Trooper Down! (9 page)

I thought, “This is real good. Here I am in a North Carolina
patrol car going through Myrtle Beach at 90 mph, traffic all over the place,”

We got just out of North Myrtle Beach and there was a bypass. I saw two South Carolina troopers sitting there and I thought, “Something's gonna happen.”

In a minute, something did. They pulled their patrol cars out in front of that boy and it was all over with.

When we got downtown, they asked the boy if he wanted to stay at the Myrtle Beach jail or go back to North Carolina with me. He said, “Back to North Carolina,
please.
”

*

I still think most people are decent and honest. But I'm not as trusting as I once was.

That January day I was supposed to get off duty at 4:00
P.M. 
A city policeman was at the town square and I stopped to talk with him. Then someone called and said there was a problem across town. A boy was causing trouble. That's all they told us.

We were expecting to find a fourteen-year-old kid, but when we got there, we found a forty-year-old man with a knife in his hand.

As it turned out, I knew the guy, and thought I could talk to him. He was an intelligent person who had suffered a nervous breakdown, lost his job, and was having a lot of problems. In all the years I'd known him, he had never hurt anyone.

I walked up behind him as he was beating on the police officer's window—with the officer still in the car. As I approached, he heard me and wheeled around. I backed up, trying to calm him down, but he lunged at me, slashing hack and forth with the knife. He didn't seem to recognize me.

“Come on, you son of a bitch,” he said, “I'm gonna kill you!”

I drew my gun and started to shoot, but there were so many people around I was afraid a .357 bullet would go through him and strike somebody else. So I put the gun back in my holster.

I had forgotten to pick up my flashlight or nightstick and had no other weapon on hand. The police officer jumped out of his car and I called to him, “Hurry! Hand me something!”

The officer grabbed a broom from the trunk of his car and threw it to me. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.

The man lunged at me again and I struck him with the broom.
I thought he had missed me, but he hit my arm.

I seized him, put him on the ground, and started to cuff him. But I had no strength in my arm. I looked down and saw blood squirting from my jacket. Someone helped me get the cuffs on him and arrest him.

By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two pints of blood. As a result of the incident, I was out of work two months. Today, I still have trouble with my arm. The guy who cut me is in a mental institution.

I thought I knew him and could predict what he would do. But I didn't. It changed my attitude towards people. Now, if something similar were to happen, I wouldn't hesitate to shoot.

*

It was about 2:00
A.M. 
on a Saturday in Lincoln County. I saw a tractor trailer come out of a little side road and wondered, “What is a tractor trailer doing here?” When you “trooper” in a small county, you get to know everybody's husband, wife, kids, and dogs. I knew nobody who lived there was a trucker, so I got the tag number and had the communications center check it for me.

The truck came back from a different location than the trailer and that made me more curious. An ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission) officer happened to be around and he said, “I don't know about the tractor but that trailer belongs to some liquor boys. Do you want to go with me and we'll look around? We may find a still.”

I checked off, changed clothes, and rode with him to a place where we parked and just sat, waiting. At daylight we heard a noise. We got out, looked around, and located this old outbuilding in the middle of a pine thicket. It was made out of tin put on two-by-fours and nailed up, supposed to be disguised as a hay barn. We went inside, moved some of the hay around, and found a trapdoor. It was a false floor, with a tunnel inside and an underground still. They had the mash running out through vents to a small creek. No one was around. So we just left everything as it was.

The next afternoon Frank called me and said, “You want to go back with us tonight? We've got some federal and state boys coming too.”

About 1:00
A.M. 
we walked in there and surrounded the place.
They had backed the truck in and were loading gallon milk jugs filled with moonshine. We arrested six people. When we came in, one of them said, “Got us. How'd ya know where we were?” That's all the resistance we encountered. You don't generally get any trouble out of those people. All they wanna do is make a few bucks.

*

I stopped a pickup truck one time after a guy tried to drive across a six-lane highway. I chased him a pretty good ways, then he cut off into the woods. We both jumped out of our cars and I ran after him until I reached the end of a thirty-two-foot tunnel where I fell and lost him. I had to go to the hospital for treatment, but after I was released I went back to look for him. Never did find him.

The next morning, I got a call saying someone had found him in the woods. The man had run himself to death, just fell over dead. The NAACP investigated it because they claimed I had killed him, beat him to a pulp. But they did an autopsy at the hospital and couldn't find the cause of death.

I still don't know what really happened to him.

*

There's no telling how many times you walk up to a car and somebody's sitting there thinking about shooting you. And maybe another person in the car has talked him out of it. It just makes you realize how often you play Russian roulette with the Grim Reaper.

*

Some crazy had stolen an armored truck from Fort Benning, Georgia, containing a bunch of Claymore mines. I don't know that much about Claymore mines, but people have told me they can wipe out half a football field.

I was positioned at a roadblock where this guy was supposed to come through. So I'm standing there thinking, “This is gonna be great. Here I am waiting to get blown away and there's nothing I can do about it.” That's the worst kind of situation for me because I have no control over it.

*

The scariest type of situation for me is a car chase. Not so much for myself, but I'm afraid I'll hurt somebody else. You're speeding
around curves on the wrong side of the road and you can just see somebody's family coming. You're in a bind because if you don't stop that person, he might go down the road and kill someone. If you continue chasing, you could hurt an innocent bystander. So it's real touchy when to cut it off.

*

It was pouring down rain that day when I got called to investigate a simple wreck. This boy, a construction worker in a truck with an out-of-state license, had rear-ended a lady. So I went ahead and filled out the wreck report in order to get her on her way.

