Trooper Down! Page 10

  I attended the girl’s funeral. I guess I needed to be there to make it clear in my own head that it was over, she was gone. I was standing at the back of the church, trying not to be noticed, when the mother looked up and saw me.

  She came straight toward me, put her arms around me, and hugged me. People turned and stared. I kept wishing I was somewhere else because she wouldn’t let go. I didn’t know what to do, so I put my arms around her.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for doing everything you did to help save my daughter. I hope God is always with you in your work and keeps you safe.”

  She did more to help me in those few seconds than I was ever able to do for her. We didn’t save a life, but we tried. And that’s what being a public servant is all about—doing the best we can for the people we represent. Having people appreciate what we do—appreciate that we try—can make up for a lot of the bad things that happen on the road.

  5. Strange Encounters

  “Well, I’ll just prove that I’m not drunk. I’ll stand here on my head in front of the courthouse!” —Sixty-four-year-old man on his way to the breathalyzer room with a trooper

  Not everything that happens on patrol involves trauma and tragedy. Sometimes the job has its humorous, though somewhat bizarre, moments. Experienced troopers even come to expect odd behavior from people they encounter on the road. Many highway patrol veterans say that nothing surprises them anymore. One patrol officer, a trooper for seventeen years, puts it more bluntly. “People are just damn crazy,” he says.

  All of the following incidents are true:

  Me and another trooper were riding down the road one night when we passed a pickup truck. We thought we spotted a child in the vehicle with an axe sticking out of its back.

  I said, “Jesus Christ, Ron, they’ve killed a kid!”

  “Aw, come on, it’s Halloween,” said Ron. “It’s got to be a prank.”

  “Let’s stop them and make sure.”

  So we got them to pull over and I walked up to the driver. About the time I got to him, he jumped out of the truck, raised his arms, and bared two white fangs at me. He had on a black cape, white powder on his face, and this red stuff squirting out of his mouth. It startled me so much that I drew my weapon and told him not to come any closer. Then I heard someone in the truck laughing. Turns out that both her and “Dracula” were sheriff’s deputies on their way to a Halloween party.

  We made jokes about it all night, but I’ll have to admit, it scared the hell out of me at the time.

  *

  I clocked the car speeding at eighty miles per hour, walked up to the driver, and said, “Ma’am, can I see your driver’s license?” I noticed she was wearing a miniskirt, hose, high heels, and makeup. But when I looked at the license, it had a man’s name and picture on it.

  Sitting next to the driver was a male dressed in a suit and tie. I asked the driver to come back to my patrol car. As “she” got of the car, I realized “she” was a “he.” By that time I was totally confused.

  I put him in my vehicle and proceeded to write the ticket.

  “Why do you do this?” I asked.

  “Do what?” he said.

  “Dress like that.”

  “Because my mother dressed me like this all my life,” he replied.

  “And who’s the man riding with you?”

  “Oh, that’s my date,” he said.

  “I see.”

  Later, when he came to court, he was dressed the same way. Neither the judge nor the people in the courtroom were surprised, but the whole thing was a shock to me. That was years ago. You see more of it today. In fact, I no longer expect people to come across a certain way. Now I just ask “What’s normal?” and go on about my business.

  *

  People will use any excuse to get out of a speeding ticket. I stopped a man on Interstate 85 and asked him what his hurry was.

  “It’s my dog,” he said, pointing to a large animal riding next to him. “He needs to go to the bathroom.”

  “So why didn’t you pull over and stop on the side of the road?”

  “You don’t understand, officer,” he said. “This is a three-hundred-dollar dog and he won’t go to the bathroom just anywhere. I’ve got to get to the next rest stop.”

  “Well, take him on down there,” I said. “But meanwhile, dog or no dog, I’m gonna write you a ticket.”

  And that’s exactly what I did.

  *

  I got a call one night about a drunk woman sitting on Interstate 85 at the South Carolina line. There was a question about which state she was in, so when I arrived a South Carolina trooper and a police cruiser were there. One of the officers had put her in his car and she had taken off her shoe and was trying to beat the back window out of his cruiser. By the time I arrived, they were tired of her high jinks and were glad to be rid of her.

  I got them to help me handcuff her and I put her in the front seat so I could keep an eye on her. We had just gotten on the road when she started kicking and screaming and trying to bite me. I struggled with her as long as I could, but finally couldn’t control her any longer.

  I called my sergeant and he agreed to come and help me. As soon as I stopped the patrol car to let him in, the woman got real calm and quiet. We put her in the back seat and the sergeant got in front.

  “You might as well get in the back with her, Sarge,” I said, “because as soon as I start this car, she’s gonna raise hell.”

  “No she’s not.” Then he turned in her direction. “You’re gonna be a real sweet little lady, aren’t you?”

  She just looked at him.

  Sure enough, when I started the patrol car, she went wild. The sergeant ended up in the back seat and he said it was like riding a bucking bronco. She fought him all the way to jail.

  When we got there, we put her in a cell and left her by herself. When we went back to check on her, she was sitting in the middle of the floor—stark naked. She had stripped off all her clothes and placed them in a pile in a corner of the room. But at least she had settled down.

