This past week there was a news item that showed up on
Facebook about a criminal who accidentally shot himself in the “package” with
his own pistol while committing a robbery.
It turns out it happened in Chicago
It reminded me of a crime scene from back in the early 70s
when I worked as a Crime Scene Investigator; before such a designation became
popular. Basically, the department
assigned some low seniority patrolman, which would be me, to carry a latent
fingerprint retrieval box and a camera in the trunk of the police car for those
times when a detective wasn’t available.
It wasn’t a glamorous job at all, often times being sent to
the morgue to lift prints off a ‘John Doe’ to figure out his identity. Think about having to get up close and
personal with a stiff body that had already begun to stink and having to take a
‘dead-man’s spoon’, some ink and then transfer each finger’s print onto a flat piece
of card stock.
Yeah, that was a fun and exciting job. So glad I moved on within the department,
directing evening rush hour traffic; now that really was fun. Somehow that fun
and exciting job as CSI became a popular television series; folks will believe
anything that comes out of Hollywood
I did get to take pictures with a fancy 35mm camera at
various crime scenes. As I recall, there
was another CSI who had a morbid sense of humor. When I say morbid, that means much more so
than most other police officers since that’s probably a character trait
required to be a police officer… where was I?
Anyway, not a great way to start a sentence; but anyway,
this officer would take slide film of his own and take pictures of crime scenes
and then drop a slide of a really nasty one in with his vacation pictures when
relatives came over asking about how much fun he’d had. Apparently the department didn’t think too
highly of this and he was let go; imagine that…
Getting back to surprise endings for a crime scene… The best
one I was ever mixed up with involved several locations all tied in with the
same suspect, there having been a robbery, subsequent search for the suspect
involving an empty school bus by two police officers, and then the suspect
finally being shot by a security guard down the street…but I’m getting ahead of
myself.
The suspect ‘allegedly’ (I love how that word has to be
included) robbed a small convenience store using a pistol and got away with a handful
of dollars, a couple of packs of cigarettes and some candy which he’d stuffed
under his shirt. He fled through an
apartment complex with several police units that were close by when it went
down in the area looking for him.
A two man unit decided to check out a school bus that had
been parked on the street over night.
The lead officer was going through the bus, looking under every seat as
he worked his way towards the back of the bus.
His junior partner was standing on the landing of the bus with the door
open keeping an eye out for the suspect.
Sure enough, the suspect came running in the direction of
the school bus, pistol still in his hand while looking for any police that
might be chasing after him. The officer
in the bus ducked as the suspect took a shot at him and then returned
fire. The awkward manner in which the
officer was standing caused him to lose balance and he fell backwards into the
bus while the suspect continued on down the street.
From the evidence at that location the suspect did get hit
by the officer’s bullet, striking him in the stomach. There was a blood trail that was easy to
follow; again I’m getting ahead of myself…
The officer in the back of the bus thought his partner had
been shot and, putting it delicately, lost his composure. He was normally an excellent shot with a
pistol and had the medal hanging on his shirt to prove it; but that wouldn’t
explain the back window of the bus being shot out from the inside of the bus or
the multiple bullet holes that exited the roof of the bus.
Yeah, I had to take pictures of all the bullet holes and I don’t
know how it came to be, those bullet holes were listed in the official report
as having come from the suspect’s pistol as he shot at the officers inside the
bus.
As I mentioned, the suspect continued running away from the
bus and towards yet another small convenience store where there were several
cars parked and a security guard standing in front of the store. The suspect began shooting at the security
guard and the security guard began firing at the suspect, all the cars in the
parking lot sustained damage.
The suspect’s pistol ran out of ammunition; but that didn’t
stop him from aiming at the security guard and continuing to pull the trigger,
“click, click…and click”. This didn’t
set well with the security guard who still had bullets in his pistol as he shot
the suspect several times at close range, “Kablam, kablam and kablam”. The last shot apparently removed the
suspect’s “package” and the rest tore up most of his gut and chest.
The suspect was loaded into an ambulance with a limited
chance of survival while I was called out to gather evidence and take
pictures. As mentioned, I took pictures
around the school bus to include the spot where the suspect dropped the money
along with the candy and cigarettes that were on the ground.
I then took pictures of the cars that had bullet holes and completed
my supplement report, the one that would be assigned with the primary reports
filled out by the officers assigned to each location’s criminal report.
Here’s where it got interesting… About a year later I received
a subpoena to attend District Court on this incident. It surprised everyone when the suspect, the
one everyone expected to die from his wounds, yeah, that suspect walked into
court and pled not guilty. It later
turned out that the State of Texas and his
attorney worked out some kind of plea deal so I never got to bring my “Eight by
ten glossy color images of the crime scene” into court (a reference to the
tune, Alice
In my best Paul Harvey voice, "...and that’s the rest of the
story…"
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