By Uniform Stories
The following is a “Stories From the Beat” guest post from recently retired Lt. Patrick E. Matthews.
Generally among the most unglamorous and mundane of calls is the traffic accident. But as a fairly new officer, on one Sunday afternoon, I was reminded that these calls can be anything but routine.
Sundays are usually the days you hope for peace and quiet during your shift. They give you a chance to get caught up on reports, and generally, to decompress from the hectic pace of the week.
Well, on a sunny day shift one Sunday afternoon, I received a report of a traffic accident on a four-lane highway into town. While I was still en route to the accident, dispatch updated the call to a hit-and-run, advising that one of the involved drivers had left the scene. Oddly, it was not the vehicle at fault.
Upon arriving I met with the driver still on scene, who had been following a bit too close and had run into the rear of the vehicle ahead of him at a red light. After gathering his information, I then decided to look into the circumstances behind the other driver fleeing the scene.
After obtaining the name and address of the hit-and-run vehicle from the registration they showed to a person on scene, I proceeded to the residence. I made contact with a young couple at the home, and after only initial questioning determined the female had been the driver and sole occupant of the car during the accident. It also became immediately apparent why she fled the scene. The 30-something lady was heavily under the influence of prescription medication – something she admitted to taking – though she professed it was after she got home.
Being unable to prove at what point she took the medication, an arrest for driving under the influence wouldn’t have held up in court. I collected the necessary information to complete the accident report, and gave a rather pointed commentary to the lady on driving under the influence of her medication, and how disastrous things could have turned out if she had struck and injured another driver, or worse yet, a pedestrian.
Leaving the lady inside, her husband and I walked into the driveway to look over the vehicle and to talk briefly. After a few minutes of speaking with him, and examining the damage to his car, his wife walked outside and stood on the front lawn about fifteen or so feet away. She had her right arm at her side, her hand slightly behind her so that I couldn’t see it. She had a flat, expressionless look on her face. An alarm bell should have been going off at this point, but hey, it’s Sunday afternoon with blue skies…and anyway, this is just a traffic accident call, right?
Standing there for several seconds the lady called to her husband, “Where’s your heart at?”
The husband looked over and replied, “What?” She repeated the question a little louder. He paused, looked at me, then back to his wife and vaguely pointed to his chest, saying, “I don’t know, honey….somewhere about here.”
The woman then took her hand from behind her back, revealing a fully loaded Glock 9mm. She put the gun to her chest and pulled the trigger.
I felt time stop.
The gun just made a click. It had misfired.
The husband and I rushed the woman simultaneously. I disarmed her and we took her to the ground, holding her there until an ambulance arrived. She was taken away for evaluation by the EMTs.
I seized the weapon for safekeeping. Upon examining, I could see that the round had a slight indentation on it from the firing pin. The only thing that saved this lady was the slight pressure she placed on the barrel of the weapon when she pushed it into her chest. It forced the slide back just enough to prevent the pin from making full contact with the round.
I had lots of time after this day to meditate on the events of that afternoon. What if the gun had fired? What if she had pointed it at me or her husband?
I began teaching traffic investigation classes at our Police Academy some time later, and for many years I would use this “war story” to open up my sessions. I would always pause for effect after I described the “click”...and would end with “do you still think traffic is boring?”
Well, do you?
