When I got to the intersection of DeSoto and Mesa Vista, I looked to my left and saw a tank rolling down the street. It had dragged a streetlight that came off when the driver turned the corner, leaving the pole blocking the intersection. To avoid it, I drove through the driveway of the Jack in the Box on the corner and got behind the tank. There was a crapload of other cops there too, so we just kind of traded places back and forth, all in a line abreast from the intersection, and then down onto the freeway. We were all just following along, kind of looking through our windows at each other, going like, “Hey, how you doing?” because there was nothing much we could do.
I remember thinking that the guy was either gonna stop and give up, or some knucklehead was gonna have to jump up there and shoot the driver. He had already run over a van that was occupied with civilians, and he’d been trying to ram police cars throughout the pursuit. Anytime somebody would get up close to him, he’d turn toward ’em and try to hit ’em. Of course, our cars were faster than he was, so we were able to get out of the way, but he was definitely trying to kill some cops. Somebody got on the radio and asked if SWAT could do anything. They said they couldn’t, so there was no way we could stop him. If he wanted to keep going, he was gonna keep going. I knew that eventually he would have to stop somewhere, but I didn’t know what was gonna happen then. So I figured that there were only two options: either he was gonna give up or somebody was gonna shoot him.
Tom Jackson, one of the guys in the pursuit, was a tank commander in Desert Storm, so I figured if anyone could figure out some way to stop the guy, it’d be him. He had actually been ordered to go up behind the tank by his sergeant, who knew he had tank experience, so he was in the unit closest to the tank, along with a sergeant and another officer.
After we’d been on the freeway for a little while, the guy started to drive toward the center divider, heading for the oncoming traffic. I thought, “Oh, shit, there he goes.” We were heading southbound, and no one had stopped the northbound traffic. It was still pretty much rush hour, and I knew that there wasn’t enough room for both his tank and all the traffic in the northbound lanes, so somebody was going to get run over once he made it over to the other side. I was thinking that he was about to kill a bunch of people.
When he hit the Jersey wall separating the north and southbound traffic, he sent up a huge cloud of dust that I couldn’t see through. When the dust settled a few seconds later, I could see that he had high-centered the tank on the center divider wall so that the left tracks were on the northbound side and the right tracks were on the southbound lanes. He kept moving the tank back and forth, just crushing the concrete wall underneath him. I stopped my car just a little forward of the tank and jumped out.
There were cops all over the place, and by the time I got over to the tank, Tom Jackson and a robbery detective named Henry Beard were already up on it. The tank was still moving, going back and forth, crabbing along the wall, crushing the concrete. I stood there for a few seconds. Then it stopped for a moment. At that point, a guy named Bill Kingwood boosted me up onto the tank. Just as I got up on it, it started moving again. When that happened, I got a little bit worried because I didn’t want to get caught in the track or get flipped off the tank and end up under the track.
I was able to hang on and get all the way up onto the turret, where I felt a little bit safer. The tank was still moving pretty violently, but I got a handhold on a bar up there, so I was pretty stable where I was—even though the three of us were constantly swaying as the tank was jerking left and right and moving forward along the wall. I was on Tom’s right side, which put me on the southbound side of the freeway, just hanging on. He was trying to open the periscope hatch, which is about an eight-inch-long by four-inch-wide hatch in the middle of the big hatch that you actually climb through to get inside the tank. From the inside, you can open it and stick a little periscope up to see what’s going on outside. I let go of my handhold and pulled my gun out when Tom got the periscope hatch open. Just then, the tank lurched, and I almost fell off. Tom reached out and grabbed me. Then I put my gun back in my holster and grabbed the handhold again. We looked down through the periscope hatch, but we couldn’t see the driver, so Tom reached inside and popped the lever that opens the big hatch. When he got the big hatch open, I found another hold for my left hand, grabbed it, and pulled my gun out again.
