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The entire event described below took about two minutes from beginning to end.
| Around 1990 I was an undergraduate, going to school at ETSU. I attended a (symphony? opera?) at the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, Tx. The symphony ran long, and let out around 1am. I was exhausted and not looking forward to the 1-hour drive home to Commerce, Texas. |
Good:
Bad: I didn't know how long the event would take. I allowed myself to get overtired with a drive in front of me. |
| I needed to stop for coffee, but was largely unfamiliar with the downtown area. I decided to stop in the nearby Deep Ellum area where I knew the location of some coffee shops. |
Good:
Bad: Deep Ellum may or may not have been a high crime area at the time; I definitely shouldn't have gone there late at night by myself. |
| When I got to Deep Elllum, there must have been a concert or something because the closest parking was on the street, about 100m away from the coffee shop, where the area starts to get less commercial and more warehousey. I parked there anyway and walked to the coffee shop. I had only my truck key with me because I had taken it off my keyring earlier so it would not mess up the lines of my suit. |
Good: I knew that my key was in my right front pocket.
Bad: I parked on the very margins of the decent area, ignoring my gut instinct that it was not safe. |
| After I was done I walked outside (1:30am?) and noticed there was medium-heavy traffic in the street, and also that it had started lightly raining. To keep from messing up my wool suit I started to trot toward my truck. |
Good: I noticed the changing weather and traffic conditions
Bad: I was wearing leather-soled wingtips which were slippery in the rain, and I was distracted by my desire to protect the handmade wool suit; this will be a recurring theme as the event unfolds. |
| As I started trotting down the sidewalk (the side against the traffic flow) a DART (public transit) bus pulled up. I noticed that a young black male was exiting the bus at a high speed, like he was loping to the door and down the bus steps. As he exited the bus he pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head. I assumed this was because of the light rain.
He trotted to catch up with me (I'm still trotting).
perp: Hey man, gimme a coupla dollars for a sandwich. me: I don't have any money (which was true; I might have had some change). perp: I ain't joking. Gimme a coupla dollars. me: I don't have any money. perp: Give it to me! me: (still trotting) Seriously, I would if I could. I don't have any. |
Good:
Bad: A huge mistake. When the fellow wouldn't give up pestering me I assumed he was harmless. This would have been a great opportunity to stop and attract some attention from pedestrians/motorists by yelling "No!" in a forceful voice. This silence on my part will be another regrettable pattern in the event. |
perp: What you reading? me: Montaigne (I had been reading a book of essays). perp: What? me: Montaigne. You wouldn't know him. perp: [grabs book from my hands to look at it] me: [grabs it back, and swats him on the head with it] The perp grabbed my sleeve and slung me into traffic; I caught his sleeve and we both stumbled into and across the street. A car or two slid to a stop. |
Good:
Bad: My bahaviour there was strange. My indignation at his rude grabbing trumped my ability to reason out that this situation was turning bad. Even when he threw me in traffic I was incensed at his rude bahaviour but not consciously aware that he had just put me in grave danger by slinging me into traffic. Notice that I have onlookers here (in the cars) but made no attempt to communicate with them. I am surprised no one called the cops. |
| At this point I formulated a plan: get to my truck and leave the situation. Unfortunately, this meant leaving the populated area and walking toward the unpopulated urban area where I parked. |
Good: Ok, so I'm finally thinking about extracting myself from the situation....
Bad: but it hinges on leaving the relative safety of the populated area. |
As I walked up the middle of the street I realized he had grabbed me by the scruff of my jacket, as if I was on a leash. The scene was getting weirder and more surreal, and I was acutely aware that I didn't want to do anything that would tear my jacket (hey, people think weird things under stress).
perp: [sticks hand in left pocket] I've got a knife and I'm going to stick you. me: [no response; I believe he is lying about the knife] perp: I'm serious, white boy, I'm going to stick you. It goes on like that a ways as we get nearer my truck, and I start to refine my plan. I double-check the location of my key (front right pocket as expected) and I wrap my hand around it. He notices this: perp: you gotta gun? me: no. perp: you gotta knife? me: [irritated] no! perp: what you got in your pocket? me: nothing. perp: I swear I'm gonna kill you, white boy. |
Good: well, at least I found my key.
Bad: sigh... even in the face of direct threats against my life I was still failing to register the deadly seriousness of this event. |
|
The perp said once more that he would kill me (which I disbelieved), and then he shoved me hard into a side alley. When I realized I was in a dark alley alone with a thug who had threatened to kill me several times, I quickly knew it was no joke.
I backhanded him in the nose with my left arm, although I am not muscular and I am right handed, his nose crushed audibly when I hit him and the blood flowed copiously. He did not react at all; it was as if he did not know I hit him. This freaked me out (realizing he was likely drugged up) and I took off running like a madman, sliding around on my no-grip shoes. |
Good: I finally took some action.
Bad: Waited way, way, too long... |
| I did some planning on the run: I could hear him running behind me and new I would just beat him to my truck. I was in the street and he was on the sidewalk, so I realized I could buy a second or two by running full speed right up to my truck instead of slowing down. This feint worked and he overshot by about 10 feet, plus I already had my key out but hidden in my palm.
Just like in the cheap horror movies, the thug was running toward me and for the life of me I couldn't get the key in the lock; I was shaking too bad. By the time I sank it in he was rounding the corner of the truck. I got in and started to close the door but he got between the door and the door frame and shoved me across the bench seat. I was sprawled across the seat now, eyes even with the glovebox. I popped open the glovebox and grabbed the Beretta 92-series 9mm, 15 Winchester Silvertips in the Mag. I chambered one and aimed at his face. . me: You're not going to f_ck with me anymore, motherf_cker! perp: [slowly extracted himself from the cab.] I assumed he was moving slowly to keep from agitating me and causing an accidental discharge, but in retrospect I think he just didn't care much (drugs, depression, whatever). After he stepped away from the truck I put the pistol in my weak (left) hand, started the truck and started extricating myself from the parallel parking spot. Of course, some goober had parked right up against me and it took several seconds to get the truck pointed in the right direction. By this time he was walking behind the truck and I swapped to my strong hand as I pulled away, gun pointed through the passenger window as he came up on the passenger side. As I pulled away, he actually kicked and dented the passenger side door. |
Good: deployed a weapon, retreated from danger.
Bad: No round in the pipe. I allowed myself to park where I might get hemmed in. I assumed the perp would retreat faster from a gun in the face. |
During and after the event (remember I had an hour drive home) I don't think I ever felt fear, rather I had an irrational indignation and a sort of dreamy dissociation from the scene that really hindered my ability to react. I remember being very pissed off that he had put me in a position where I might have had to shoot him (not that I cared about him, per se, but it would be an all around Bad Situation to kill somebody in my truck.
Nowadays I don't go to borderline places, I don't go alone, and I carry 100% of the time. I don't go to places where the Texas CHL won't let me carry.
$Id: ellum.orb,v 1.5 2002/09/16 17:15:44 mouse Exp $
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