After a violent breakup with her boyfriend, Bobbie Sapp said she went to sleep in her Winter Park home nearly five years ago with a semi-automatic pistol in her hand and another firearm tucked behind her leg.

When Sapp woke up on Sept. 17, 2017, three Winter Park police officers surrounded her bed with guns drawn. During the encounter, Sgt. Jeffrey Marcum shot Sapp, now 51, in her right shoulder, according to a federal lawsuit she filed against the agency alleging excessive force.

Winter Park Police Department spokesperson Lt. Lisa Suepat said in an email Friday that the agency is “unable to comment on ongoing litigation.”

Sapp was arrested on charges of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, aggravated assault and resisting an officer with violence, an affidavit said.

Records show the Orange-Osceola State Attorney’s Office eventually dropped the attempted murder charges before Sapp’s case went to trial. An Orange County jury acquitted Sapp of all charges on April 9, 2021.

Sapp, who is represented by law firm Morgan & Morgan, declined to be interviewed by the Orlando Sentinel. Her lawyer Farnita Saunders Hill, did not respond to a request for comment.

Officers told Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigators Sapp’s ex-boyfriend Dean Johnson called 911 and requested a welfare check, telling the dispatcher that Sapp threatened suicide the night before.

Sapp said in court records that she retrieved the weapons from her gun safe earlier that morning because Johnson banged on the doors and windows of her home. Her recent breakup with Johnson was violent, she said in court records, and he allegedly pushed her into a wall during an argument.

Sapp said she turned off her cell phone, took a sedative and two prescribed Xanax pills then went to sleep.

She didn’t answer the door of her Buckingham Road home when officers knocked or phone calls made by the 911 operator, the report said, so Lt. John Bologna leaned in through a back window and unlatched the door from the inside with a coat hanger.

In the lawsuit, Hill wrote that Winter Park officers “were not investigating a crime, they did not have a warrant to search [Sapp’s home] or enter to make an arrest and they did not have any basis to believe that entry into the home was necessary.”

Sapp and the police department dispute what happened next.

There is no body-worn camera footage of the 2017 incident. Winter Park police officers began wearing the recording devices in June 2020.

Hill wrote that Sapp didn’t grab a gun or threaten the officers. She was groggy from the medications, wasn’t wearing her glasses and couldn’t see when the officers entered her bedroom because she is “legally blind without them,” the suit said.

Marcum didn’t remember announcing “police” after Sapp was spotted in her bedroom, he told FDLE investigators, but Sapp “never questioned who they were or said anything other than ‘no’ to the command to show her left hand,” the state agency’s report said.

Bologna deployed a Taser, the report said, but it “did not affect Sapp.”

According to the arrest affidavit, Sapp raised a handgun toward officers and ignored pleas to drop the weapon. Marcum told FDLE investigators that he shot Sapp because he was “scared to death” and feared for the safety of his fellow officers.

“I had no choice, I had to protect myself and them,” Marcum said.

The State Attorney’s Office declined to file criminal charges against Marcum for the shooting. In a letter to WPPD, prosecutors wrote that Marcum’s actions “were in response to what he reasonably perceived as a deadly threat.”

But Hill argues in court documents that the officers “created any dangers that existed” when they broke into Sapp’s home based on statements from Johnson. Marcum used excessive force, Hill said, and officers Bologna, Jessica Eller and Daniel Pushor failed to intervene.

Sapp is seeking unspecified monetary damages for her injury and restitution for her employment losses when she was incarcerated for nearly six months in Orange County before the trial.

WPPD Officer Jason Bracknell told FDLE investigators he heard Sapp mutter several statements during the ambulance ride to Orlando Regional Medical Center, where she underwent surgery.

“I would’ve never done that. I would’ve never hurt anybody,” Sapp said, according to Bracknell. “I had to sleep with my gun. [Johnson] was going to come back.”