When we looked inside, the only thing we could see of the driver was the top of the back of his head and the tops of his shoulders. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and I could see his shoulders moving back and forth as he was turning the levers to steer the tank. We started yelling at him, and he looked back up at us, so he knew we were up there, and he knew we had the hatch open. The guy looked real tweakerish, like a methamphetamine user. He had long, stringy, greasy hair down to his shoulders, a bad complexion, real dirty, not quite a transient, but on the way there. We were yelling at him to stop the tank, to let us see his hands, to come out of there, just the general police stuff. All three of us were yelling at the same time. In fact, the next day all three of us were hoarse, so I guess we were yelling that stuff pretty loud. After a little while, the driver took his eyes off us and looked forward again. He never looked back up at us again.
I know it was real noisy up there from the tank engine and from the concrete breaking underneath us, but I don’t remember hearing any of that noise. I could hear the three of us yelling, plus I had a brief conversation with my sergeant, who was standing on the ground to the right side of the tank, that sounded just like two people chatting at a table. I looked over at him and said, “I’m gonna have to bust a cap in this guy.” He looked back at me and said, “You gotta do what you gotta do.” I know we were yelling because I know it was loud, but it sounded like we were just talking.
I remember a strong smell of hydraulic fluid, ’cause the guy had popped a hydraulic line when he hit the wall. I also remember looking up and seeing all the officers standing on the freeway and all the traffic going by, but it didn’t seem like things were moving very fast. I know the traffic going northbound was still going at a pretty good clip, but when I looked up and saw the cars, it wasn’t like they were whipping past like they’d normally be. Another thing that was weird was that I looked over where the other officers were on the ground a few times, and sometimes I would see them, but sometimes they weren’t there. I don’t really know how to describe it other than to say it was a like a strobe light effect. I remember looking around and thinking, “Wow, this is pretty cool.” Then I started thinking, “What the hell are you thinking about that for? There’s a guy inside the tank. Think about him.” It was odd, but I remember thinking those things. I was like, “What the hell are you thinking about this for now?”
Then I heard Tom yelling some more, and I saw him pull out his OC to spray it into the tank. While he did that, I was thinking, “Oh, crap, that’s just gonna screw up the whole inside of that tank, and we still gotta get in there.” I know how that stuff affects me, and it’s not a good thing. I thought that if we ended up having to go in there, I was gonna have to fight the guy while Tom stopped the tank, and I didn’t want to fight this guy inside a tank full of OC. I was about to knock Tom’s hand away so that he couldn’t spray the inside of the tank when he pulled it back and put it away. He told me later on that he had thought the same stuff I was thinking about the OC, so that’s why he pulled it away and put it back.
I was thinking that we were getting pretty close to where we were going to have to shoot this guy because Tom had to get inside the tank and stop it before it made it all the way over the center divider. Based on the way the tank was moving, I knew that he wasn’t gonna stay on that wall forever, and we were gonna come off the wall and into the northbound traffic pretty soon. We had to do something before he started rolling again, but none of us wanted to go down into the tank because we didn’t know if the driver had guns with him, and we also didn’t know if there was anybody else in the tank with him. I was pretty sure th
at one of three of us up there on the tank was gonna shoot him if he didn’t give up. I just didn’t know it was gonna be me.
I stuck my gun into the tank and yelled at the guy, “Hey, last chance. Stop the tank or I’m gonna shoot!” Just then, the tank lurched real heavily to the left toward the oncoming traffic. I thought he had finally broken enough of the concrete to where we were on our way to the northbound lanes. It turns out that the left track had come off the tank at that time, but I didn’t know that until it was all over. I thought that he was about to drive into the oncoming traffic, so I aimed my gun at the back of his head and pulled the trigger. I didn’t want to miss him because I didn’t want the bullet to bounce around on all that steel in there ’cause with my luck, I figured it’d bounce back up and pop me right between the eyes.