  I remember that little episode every time I see a South Carolina trooper. Thanks a lot, guys.

  *

  This trooper had stopped to buy a drink and a candy bar, and left the door open as he got out of the patrol car. He came back a minute later, climbed in, closed the door, and took off. Just as he was coming into the patrol parking lot, we heard tires squealing and someone yelling. We raced outside to see what was happening and saw the trooper with his gun drawn, pointing it toward the back seat of the patrol car.

  Said he’d been driving along and felt something nuzzle his head. When he had left the door open, a dog had jumped in the back seat and put his nose on the trooper’s neck.

  That sure came close to being one dead dog.

  *

  I stopped a girl traveling ninety mph one night. Walked up to the car and saw right away that she didn’t have a stitch on. All of her clothes were in the seat beside her. She was good-looking too.

  I said, “Uh, lady, I need to see your driver’s license. I clocked you at ninety mph. I suggest you get some clothes on while I write this ticket.”

  I took my time writing out the ticket so she could dress. Then I went back to her car and handed her the citation.

  “By the way,” I asked her, “where were you going in such a hurry?”

  “I’ve been at my boyfriend’s house,” she explained. “But my husband called wanting to know where I was. So I have to get home right away.”

  I have no idea what happened after that, but every now and then I see her in the shopping mall. She smiles as we pass. And I smile back.

  *

  It was a Fourth of July and another trooper and I were working late shift when we noticed a car driving erratically in the middle of the road.

  I said, “He’s drunk. Let’s pull him over.”

  I walked up and shined the flashlight, saw a well-endowed girl trying to get her clothes on, and the driver
pulling up his pants. She turns out to be his wife, but they were doing more than celebrating the Fourth. The car was full of Valium, Quaaludes, marijuana, and other controlled substances they had obtained illegally.

  To beat it all, he was a pharmacist and really should have known better.

  *

  I was working the interstate in Gaston County one day and noticed a hitchhiker on the road. It’s illegal to thumb a ride on North Carolina’s interstates, so I stopped him and gave him a warning ticket. When I asked for his identification he said he didn’t have any.

  I patted him down, took him back to the patrol car, and attempted to find out who he was. He handed me a slip of paper and told me to call this number in Washington, D.C.—collect.

  “They’ll tell you who I am,” he said.

  I got the telecommunicator in Newton to put the call through. A minute later she came back on the radio and said she had the White House on the line and who did I want to talk to?

  The guy said, “Tell them to ask for President Carter.” Then he gave his name and added, “He knows who I am.”

  The telecommunicator relayed the information and was instructed to have me stay put. There would be someone from Charlotte arriving at my location shortly. About fifteen minutes later, two unmarked cars pull up and two men jump out and flash their badges, showing me they are Secret Service. Then they take the guy into custody.

  Seems my hitchhiker had been to the White House on a protest march and gotten inside the private quarters where the president and his family lived. Some personal items were missing. While no one actually said the man had stolen anything, that was the impression I got. He was also a former mental patient.

  When I caught him, he was passing through North Carolina on his way to Texas to see Lady Bird Johnson. Said he had been in phone contact with her and wanted to pay her a visit.

  Later, I got a nice letter from the two Secret Service agents. They explained the man posed no threat, but was a real nuisance, and they appreciated my help in apprehending him.

  Right before he got into the car with the agents, the guy came up and shook my hand.

  “I’ll see you later, Trooper,” he said.

  And the next time he hitchhikes through North Carolina, he probably will.

  *

  It was Sunday afternoon in Jackson County and I stopped a guy for what I thought was a drunk-driving violation. When he got out of the car, he didn’t shut the door completely and this big Persian cat jumps out.

  As the fella was handing me his driver’s licence, the cat ran across the road, rolled under a car, and got hit. Then it took off across a golf course and into the woods.

  Next thing I know, the driver is chasing after the cat, yelling, “Fur-Ball! Fur-Ball! Come back here!” while I’m holding his driver’s license and wondering what to do.

  By this time, several people had stopped to see what the commotion was about. To their right they could hear someone in the woods yelling, “Fur-Ball! Fur-Ball!,” and to their left, see me standing there looking stupid.

  Finally the guy comes out of the woods carrying the cat in his arms, brings it to the car, and lays it across the front seat.

  Then he walks back to me with tears streaming down his face and says, “Fur-Ball’s gonna die. Now what do you want?”

  I shook my head, said, “Not a thing,” and handed him back his driver’s license. What else could I do?

  *

  I was in Bryson City when I got a call that a guy was shooting at cars.

  He was standing there facing me with a shotgun when I stepped out of the patrol car. I pulled my weapon and looked at him. No one said a word. For several seconds we just stared each other down, like in a western movie. Then he turned around, got in his truck, and drove off.

  I thought, “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

  So I went after him. He stopped, got back out of the truck. I stopped, got out of the patrol car. The same thing happened again.

  Now we’re about twelve feet apart, facing each other. I told him to drop his weapon. He looked at me like he didn’t hear me and kept coming. He could have easily shot me before I had a chance to pull the trigger.

