PRINEVILLE — The woman on the other end of LeeAnne Trent’s phone was frantic, screaming that Trent’s son had just been shot by a Crook County sheriff’s deputy. But then it got worse for Trent, who sat in her Oklahoma home as the woman described the final moments for Nick Rodin, who lay dying in a county road.

“She’s calling me, and she’s screaming because she can hear Nick screaming and I can hear her screaming, and I’m on the other phone while my son is dying,” Trent told The Bulletin. “I heard it all.”

The shooting Feb. 4 has left Trent and her family searching for answers and trying to reconcile Rodin’s troubled life with his violent death.

Trent’s son had a long criminal record in Central Oregon, severe mental health issues and had survived a brutal stabbing in March. But he didn’t deserve to die the way he did, Trent said.

“I want answers,” Trent said, “because it is unfair. They can’t just let this happen and then not tell a mother why he was taken.”

Rodin, 35, was shot on Feb. 4 at around 1:40 p.m. by a sheriff’s deputy who has since been placed on administrative leave. Dan Wendel, the acting Crook County District Attorney, has said little on the investigation now underway, but promised transparency at a later date.

The woman who called Rodin’s mother was his longtime friend, Jennifer Hill. She had heard Rodin’s name over a police scanner, and called her friend to share the information. They were on the phone during Rodin’s entire encounter with the sheriff’s deputy, Hill said.

The deputy approached Rodin alone and at some point during the confrontation, drew his weapon and ordered Rodin to show his hands, Hill said.

“I heard one shot. It was a lethal shot to kill,” Hill said. “After the shot was fired, it was within two minutes and he was dead. I heard him scream. I heard him take his last breath and that was that.”

Rodin was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 14 and struggled with his mental health for most of his life. His family and friends said it is common knowledge among local law enforcement officers in Prineville that Rodin suffered from mental illness, and the common procedure was to approach him with caution.

Rodin’s criminal record goes back to 2008, and includes convictions for driving under the influence, possession of illegal drugs and second-degree assault, court records filed in Crook, Jefferson, Deschutes, and Lincoln counties show.

At one point, while in jail in Crook County in April of 2012, Rodin tried to commit suicide two times. He suffered from crippling depression and hallucinations, prompting his appointed counsel to report to the court that Rodin was unfit to continue with criminal proceedings, court records show.

While in the Jefferson County Jail in November 2014, Rodin was convicted of assaulting his cellmate with a mop ringer and then sentenced to nearly six years in prison.

While in prison, Rodin got a tattoo of a swastika on his hand. The tattoo appeared in one of his Facebook photos that has since been taken down after the Central Oregon Peacekeepers brought it to the public’s attention via social media.

The Peacekeepers have called for an investigation into the shooting but have called off a protest previously scheduled to take place in Prineville.

Both Trent and Rodin’s younger half-brother Tommy Lamance said Rodin got the swastika tattoo in prison as a survival mechanism. It kept him from being beaten or stabbed, they said.

“That was an old tattoo. When you are in prison, you are obligated to live a certain way,” Trent said of her son’s tattoo. “It’s a persona.”

Trent said after her son got out of prison, he tried to scrub off his swastika tattoo. However, it was somewhat still visible on his hand in his Facebook photo.

Lamance said his half brother was not a racist. And because Rodin was 6-foot-7-inches tall, inmates wanted to fight with him all the time, Lamance said.

“I don’t care if he had a swastika tattooed on his forehead, none of this is right,” Lamance said. “This has nothing to do with his life. And his personality. Everyone doesn’t know Nick like we know Nick, and who he was. They are just looking at what they can see and judging him off of what they can see. They don’t know him.”

After his release from prison, Rodin was also at the center of an attempted murder case last year after he was stabbed five times by a friend he encountered at Ochoco Plaza while buying a pizza with his fiancé. He would survive but suffered life-threatening injuries that required him being airlifted to St. Charles Bend.

After his most recent release from prison, Rodin’s friends and family said he had reformed himself quite a bit. While he remained on a number of medications for his mental health condition, he was largely living a sober, productive lifestyle working for his family’s painting company.

And his fiancé was pregnant. The baby is due next month.

Rodin’s body remained on Southeast Maphet Road south of Prineville for nearly nine hours, said Lamance, who went to the scene after hearing the news. Lamance said he and his family were not allowed to get close to inspect Rodin’s body.

Hill said she went to find Rodin, too, and recognized his white Nike sneakers poking out from under the sheet police used to cover his body. Rodin’s feet were sticking out because he was too big, Hill recalled.

The investigation into the police-involved shooting has been turned over to the Central Oregon Major Incident Team, the Crook County Sheriff’s Office said in a press release last week. The Crook County District Attorney’s office and the Oregon State Police remain the leading agencies taking charge.

“We are in the midst of an investigation of the events of Friday afternoon, and the most important thing at this point is the integrity of this investigation,” said Wendel, the acting district attorney. “At some point there will be transparency and the facts will be released, but at this point I have no further comments.”

Wendel said he has dealt with police-involved shooting investigations in the past, and that the end goal is always to determine whether or not lethal action was justified. Wendel made it clear that the district attorney’s office remains an independent investigatory body that will follow standard procedure.

“The DA is an independently elected official,” Wendel added. “The DA doesn’t report to the sheriff… the state police does not report to the sheriff.”

“Everything is proceeding according to law and policy as it is supposed to.”