It’s More Than Shootouts and Car Chases

He Protected the Little Girl

            October 17, 2000 started off like any other Tuesday. At that time I didn’t have a regular partner, so I rode with the less-experienced junior officers on the shift. On that particular night, Officer Paul Sampson and I were partnered together in district sixteen. We started the evening off pretty much like any other; a couple of minor calls, alarms, family disturbances, theft calls and the like—nothing special.

A little after 7:00 p.m. however, things changed. We responded to a domestic violence call on Marlowe Drive. The address was several miles away, and I knew it would take some time to get there. The units in that area were out of service on other calls, and we were the closest help available. Sampson notified dispatch that we were en route from Woodley Road and Virginia Loop Road. Since we were in a more rural area of the district I chose to travel the back way and avoid the major thoroughfares. The route was a little longer but lighter traffic would allow us to make better time.

            As we neared Marlowe Drive, the dispatcher radioed that a black male suspect was standing in the front yard with a gun. Now the situation had intensified, so I picked up the pace just a bit.

Often on disturbance calls, the caller will lie and say that someone has a gun hoping that the police will respond more quickly. Whether or not it turns out to be true, it always elevates a responding officer’s level of anticipation when he expects to confront an armed suspect.

            An update from the dispatcher informed us that the complaint clerk could hear arguing in the background, and she could hear the suspect threatening to shoot everyone at the house. I gunned the Crown Vic and pushed it as fast as I safely could, but it seemed to take forever to get there. I turned onto Narrow Lane Road racing against time as the tone of dispatcher’s constant updates told us that the situation had gone from bad to worse.

The cruiser’s headlights pierced the darkness ahead then arced broadly as we turned with screeching tires onto Buckingham Drive into the neighborhood. The dispatcher’s voice tensed perceptibly as she reported that the clerk could hear the staccato popping of gunfire. I made the right onto Marlowe Drive just a block away, tires now howling against the pavement, as the dispatcher blandly stated that the caller was no longer on the phone.

            I rounded the corner pulling to a screeching stop in front of the brick house now surrounded by neighbors, frozen in the street in various states of shock and disbelief. The pale, acrid smoke from gunfire lingered like a haunting mist in the night air. As Sampson and I got out of the car, weapons drawn and scanning frantically for the gunman, one of the women in the growing crowd began to scream, “Rat Boy" did it! "Rat Boy" did it!”

            “Which way did he go?” I shouted.

            She pointed back down the street toward Narrow Lane Road in the direction from which we had arrived, so I assumed that he must have hidden in the darkness of one of the yards as we passed by. We’d missed him by only seconds.

I walked cautiously up the driveway and saw a black female lying facedown on the ground between the house and a car parked in the driveway. I approached her, carefully stepping around the twenty or so brass casings littering the driveway, and saw that many of the rounds had torn jagged holes in her blood-soaked clothing as each one embedded itself deeply in her flesh. I quickly ordered Sampson to cordon off the scene with crime scene tape.