I had the boy sitting in the back seat. He said he knew the wreck was his fault, and that he didn't have his driver's license with him. Said he had an Ohio license. I was about to write him a ticket for rear-ending this lady and picked up the radio to check his license when he said, “What are you gonna do?”

“I'm gonna call in and see if you've got a valid license.”

“There's something you need to know before you do that.”

I thought maybe he had a suspended license or something. But he said, “I'm wanted in Ohio for armed robbery.”

Then he said, “Well, I thought I'd go ahead and tell you before you found out. I've been down here six or seven months and I'm tired of running. I'm homesick. I wanna go back.”

So I called and sure enough, they confirmed he was a felon. He got to go back to Ohio all right—back to jail.

*

Years ago, before we had overtime, you could stay out all night and watch the sun come up if you wanted to. Then everybody would meet somewhere, work as a team to make a lot of arrests, or just talk and have a good time. One night we were standing around in this parking lot. Our patrol cars were backed in so that we were blocking each other. Then a car sped by at about 100 mph. Tommy—the only one who could get to his patrol car—took off running, jumped into his car, and reached for the steering wheel. Except he was in the back seat.

We just died laughing. Not only because Tommy had made a fool of himself, but because we knew the driver was so far away by now none of us would ever catch him.

*

We were told it was a felony stop—a couple from Seattle wanted on child abuse charges—but didn't know if the people had guns or anything. Me and another trooper stopped the vehicle, got the couple out, handcuffed them, then went up to the car. When we got there, we saw two little kids in the back seat. One of them had second-degree burns all over his body and cigarette-lighter burns on his arms. The other kid had bald places on his head where the hair had been jerked out.

We stood there choking back tears. I don't know what's going to happen to the children, but I'm gonna make damn sure that couple goes to prison.

*

It worries me when all these guys get into fights. I learned early on that you can talk a man to jail quicker than you can whip him to jail—and it's a whole lot easier.

I had a guy buck up on me one night in a place with a bad name. He said, “You don't know where you're at, do you? You're in Whittemore Branch.”

And I said, “Well, that's in North Carolina, isn't it?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you're under arrest for drunk driving.”

“Son,” he said, “I never went to jail without a fight and I ain't going tonight.”

“You look like an awfully nice guy to me,” I told him. “Too bad you're gonna have to go to the hospital.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm gonna put you in the hospital—fractured skull, broken collarbone, the whole nine yards. You're gonna be laid up for at least a week, 'cause I'm gonna hurt you bad. And you're just too nice a fella for me to have to do that to.”

He thought about it for a minute and finally he said, “Can I make a phone call before we go?”

So you
can 
talk them down. In fact, some of my best friends [now] are people I've arrested in the past.

*

I worry about making mistakes. What if I kill someone through an error? I also have a recurring nightmare—I'm in a shooting situation, I draw my gun, I'm squeezing the trigger, and it won't
move. I remember having a toy gun when I was a kid and I'd squeeze it and it wouldn't work. Maybe that's where the dream comes from.

*

My line sergeant and I were investigating an accident near the Tennessee border at Wolf Creek, and we were waiting on the wrecker to come, sitting there with the blue light going, shooting the breeze.

All of a sudden we heard a shot—then another—that seemed to be directed right at us. I said, “Hell, sergeant, somebody's trying to shoot us!”

So we bailed out, hunkered down behind the car, and called for assistance. I grabbed my .357 Magnum, opened the trunk, and pulled out a shotgun too. About five minutes later, a woman came by, driving very slowly. She had a young boy with her and when she got out of the car she was very excited. Said she lived on the hill across the road and that she was the one who'd been shooting at us.

When we asked her why, she said her husband—who was a known drug dealer—had been killed in her front yard recently and she didn't want anyone coming around. She'd been drinking, so I'm not sure if she was playing with a full deck or what.

We charged her with driving while impaired, but never brought charges against her for the shooting because none of the bullets struck the car. Plus she refused to make a statement saying she had been using a gun.

Later on, as I thought about it, I realized we could have been killed over something that didn't even make any sense.

*

After one of our troopers was shot, we were looking for the two guys who did it. There were so many law enforcement officers around—everyone armed to the teeth—that it's a wonder somebody wasn't shot accidentally.

We were told the two fugitives had spent the night in a deserted barn, so our job was to go in and search the area.

I remember crawling up into a hayloft. The first two steps were broken off, so to keep my balance, I'd hand my shotgun to the person below me, take a step, then take my gun back. When I
got to the top, I had to stick my head up into the hayloft, shine the flashlight, and look around to see if anyone was there.

The place was empty. But I'll never forget that sitting-duck feeling. I guess that's the most afraid I've ever been.

*

A trooper in Cleveland County stopped a motorist one night and was attempting to place him under arrest for drunk driving when one of the guy's friends drove up. He didn't like the idea that his buddy was about to go to jail so he walked up and stabbed the trooper in the back with a four inch blade. I was called to assist and was the first one to arrive on the scene.

When I got there, I checked the trooper out and determined he was in no imminent danger. I was trying to get the guy in custody when his father arrived and tried to stop us from arresting either of the two boys.

We scuffled around for a while and the guy with the knife started lunging at me. I took my pistol out, cocked it, and told him if he tried it again, I was gonna kill him. About that time, all three of them ran into a store and we had to go in and get one at a time. More troopers had arrived to help us.

We charged one guy with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. The father was charged with assault and interfering with an arrest. The driver was charged with drunk driving and interfering. It could have been a simple arrest, over and done with in a few minutes. But the others had to turn it into a free-for-all. That's when I begin to think people are their own worst enemies.