  He kept approaching and I’m thinking, “You need to shoot him. You need to shoot him.” But my instincts were telling me otherwise—that I wasn’t threatened enough yet to take a human life.

  Now he’s eight feet away and still coming. Then he suddenly stops. I was so damn mad at him that I walked up, took the gun away from him, punched him in the mouth, and said, “You stupid son of a bitch! Don’t you know how close you came to getting killed?”

  I took a chance that time and I won. But I could have lost just as easily.

  *

  It was a Saturday afternoon, about suppertime. I was patrolling north of Robbinsville and had turned around to head back to the house when I met an old pickup truck with an expired inspection sticker.

  I thought, “Well, I’ll give one more warning ticket before I take a break.” So I turned around to follow him. But he picked up speed and went down a dead-end road called Cat Eye Hollow.

  Being a rookie, I was too inexperienced to know the guy was running from me. I just thought he wanted to see Cat Eye. When I got there, he had wrecked his truck in a pile of dirt and I figured I had a drunk driver. He jumped out and ran, so I jumped out and followed him. Didn’t take a flashlight, nightstick, nothing. Didn’t even call in to let the telecommunicator know where I was or what I was doing. Just acted like a dumb rookie.

  I chased the guy about half a mile into the woods. He was a big fella, a lumberjack, and drunk as a hoot owl. At one point he fell and I jumped on top of him, pulled his arm around his back, and said, “Gotcha!”

  He looked up and said, “Oh no you don’t.”

  Then he brought his other arm around and grabbed me. I knew I was in trouble when he threw me across the woods. As soon as I fell, he was on top of me, reaching for my gun. He put it to the side of my head, cocked it, and said, “I’ve got you now.”

  “Yeah, I guess you do.”

  I didn’t really think he would shoot me on purpose, but I was afraid he might slip or accidentally release the trigger. So I used the only trick I had left—my gift of gab. I struck up a conversation with him right there in the woods, with the gun at my head.

  We’d been talking for a while when he said, “By the way, why’d you stop me?”

  When I told him it was because of an expired sticker, he said, “But I can’t read. How was I supposed to know it was expired?”

  I thought about that for a minute and said, “Aw, don’t worry about it. A lot of people can’t read.”

  We talked a few minutes more and then he got an idea.

  “I tell you what,” he said. “You handcuff yourself to that tree.”

  I said, “Do what?”

  “Handcuff yourself to that tree,” he repeated.

  “Aw, come on. Let’s not do that.”

  He put the gun back to my head and said, “Put the handcuffs on.”

  I put em on.

  Then he changed his mind, decided that wasn’t such a good idea after all, and asked me to drive him to his brother’s house instead.

  On the way to the car, he explained why he ran from me. Said he was scared of being arrested and locked up.

  “I just die when I get locked up,” he said. “I can’t stand it.”

  When we got to the patrol car, he showed me his driver’s license and I began to call him by his first name. I drove to the top of the road where he got edgy again, put the gun to my head once more, and said, “Did you call any more law?”

  I said, “No way, man.”

  “You know if you called any more law and they’re sittin’ up there, you’re dead. They’ll kill me, but I’ll kill you first.”

  “Yeah, I know that, but I haven’t called anyone.” The whole time, I was praying we wouldn’t see any officers.

  We got to his brother’s house without incident an
d he started to get out of the patrol car with my gun in his hand.

  I said, “Now, Ed, you’ve got to give me my gun back.”

  “No, I’m not gonna do it.”

  “Come on, give it back. I can’t leave without it.”

  “I’ll give it back to you if you promise not to use it on me,” he said.

  “I promise.”

  To make sure I kept my word, he emptied out the bullets and threw the gun down on the seat. Then he hightailed it up to his brother’s house.

  Meanwhile, I’m sitting there wondering what to do about this situation. I went home, changed clothes, and drove to another trooper’s house. I think I was in shock.

  As I pulled up, the trooper came out of his house and I was about to say, “Let me tell you what happened,” when all of a sudden I hit the ground. Just passed out cold in the driveway.

  Ed eventually got eleven years in prison for kidnapping me and I got transferred out of the county. The patrol thought I’d be too easy a target for anyone wanting to try the same thing. It took me a long time to live that one down.

  *

  I investigated a wreck one time in Chapel Hill where a car had turned over and thrown the occupants out. Two people were hurt, so I sent them to the hospital for treatment.

  I was looking for evidence near the scene when I spotted what appeared to be a full-face Halloween mask. Only it wasn’t. It was the embalmed head of a cadaver.

  The driver of the car that wrecked was a resident in oral surgery at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and had taken the head home with her. I put it in a plastic bag and delivered it to the medical examiner at the hospital.

  The next morning the dental school called me wanting to know where to find their cadaver’s head. I assured them I didn’t have it, didn’t want it, but would certainly tell them where to find it.

  *

  There’s a T-shaped intersection at U.S. 52 and U.S. 74 that connects right after you pass the crest of a hill. To warn drivers of what’s ahead, the highway department installed a flashing red light and a sign before you reach the top.