A toxicology report shows Zolpidem was the only thing in his system.
Sanofi, which makes the drug, has not responded to the I-Team’s request for comment.
That report was key for Dr. William Newman’s review of the case for the defense. He is a professor of forensic psychiatry at the University of Texas, Austin, and at the University of Oklahoma.
“It was only his prescription Ambien that was confirmed in his system and to my knowledge, there's not a published case like that in the United States,” Newman said.
Newman said he’s consulted on other cases involving the sleeping pill defense.
“One of the clear things to look for is whether there's what's called a rational ulterior motive, whether there's another explanation other than an Ambien-induced delirium that could explain the person's criminal actions,” he said.
He cited a hypothetical example to prove his point, saying if someone threatened their ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend and then shot the two of them out of anger the next day with text messages to support it, "that would be one where you'd be a little suspicious.
“In this instance, where Mr. Swick was shooting at total strangers and giving a bizarre account of thinking go-karts were chasing him, and people wearing furs immediately afterwards, there was no other explanation that I, or seemingly anybody else, could come up with as to why he would be doing that, a guy with no violent history, no criminal history who would just wake up and suddenly decide to start shooting people.”
Newman said he understands it is difficult for most to believe someone is capable of violence -- including shooting while driving inside a car -- without waking up. He said the best comparison would be when a person is so intoxicated, they blackout and don't remember their actions.
Swick spent more than two months in the Jefferson County jail and the rest of the four years it took for his case to go to court on house arrest.
Shortly before trial was to begin in late 2023, Swick pleaded guilty to reduced felony charges.
Bruntrager said going to trial was too big of a gamble because Missouri law doesn’t allow an “involuntary intoxication” defense in a case like this.
“There's no way in the world he could have understood that this drug would create this behavior for him, but under Missouri law, because he voluntarily took that pill, he can't make that claim,” Bruntrager said.
So, the court might not have let a jury hear the sleeping pill defense, and that could have landed Swick in prison for 35 years.
“That would have been really unfortunate for someone who really had no idea what he was doing at the time,” Newman said.
Jefferson County prosecutors did not oppose probation.
Judge Vic Melenbrink did.
He sentenced Swick to seven years in prison but offered an alternative that would allow Swick to get out on probation after a 120-day drug treatment program.
If he completes that program, he could be out in April – even though all he took was a sleeping pill as it was prescribed.