THE MAN ON THE BLOODY RED GROUND
“Is he shot?” I asked the grim faced officer who was only now lowering the revolver he was gripping with both hands. “Yes,” he exhaled as
the crimson shadow began to expand beneath the crumpled man on the ground….
We were returning from the mountains with a story for the 5
o’clock news. Neal Brown and I had been to Copper Mountain shooting interviews
with tourist about the holiday ski business. It was still early in the
afternoon when we started back down to Denver.
The roads were dry but covered with sand and grit left by
the snowplows. We were eastbound on I-70, just past Idaho Springs, when we saw
a white pickup with a camper shell in the opposite lanes racing uphill ahead of
several police cars, red lights and sirens, in full pursuit.
We looked at each other briefly as I swerved onto the approaching
off ramp at Hidden Valley for a quick turn around back to the westbound, uphill
lanes.
I’d learned long ago as a member of the media not to expect
any favors regarding speeding tickets from the local police organizations but
figured with all those flashing lights in front of us, there wouldn’t be anyone left to clock me, so I got on it. We closed on the convoy much faster than
expected because they were barely doing 50 miles an hour. It was a slow speed
chase on a four lane highway bounded in places by drop offs and cement walls.
We pulled up along side the last police car and rolled down
the window. Neil asked what was going on and the patrolman yelled back, it was
a DUI. This was a day or so before New Year’s. Drunk driving was topical
because of the holidays, so we decided to stay with the chase for a while. We
might come back with two stories instead of just one.
Falling back into the column, I noticed several other lawmen
now joining in behind us. We seemed to be picking up reinforcements as we
passed each new mountain jurisdiction but I held my place in the line. No one
tried to pass us.
Even at the slow uphill speed, the Colorado State Patrol
cars behind the white pickup couldn’t get around to cut him off. Whenever the
CSP attempted to pass, the truck would swerve, trying to drive them off the
road. I suppose the PIT maneuver hadn’t been developed at that time so they
just stayed back and followed. We guessed they’d stop him up ahead, at the Eisenhower
Tunnel, with a roadblock.
By now the procession had grown to more than a dozen
vehicles; all, but our news car, with blasting sirens.
Neal reached into the back and grabbed my camera. He shot as
best as he could from the passenger side but was blocked by the police cars in
front of him. I shot a little of the swerving back and forth from my position
behind the wheel with Neal trying to steady the camera on my shoulder. But the
large awkward Beta Cam made that pretty scary for both of us. This wouldn’t be
the best place to lose control of the car. The hand held video was shaky but I
thought it would be pretty compelling. Combined with the upcoming arrest, it
would make a strong statement about the consequences of drunk driving. The tunnel
was coming up as we planned how we would shoot the approaching confrontation.
The white pickup surprised us and took the ramp heading toward Loveland Pass |
With this policeman’s overreaction still fresh on my mind, I
thought there might be a similar situation building again. It was pretty clear
the law was not happy with this guy. When they pulled him out of the car I
wanted to be ready to tape whatever happened.
With one exit to go before the tunnel, the white pickup
surprised us and took the ramp heading toward Loveland Pass. Within a half mile
the truck stopped abruptly in front of the main entrance to Loveland Ski Area nearly
blocking the highway as a state patrol car sped around to box him in.
The man held the long gun with both hands in the ready position |
He appeared very calm in the mist of this chaos as lawmen
screamed from every direction to drop the gun. He slowly rotated his head surveying
the very tense situation and turned to the State Patrolman who had rushed past,
spun his car around, and was now standing outside leveling a shotgun over the
roof of the patrol car.
The noise was deafening. Everybody but me had a gun and was
pointing them, God knows where. Like I said, it was very tense.
I ducked back behind my still open door and shot from there.
The man held the long gun with both hands in the ready position, keeping the
barrel up, and walked slowly from the door of his truck toward the State
Patrolman with the shot gun. There were no fast moves but the man could have fired the gun in an instant. I could see the officer shouting
something at him but he kept moving steadily closer anyway. As the man closed in
on the rear of the patrol car there was a boom, which I assumed was a shot,
but nothing seemed to change for a few seconds. Then the man slowly dropped to
all fours, laid down on his right side and rolled over on his back like he was
surrendering. Nothing like I’d seen a thousand times before on TV and the
movies where bodies are thrown violently backward by a bullet’s impact.
Skiers looked on as the lawman pulled the gun from under the man on the road and tossed it aside. |
Why did this happen? Who was this man? What were his stories
about? Who would care?
Left in the pickup, beer, whiskey and "Vengeance". |
The white pickup had been pulled over in Golden on a traffic
stop. The officer saw the gun when he approached the truck. As he hurried back to
his patrol car to call in, the guy took off. The man had been released from a federal prison in
Oklahoma just a week before. He was 57 years old and I guess he didn’t plan to
go back. So a few days after Christmas, with a bottle of whiskey and a gun in
his truck he took off for the top of the world with the law on his tail as he searched
a final, certain end.
No innocent people were hurt. We got our story. And maybe
someone out there remembered something about a guy they once knew. A guy who
took a wrong turn back there a long time ago before winding up there, in front
of my camera on the bloody red ground.
Wow, powerful stuff Chuck. Great writing.
ReplyDeleteWell written. Took me back a few years, some of the most amazing things I've ever seen happened when I was a news photographer. Life and death in black and white. Things most folks can't imagine. Nice job Chuck.
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