Just as I pulled the trigger, he moved his head forward and to the left a little bit, so I knew the bullet wasn’t gonna hit his head. I heard the round go off, but it wasn’t real loud. It sounded exactly like it does at the firing range when you have mufflers on your ears. Then I saw the bullet strike the guy’s right shoulder. I actually saw the projectile hit his shoulder, I saw the hole open up, I saw the blood spurt out, I saw my slide come back, and I saw my casing come out of my pistol. I thought that was pretty weird, seeing all that. Then my next thought was, “Oh, shit, now I’m gonna get sued.” I wasn’t afraid of getting sued; it was just a thought that crossed my mind. I knew that officers who shoot people sometimes get sued. I don’t know why it went through my mind, but it did. Then the tank stopped moving.
A few seconds later, Tom told me to go down into the tank, so I hopped on in. Once I was down inside, I could see that the guy had fallen forward but that he was still in a seated position with his hands on his thighs. I could see that he had no gun, so I put my gun away, put on my rubber gloves, and felt for a pulse. I couldn’t feel anything. As I was doing that stuff, Tom came in, checked the rest of the tank to make sure there were no more suspects inside, then told me to shut the tank off. He told me how to do it. Then he grabbed the guy and pulled him to the side so I could lean over and pull the levers. It got real quiet when I shut the tank down.
I looked over and saw that the guy was still bleeding a little bit. I thought, “How do we get him out of here?” Then I reached over him, and I grabbed both of his hands in both of mine and started pulling him up. When I got to a point where I was standing up in the turret with him right in front of me, all this blood started spurting out all over the place. By that time, other officers had climbed up onto the tank, and one of them reached down and stuck his finger in the hole in his shoulder to stop the blood flow. I thought, “Well, what do we do now?” Then a bunch of hands reached down through the hatch, grabbed him, and just sucked him right out. Tom and I sat inside there for a few minutes. Then I thought, “This is boring,” so I got out and jumped off the tank. One of the sergeants there grabbed me, threw me in his car, and drove me back to the station.
• • •
I was working a crime suppression detail with Roger, my regular partner. Our job was to go into the housing projects and gang areas that were known for narcotics activity and see what was going on. At about 2145, we were cruising through a place called Kennedy Court, a high-crime area with a lot of crack cocaine dealers. Roger was driving. We spotted these two guys at the corner who were making some type of exchange. Automatically, we thought narcotics. They saw us, turned, and started walking away. Roger pulled up just behind them as I opened up the patrol car door. I asked them, “Hey, guys, what’s going on?” One of them replied, “Nothing.” So I asked, “Have you all got any ID on you?” The other guy then said, “We’re just going to the store.” And I said, “Well, that’s fine. I understand that, but could I still see some ID?” About that time, the guy who said they were going to the store took off running. I figured he had dope on him, so I took off after him, leaving the other guy behind. I was chasing him down the sidewalk. Roger was in the car so he pulled ahead, then swung the car to block the guy in before he got to the corner. I had been about ten feet behind the guy as I was chasing him, but I caught up to him when Roger cut him off.
I was just about to grab him, couldn’t have been more than three feet away, when the guy turned around and shot me. I never saw the gun. He was a black guy, the gun was black, and it was dark out. All I remember is that when he turned around, he was firing. I don’t remember seeing the muzzle flash, but I did hear the round go off. It was kind of muted though, not as loud as it should be. The bullet hit me in the inside of my right forearm. It didn’t really hurt, but it stung, like somebody had slapped me real hard.
As soon as I got hit, I yelled, “I’m hit!” Then I remember spinning around, falling down, taking my gun out of my holster, getting up, drawing down on the guy as he ran away, hearing Roger shooting at the guy, then seeing the guy on the ground. Roger went over to him, got the gun away, and cuffed him up. Then Roger came back to the car to check on me, and we started arguing about who was going to get on the radio to tell the other units what had happened and where we were at. I guess he thought that I was hurt pretty bad, but I didn’t feel I was injured bad at all. I knew I was hit, but I figured I could still do my job. So we had a little argument:
“I’ll call it in”
“No, I got it.”
“No, I’ll call it in.”
“No, I got it.”
Back and forth like that for a few seconds, then I finally got on the radio and advised dispatch about the shooting.
Other marked units started arriving just a short time later. They made sure the guy was secure and kept the crowd that had gathered away from the scene. I was feeling real hyper, just walking around. Then a detective arrived, and he made me sit down in the patrol car. He asked me how I was and I said, “I’m fine.”
