To Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman
 
I want to thank you for coming to Evansville, Indiana and speaking to our group of WARRIORS.  I spoke with you very briefly and told you the story of my shooting from 1985 in Evansville.  I was a detective at the time and I was a member of our SWAT Team and was part of the Honor Guard for funeral details for police officer funerals.  A friend of mine and co-worker in the Detective Office, Bud Sebastian, died of a heart attack in the office and his widow requested a FOP funeral for him.
 
The day that Bud was buried I was in uniform because of the Honor Detail and after the burial I was on my way home to change back into my detective clothes (plain clothes).  I was in an unmarked white Ford Crown Vic that had a spot light on it.  All the bad guys knew it was an unmarked police car.  While en route home I heard a fleeing shoplifter call come out on the police radio at the Target store.  I was close so I headed in the direction the fleeing suspects were last seen running.
 
As I cruised the area I saw the two B/M suspects dressed distinctively different from one another.  They saw my car about the same time I spotted them.  They were in a business area at the time and they fled on foot and I parked the car and pursued on foot.  I was 34 years old at the time and these 19 year old hoodlums out ran me fairly easily.  They dropped some of the loot that they stole from the Target store and I called on the radio and asked the officer on scene if he wanted me to have the Crime Scene Unit pick up the evidence or if he wanted me to go ahead and pick it up.
 
He told me to pick it up and I did.  I saw that there were Target price tags on the merchandise.  A very short time after this he called me back on the radio and told me to be careful because he had just discovered that one of them had a knife and attempted to use it while fleeing.  The suspect with the knife was dressed in a distinctive fashion and I remember that one of the suspects was dressed just like the officer described.
 
This particular suspect pulled a knife on the unarmed security guard chasing him and the suspect came at the guard and threatened him with the knife.  I now had information that caused me to treat this suspect differently should I run into him again.  I now knew that he was a fleeing dangerous felon and the trouble was he was headed toward a Christian school and a residential neighborhood.
 
As I continued to search for the suspects I thought to myself that I had to be very careful of these suspects and in particular the one that used the knife to further his crime.  I worried about him forcing some citizen into their home and holing up to hide from the police.  I also worried about what he might do to an unsuspecting officer.  I fretted over this because I thought to myself I would not be able to live with myself if he escaped from me again and then I later learned he had seriously injured or killed someone.
 
As fate would have it I saw him again behind a house and near the Christian school.  It was the suspect described as having the knife.  I immediately looked away from him and toward the other side of the street to give him the impression I did not see him.  When I drove past the house he was hiding behind I stopped my car, turned off the engine, took the keys, and left the car door open so I would not make noise shutting the door.
 
I drew my service revolver and ran to the last location where I saw him and as I rounded the corner there he was only a few feet away.  I was in uniform and I pointed my revolver at him and shouted out, "POLICE DON'T MOVE!"  He started to back away from me, but I could not close the gap because I knew he was armed with a knife and I had my revolver in my hand.  He did not have the knife in his hand, but that did not matter to me.  My training and instincts told me to keep my distance from this potentially lethal threat.
 
As he backed away I shouted another, more stern warning, "STOP!  IF YOU RUN AGAIN . . . I WILL KILL YOU!"  He continued to look around and he backed up toward a four foot chain link fence.  I was already processing everything that was happening in my brain.  I knew that if he jumped the fence and fled again he would escape in this residential area and I had already told myself I could not allow that to happen again.
 
He finally backed up to the fence, grabbed the top of the fence with his hands and made that movement that he was going to vault over the fence.  Just before he grabbed the fence I shouted out the last warning, "STOP, DON'T DO IT!" and then as he made the movement to jump I fired one shot.  I was standing in the classic isosceles position and I was holding the gun in a point shoulder fashion without the use of my front and rear sights.  I had practiced shooting from a point shoulder shooting position thousands of times at the range and I was always pretty good at nailing the center mass of the upper chest area of the target.
 
On this particular day when I fired the shot I was visually locked onto his back as he turned and I locked on to the area where his heart would be.  When the shot was fired I heard a pop, not a loud bang, and I was suffering from tunnel vision because everything around him was black.  I could only see his head and about to the mid level of his back.  In fact I was able to see the bullet strike him.  I have had officers tell me that was not possible, but I know what I saw and I saw the bullet strike him.
 
My vision was so acute from the stress of the moment I believe I had super vision.  I did not feel the recoil of the gun and when the bullet struck him he dropped out of my sight like a load of bricks.  At first, it was as if he had disappeared, but when I looked down he was still on my side of the fence and he was thrashing about from the shoulders up and squealing like a wounded pig.  His legs were crumpled up under him in what looked like a contorted position and I remember thinking, "Boy that has to hurt."  My very next conscious thought was about his race.  I remember thinking to myself, "Oh shit he is black!"  My next conscious thought was "Oh boy he looks awfully young, I hope he is at least 18."
 
In the past when we had officers that shot young black males, there was hell to pay from the media and inner city community.  After those thoughts went through my head I approached him to disarm him of the knife.  At this point in my police career (about 10 years) I was very familiar with deadly force law and I was a very tactically sound officer, but my tactics went out the window when I felt the need to approach this wounded suspect by myself and disarm him.
 
I went up to him with my gun still in hand (a big NO, NO at hands on range) and I reached inside of his jacket pocket and pulled out a folding type knife.  When I stood up and was still visually locked onto him and still suffering from tunnel vision and auditory exclusion to some extent, a neighbor came up to the fence and spoke to me.  I did not hear or see this neighbor when he walked up to within a few feet of me and just on the other side of the fence and I just about shit myself when he spoke.
 
He said, "Do you want me to get a blanket?"  He had heard the ruckus and he came out of his house after I had shot the suspect.  As far as my backstop is concerned, when I fired at the suspect I had a dirt embankment of about three feet on the other side of the fence and a brick wall of the house in case I missed.
 
I found out later that when Lionel Hunter made the move to jump he twisted his upper body and that probably saved his life.  If he hand not twisted his upper body the bullet would have struck him in the heart.  Instead of a heart shot the angle at which he twisted caused the round to hit his spine.  It shattered the vertebrae and severed his spinal cord and then proceeded through this right lung on the back side and exiting on the front side.  The bullet was completely in tact just under the skin and they made a small incision and removed the flatten out 158 grain lead hollow point round from his chest.
 
There is more to this story, but I have already taken way too much of your time.  I just thought it was interesting that three of the things you talked about in your seminar I experienced that day.  You talked about how rare spine shots were, and you talked about tunnel vision and auditory exclusion.  One last thing I will share with you.  You also talked about how the voice of someone under stress sometimes sounds like Minnie Mouse.  On that day my resolve was very clear and I was under control except for the tunnel vision and auditory exclusion because my voice was very booming and aggressive.  A mailman collecting the mail from a mailbox two blocks away told the investigators he could clearly hear me giving commands to the suspect to stop and that I was identifying myself as a police officer.
 
Thank you for what you do.  God bless you and your family and the WARRIORS that you instruct.
 
From an old Marine SHEEPDOG and retired Evansville Police Officer,

Guy Minnis
Evansville, Indiana