By Chief David Oliver
The family and I were at home. The weather forecast was dismal at best. A cold Friday night in January 2005 was ending with a bad winter storm bearing down. We had rented Spiderman 2 and just sat down to start the movie when it started…
I had been the chief for less than one year. These were the days of pagers. (Even though we had cell phones, our department used the pager system.) My pager sounded, indicating I needed to contact dispatch, with an added “911,” meaning there was certainly an urgency to call in. I called and was immediately drawn back to the real world.
Our dispatcher advised that one of my officers was out on what appeared to be a double homicide. The other shift officer responded to a call, one road over, involving the same gunman. He was holding two people hostage, threatening to shoot them, but ended up letting them go. He then traipsed off into the woods.
I put on the uniform and headed to work.
I talked to dispatch while en route. I called our regional SWAT team commander and got them mobilized and headed our way. When I arrived at the first location, my worst fears were confirmed. Inside the house were a deceased seven-year-old boy and his mother. They were both shot multiple times with an AR-15.
The radio crackled and I heard Sgt. Knarr over the air, advising that he was now under gunfire. He was the officer who responded to the second call. He and three officers from surrounding departments were being fired upon.
Under direct gunfire, officers continued to push the gunman north on the roadway. The gunman ducked into the woods and came out near a duplex apartment building. He forced entry into the residence and took a beautiful, smart and talented college student hostage.
We secured the perimeter and began negotiating with him. The negotiators did a wonderful job during this situation. After some time, the killer agreed that he would take two hours to makes some calls and then he would let the hostage go, and kill himself. I approved that plan.
Almost immediately after hanging up the phone, he executed that beautiful young lady, though we didn’t know it at the time.
The temperature had fallen to 8 degrees and we were getting inches of snow per hour. Snipers had to be rotated out and one was suffering from hypothermia and still did not want to leave his post.
Two hours came and went. We called and called and called him with shots from his as the only answer. Daylight was coming and I was very concerned about the light of day exposing surrounding dwellings to his indiscriminate gunfire so, I authorized a breach and entry into the house. SWAT members injected tear gas and drove an armored vehicle down the long driveway, gaining entry just before daybreak. They captured the gunman in an upstairs bedroom. He had dropped his weapon during the tear gas assault and could not find it. He fought with officers and was subdued.
I rode in the ambulance with the gunman; it was a long ride to that hospital. After getting there, we talked. He said the first incident, involving the mother and son, was “a long time coming.” He told me that he shot the college student because he needed to “find a way out of the house if he could.” He apparently could not do so with a hostage.
When the trial date came I was mentally a mess. Shortly after the shooting, I began to suffer severe panic attacks, and they were getting progressively worse. I had always thought people who suffered from panic disorder were just weak-minded. Boy, did I learn a lesson. The attacks became more debilitating with each passing day. I was transported to the hospital four times with symptoms of a heart attack. The day of the trial, a friend had to help me get out of my police car. What an experience.
The trial took place and the killer and his legal folks did the normal stuff. They accused me of authorizing a sniper to enter the house, after agreeing to the two-hour cool off. That was proven false. They then tossed out a “rogue sniper” theory, to cast more of a doubt on police. That failed too. The jury convicted the killer of all charges and he is now waiting on death row. We are in the appeals process.
One year later I walked in to see my doctor and I broke down. I could not stop the panic. There were times I had to pull the car to the side of the road and talk myself out of a fatal heart attack. It took nearly seven years and a diagnosis of PTSD and panic disorder to finally come to terms with a very simple fact. I am human.
