what I had to. Then I could clean up the mess and separate the balloons of heroin before my wife got off work. I bunched them up together on the floor so I could count them and make sure they all were there. They were. Good, I thought. Suddenly, I heard a noise downstairs. I had not even closed the bathroom door and in walked my wife. She wasn’t expected to be home for hours! She looked at me angrily and said, “What in the hell are you doing?”
I was busted! I was looking up at her shocked that she came home early and saw me like this. I said, “What are you doing here?” She snapped, “I live here, remember?” I was sent home early today, because we are going to work late one night this week. What is that?” she asked in bewilderment pointing at the tightly wrapped little balloons. “That’s not…tell me that’s not heroin.” I had to say, “Ah, yes, it is, but don’t worry, I am going to get rid of it tonight.” She turned around and mumbled something like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe this. I’m not going down this road.”
I was so high on the drug that I did not feel the magnitude of what had just happened. I went about my business and took the drugs over to the guy’s house like I had promised. When you are this addicted, the drug always wins because it becomes the number one priority in your life over all else. Obviously at this point, my marriage was going under fast. I went about my business and she went about hers.
ASSAULT AND ATTEMPTED MURDER
My position as a security policeman was also just about to take a blow. While trying to track down someone who was committing crimes on the base, my division officer, the security officer for the base, had told me that if I ever encountered a situation that was threatening my life, I had orders to shoot to kill. That made me a little bit more nervous than I already was. I did not want to kill anyone, but at the same time, I realized that I could potentially encounter a criminal, a spy or some military violence at any time.
Shortly after those orders were given, I was driving a Navy truck to a checkpoint; I had to go two miles off base then back onto Navy property. I had a passenger that day whom I was taking with me to “the place.” He had some pie and snacks he was eating as I drove. We passed a man working on the side of the road; he was trimming a tree or something. I heard my rider laugh and thought he threw some wrapper out the window. A minute later, I looked into my rear view mirror and saw a Toyota truck quickly pull up alongside us. We then heard a loud noise as the window behind our heads shattered. I said to my rider, “Get down, he is shooting at us!” I could feel the adrenaline racing through my body and the pulse-beat of my heart as a thousand things flooded my mind. Just then, the road for the military base was coming up and I turned into it hoping he would not follow us in there—but he did. When I looked in the rear view mirror and saw he was coming after me, I felt both anger and fear rise up in me.
Who was this man and why was he after me? I was driving a Chevy half-ton truck, faster and heavier than his, so I revved the engine and tried to outrun him. He stayed with me and I figured I had better get him before he got me. I put a little distance between us, then I made a quick U-turn and told my rider to hold on—we were going to ram him! He looked at me like I had to be kidding or crazy or both. I was not kidding. I figured I would take him out before he took another shot at us. As we got closer, I saw the horrified look on his face. It was a Guamanian; I hit him head-on at about 35 or 40 mph. The collision totaled his truck, and did a lot of damage to ours.
Miraculously, we were not injured except for some cuts from the flying glass. A woman who lived in a house nearby was standing outside her home and witnessed me turning around and ramming him. She ran inside and called the Guam police and they were there in seconds. They arrested me for assault with a deadly weapon and attempted murder. A vehicle is a deadly weapon when used that way.
My passenger and I were handcuffed and put in the back of the police cruiser. I remember wondering how in the blue blazes I had gotten myself in this mess. Going to jail in a strange and remote place for assault and attempted murder against one of the locals was not a good thing. I asked my friend sitting next to me if he had any idea why that guy shot at us. He said that as we were going down the road, he had thrown a piece of the pie he was eating out the window and it hit the guy behind us in the face. “So that’s why you were laughing,” I replied. Then the police officer spoke up saying that the man involved in the accident with us was continually in trouble with the police. The police arrested him also and he was being taken to jail in another police car.
JAIL TIME
When I was booked into jail, there was this huge Samoan guard, the largest person I have ever seen. He put the man I had assaulted and me into a cell together and called the other guards to watch. The guards said to us, “O.K., you guys want to kill each other? Go ahead. We want to watch.” We looked at each other, shook our heads no and did not concede. As angry as we were with one another, we were not going to let the guards use us for their entertainment. The guards were disappointed and then moved him to another cell.
I laid down on the concrete floor. That’s all there was—no bunk, no sink, just concrete and the steel bars that separated the prisoners from the outside. I could see the jungle approximately 100 yards away. When the sun went down, the mosquitoes were thick and they came right through those bars and devoured me. A guard brought me a single sheet that night which I wrapped tightly around my body. The mosquitoes were so many, they found a way in and I was swollen all over my face and neck for days.
I had no heroin in my cell and the withdrawals made me wish I could die. I truly wished that the misery would end. The only food given to us was one bowl of rice a day, and one bowl of water. Some of the local men in that jail had family who dropped off food for them, but I had no family, only the basic food given to keep me alive. At 19 years old, I was learning some hard lessons. I found myself thinking about God…if I took my life somehow, would God forgive me? I laid on the hard cement floor and found that a peace and comfort came over me when I prayed or talked to God. I said things to Him from my heart; I said I was sorry. If He would help me, I sure would try to live my life in a better way.
A message came to me early in the morning on the fourth day. A Navy lawyer from the Communications Station had met with the District Attorney and arranged for my release. Someone from the base would come for me today. I thought, all right, maybe everything will work out somehow. The guard came to my cell around noon and opened the steel bar door and said something to the effect that he had better not see me again in his jail. He said they did not like us honkies and threatened that the next time something might happen to me. He took me to the R&R center (Receiving and Releasing), where I was released to a Navy driver.
He drove me to the Navy base. I hoped that my wife would meet me and say something like, “Are you alright?” Or maybe, “I missed you and am glad you’re home.” No, there was nothing like that. I cleaned up at our house after a few days in jail without being able to shower or change clothes. She called me from work. She said someone had called her and told her I was out of jail and back on the base. She said, “Carl, you are destroying your life. I want out of the marriage,” and then she hung up. I felt like everything had been knocked out from under me.
A week later, the District Attorney called me for a meeting at his office in downtown Agana, Guam. I was scared. I could not even imagine what it would be like if I got convicted in this place and sentenced to who knows how long. The District Attorney explained to me that the young man who came after me was someone who had a long record with them. They were not happy that we had thrown a pie provoking him. However, they were offering to drop all charges if I would not file charges against him. I said, “Sure thing, where do I sign?” It was a done deal; I went back to the Navy base feeling that something unusual had just happened. I felt very lucky, but something was telling me it was more than luck. Could that little prayer inside that cell have made a difference? Something sure made a very big difference.
