to get away.
By now, he had about a twenty five yard head start on me. He was running across the parking lot of the First Baptist Church of Grayson. I never have been a great runner but I was only 22 years old at the time and was in pretty good shape. The guy I was chasing was a good sized guy. He was about six foot and weighed at least two hundred pounds. I should have been able to catch him but fear and adrenaline sometimes give people that extra little push. I was yelling at the subject to stop but he just kept running.
We ran behind a house that was the church parsonage, continued behind the church and then back in the direction that we had come. He was trying to get back to his car. After almost two hundred yards, I was starting to close the distance. I was only about ten yards behind him when he turned around to see where I was. That was his undoing. He lost his balance and fell hard to the ground, face first. Before he could try and get back up I dove on top of him. He was about my age and it was clear he was not going to go without a fight. The problem was the long run had winded us both. We just lay there for a few minutes trying to catch our breath. The guy, who turned out to be twenty two years old as well, then started trying buck me off.
I could smell the alcohol on the guy and now realized that he had run because he was driving under the influence and had wrecked his car. I needed to get him handcuffed but he was starting to get his wind back. I managed to get his left wrist handcuffed but his right arm was under him and he kept trying to throw his right elbow at me. Every time he did I punched him in the back. At the time, we carried very cheap, very flimsy flashlights. I had left my nightstick in the car. After all, this was only a stranded motorist. After struggling unsuccessfully for several minutes to get his right hand cuffed, I swung my flashlight at the suspect’s head. Instead of stunning the suspect like I had hoped, my cheap flashlight disintegrated into several pieces all over the ground.
The drunk guy that I was wrestling with said, “Ouch! Is that all you’ve got?”
Now I did not have a flashlight and I was fighting this guy in the dark. I started punching his back and right shoulder in an effort to make him give me his right hand so I could handcuff him. It was not having any effect. Finally, I reached behind me and grabbed the drunk’s testicles. I started to squeeze. He began to scream and curse me with everything he had.
“Give me your right hand,” I ordered.
His level of profanity only increased. I continued to squeeze his testicles until the pain was too much for him, even in his highly intoxicated state. He pulled his right out from underneath him and put it behind his back. I quickly got him handcuffed and searched for weapons.
As I was trying to get the subject to his feet, (no easy task considering his size, level of intoxication, and handcuffs) a man came running up and said, “Officer, are you okay? I saw your car down there and somebody else driving by had seen you run up here. I wanted to make sure you were alright.”
I asked him to help me get the drunk to his feet. The helpful citizen did and then helped me walk him the one hundred plus yards back to the cars we had left behind. On the walk back, the drunk continued to resist and try to pull away, using many colorful phrases and expletives. My helpful citizen appeared shocked. He told the guy, “Listen here, buddy. You need to watch your mouth!”
By the time we got to the cars, Officer John had shown up. When I had not reported back into the dispatcher within five minutes as we are required to do, she had sent another officer to check on me. I thanked the citizen for stopping to help me and shook his hand. He did not have to get involved but he felt like it was the right thing to do.
My arrestee was less than enthusiastic about getting into a police car and Officer John and I had to force him in. A computer check showed that he was a Habitual Traffic Offender which meant that his driver’s license had been revoked for five years and it was a felony for him to be driving. He was charged with that, as well as Driving Under the Influence and Resisting Arrest. Our investigation discovered that the subject had driven off the road just up from where we were and had hit a “School Bus Entering the Highway” sign and knocked it over. He then swerved back onto the road and continued to where I had found him. He had hit the curb and destroyed both of his passenger side tires, actually knocking them loose from the rims. With my charges and the suspect’s previous criminal history, he spent almost a year in jail.
8
Shots Fired
It was another cold winter’s night in 1988. Nothing was going on anywhere in the county. It was another good night to drink coffee and stay in my warm car. About two in the morning, however, the radio crackled to life. “Be enroute to shots fired. The caller heard multiple shots near her residence,” the dispatcher advised.
The address was in a set of duplexes just outside the city of Lilburn. Officer Rick, one of my academy mates, cleared with me. While this sounded like a good call, most of the time “shots fired” calls turned out to be nothing. Usually, you would drive around the area never hearing anything. Seldom were you ever given a specific location, just a general area. If you happened to locate it, it often just turned out to be kids setting off fireworks.
On this call, though, we were given a specific address. It did not say whether it was on the “A” side or the “B” side of the duplex, but it was better than a general area. Rick and I parked across the street from the location and got out. The building was dark and it appeared that everyone was asleep. We decided to walk around behind the duplex and see if there was anybody back there. It is always embarrassing when officers leave a call without checking things thoroughly enough and it comes out later that they missed a body lying in the backyard. Believe it or not, that does happen.
When we got to the back of the building, we did not see or hear everything. There were no lights on back there and it was very dark. We illuminated the yard with our flashlights and did not see anyone lurking in the shadows. We were getting ready to walk back around to the front when we heard voices. A window was open near where we were standing and we could hear some people speaking Spanish inside the duplex. There was the sound of a pistol action being worked and then we heard footsteps approaching the window. Rick and I pressed ourselves flat against the wall. An arm was suddenly thrust out of the open window and was holding a pistol. It fired seven shots towards the woods behind the building. Just before the shots went off, I caught a glimpse of a single bed next to the window. We instinctively dropped to the ground and crawled around the corner of the building. We then got up and ran back to our police cars.
Both of us were a little excited. It is not every day that you get shot at. Okay, we weren’t really shot at. I don’t think the Hispanic guy with the gun even knew we were out there. But we were only about ten feet away from the window when the guy let loose with the pistol and it was a bit unnerving. I got on the radio and called for backup. When we got some more officers there, we were going to go and arrest this clown for shooting out of his window. For starters, it is illegal to discharge a firearm in a residential area. There were other possible charges that we would explore after we got the perp in custody.
Within just a few minutes, we had several more officers out with us. Lieutenant Chris was running the shift that night without any Sergeants. When he got there, Rick and I briefed him on what we had. “I’m not sure which side of the duplex the shooter is in,” I told him. Rick and I both thought it was the “A” side and we told Lieutenant Chris so.
The Lieutenant quickly took charge. He sent a couple of officers to watch the rear. The Lieutenant, Rick, me, and another officer went to the front door of apartment “A” and knocked. A middle-aged Hispanic man came to the door in his underwear. He appeared to have just woken up.
Lieutenant Chris yelled at the guy, “Were you shooting? Where is the pistol? El pistol?”
The