He said, “No, you’re not! Look at your arm! You’ve been shot! Just calm down.”
I said, “I’m fine.”
And he said, “No, no, you’re not. You’ve been shot!”
I replied, “I know. But I’m fine, I’m fine.” I lost that argument, and they took me to the hospital. Turns out it was a through-and-through wound. No bones hit. No serious damage. I was out of there in a couple of hours.
Before going to the hospital, the detectives asked me if I had fired my gun. I told them I hadn’t. They checked my gun, and it turned out one round was missing. To this day, I don’t remember firing my gun, but I did. All I remember is getting shot, spinning around, drawing, coming up, Roger shooting, and then seeing the guy on the ground. The only thing I can think is that I just reacted to my training. I have a real good friend who was one of the instructors in the academy. We’ve had some long talks about officer survival and what happens in life-threatening situations. He’s helped me out a whole lot in how to think when you go into situations like that, because he’s been there, and he’s told me that sometimes you just respond automatically. It’s like someone presses this button and you just shoot. So when the guy shot me, he pressed that button, and I just responded.
• • •
The detail we were working was this combination antigang–crime suppression deal, where the city councilmen call the chief and say, “Hey, I’ve got a constituent here saying she’s having problems with this gang-banger down the street. Send me some guys over here.” So we go and flood the whole neighborhood with officers and just basically shut it down for a couple of days. Pick up everybody we can, put as many people in jail as we can.
Johnny and I just seemed to attract criminals. We just picked the right guys, and one night we spotted these two guys about a block from us looking like they were exchanging some money, so we decided to stop and check them out. We were in a known dope area, so we figured they might be doing a dope deal. They spotted us coming up in our car, and they started to walk away on this cross street. We lost sight of them for a few seconds, then spotted them again when we turned the corner.
I slid up behind them and Johnny g
ot out. I stayed in the car, figuring that he was going to hand me the driver’s licenses, and I’d run them on the computer. He said, “Guys, I need some ID,” real nicely. No big deal. One guy said, “Well, I don’t have any ID. I’m just going to the store, and I don’t need my ID.” Johnny said, “Well, look, man, I’m just checking you out. If you don’t have any warrants, we’ll let you go.” Right after he said that, the guy took off running. Johnny took off after him, so I threw the car in gear and started paralleling them. They were running right along the sidewalk, and as we got up to this little parking lot in front of this market, just a little place where you turn in to park diagonal-like, I got just in front of him and cut the car to the right to block the suspect off. He ran into the car and turned around just as my partner was closing in on him.
I was starting to get out of the car when I heard a shot go off. I didn’t know if my partner had shot the guy or if the guy had shot my partner, so for a split second I wasn’t sure what was going on. Then I heard Johnny yell, “I’m hit!” and I saw the guy running back the way we came. When I heard, “I’m hit!” this rush of adrenaline came over me, and all my attention focused on the suspect as he was running away. I could feel my hair on my arms sort of standing on end, and I just had this sense of where everyone else was. I didn’t have to look; I just knew where Johnny was, where all the people who were out on the street were. I couldn’t really hear much of anything at that point, but I had this heightened sense of awareness.
As I was noticing all this, I was thinking all sorts of thoughts. I didn’t know how bad Johnny was hit, but I was thinking that he bought it. He always wore his vest, but I was thinking that he might have taken the round between the panels, or in his head or neck. I was thinking that “I’m hit!” might be the last words I was ever going to hear him say. We weren’t just partners, we’re best friends, and I was thinking that I’d let him down, that I should have been up there with him when we first stopped the two guys. I should have gotten out of the car, but I was being lazy, staying in the car to make it easier to run the guys on the computer. If I had gotten out, the guy wouldn’t have run, we’d have found the gun and gotten it from him right then, and this wouldn’t have happened. So I told myself, “I’ve got to get this guy, no matter what.” I wasn’t going to let the guy get away.
Into the Kill Zone Page 16