Trooper Down! (20 page)

I said, “Look. Number one, I'm not gonna put up with this nonsense. And number two, it looks bad on you guys and the patrol.”

They were also accused of getting into a fight that same night. That part of it turned out not to be true, but it shows how closely troopers are watched and judged, even off duty.

I don't like that aspect of the patrol. And I don't want to have to worry about getting any more calls.

*

My father thinks that because I'm married to a trooper, we can get anything done for him. When my brother got into trouble, my dad called us wanting my husband to get him out of it. He couldn't understand why his trooper son-in-law couldn't “fix it.” And it caused some hard feelings. As a result, my husband and my father don't get along anymore.

*

People don't realize what troopers go through. They say, “Oh, your husband's a highway patrol officer. Rides around all day in a car and hands out tickets.”

I lost one of my best friends because she said she wouldn't have anything to do with someone who issued citations and arrested people.

At work, I've heard others say it's unfair that my husband gives out tickets in an unmarked patrol car. But that's not the main thing he does. He's in that unmarked car to catch drunk drivers and to help protect the public. I wish people understood that.

*

He gets phone calls from girls just wanting to speak to him. It got so bad we finally had to buy an answering machine to screen them out. You can't have an unlisted number either, or take the phone off the hook, because the patrol might need to reach you. It's a pain, but you learn to live with it.

*

My husband's really honest with me. If a woman comes on to him, or some incident happens, he'll tell me about it—just in case someone else tells me first. I trust him totally because I know it's against his ethics to do anything wrong on the job. So I really don't let the patrolmen's reputation with women bother me.

But I think more things happen than what he tells me.

*

I don't really know my husband as a trooper on the road. I just know what he's like at home—kind and gentle. But I realize what it's like out there. I have a police scanner and I listen to it because the patrol is such a big part of our lives that I want to be involved in what he's doing, even when it's hard to deal with.

*

To make a trooper marriage work, you have to be patient, be a good listener, and most of all, be there. When he comes in at midnight, it's like he's getting off at 5:00
P.M.
and you have to understand that he needs to relax and unwind.

You're always apprehensive. You do a lot of praying and have a lot of faith the patrol has trained its officers as well as possible. And you come to realize that troopers are not there for any other reason except that they like what they're doing. It gets in their blood and it stays there and there's nothing you can do about it.

*

It's a perilous thing to love a man in the highway patrol. Because every time he walks out the door to check on duty, it's like a piece of yourself goes with him.

Then one night you're watching TV and a bulletin comes across the screen that a trooper has been shot. And your heart jumps clear into your throat. You don't know if it's him, but you can see him in your mind, lying dead or hurt somewhere. The fear becomes so great that you sit there, rooted to the chair. Even if it isn't him, the chances are good that it's someone you know or have heard of within the patrol. So it's a very bad feeling either way.

When it's over and you know that he's okay, the cycle starts again. You are aware there'll be a next time and that when it happens, he might not be so lucky.

“We tend to forget that law enforcement is a dangerous business and that it demands a devotion to public service beyond anything ever asked of most Americans.” —
James J. Kilpatrick, Washington columnist

It is a trooper and his family's worst nightmare. What begins as a routine patrol turns suddenly violent when someone pulls out a weapon. Moments later, the officer is down—wounded or dead.

Assaults on law enforcement officers are not uncommon. According to FBI statistics, nearly 62,000 city, county, and state police personnel were assaulted while performing their duties in 1985. Of those, seventy-eight were killed.

Within the North Carolina Highway Patrol, forty-four troopers have died while on patrol, either through accidents or assault. Seventeen of those deaths involved a shooting, three of which occurred less than six months apart in 1985.

When it happens there is shock, anger, and grief within the ranks, followed by a grim determination to find the culprit and bring him to justice.

“Everybody knows that individual better watch out,” said one civilian who has no ties to the highway patrol, “because whenever someone does something injurious to a trooper, it's like turning loose a swarm of bees.”

I

On March 5, 1985, in the early hours of the morning, 100,000 tons of rock thundered down a mountain in Haywood County some sixty-
odd miles from Asheville, North Carolina.

The slide blocked the major east-west twin tunnels leading to and from the North Carolina–Tennessee lines. As a result, the highway was closed for eighteen days and traffic was slowed for months. Before the episode was over, the state would spend more than four million dollars to clean up the mess.

To provide access to and from the state line, a graveled U.S. Forest Service road that bypassed the tunnel was designated as a temporary detour. Department of Transportation (DOT) workers quickly paved the half-mile road, and debris was removed from the mouth of the eastbound tunnel. Westbound traffic was then diverted through the newly opened passage. A twenty-mile-per-hour speed limit was posted around the slide area and traffic began to flow again.

Since it was important to enforce the slower speed limit in order to prevent accidents near the rock slide, DOT requested that the highway patrol maintain two troopers on duty twenty-four hours a day—one moving east and one moving west. On March 20, 1985, troopers throughout western North Carolina were notified of the special assignment and rotating shifts were announced.

The following week, Trooper Giles Harmon received word that he was scheduled for duty on this stretch of the highway.

Two states away in Lexington, Kentucky, Billy Denton McQueen, Jr., was having run-ins with the law. A volatile young man with a history of aberrant behavior, most of his troubles involved crimes such as burglary, trespassing, and criminal mischief stemming from problems with his ex-wife. After he was charged with kidnapping and harassing her, she moved to Statesville, North Carolina.

In early April 1985, McQueen decided to pay her a visit.

On Monday, April 8, Giles Harmon began his special assignment at the rockslide in Haywood County.

“I'm so bored out there I can't stand it!” he told his wife, Melinda, that night. “All we do is ride up and down the highway. I want to
work.
”

At one point, desperate for something to do, he pulled onto the shoulder of the road, reread his motor vehicle manual, and thought back to the series of events that had led him to the highway patrol.

Ever since he was twelve years old, he knew he wanted to be a
state trooper. Growing up in Brevard, North Carolina, he would watch for patrol cars to pass, hop on his bike, and follow the black-and-silver cruisers as far as he could go.

“He just had to see what was going on,” said his mother, Bonnie, a petite, attractive woman in her early sixties. “There were lots of times patrolmen brought him home from the hospital where he had followed them. He'd sit in their patrol car as long as they'd let him, asking dozens of questions about the radio, the equipment, the work. I know he must have driven them crazy.”

One day Giles disappeared and Bonnie got a call from someone at the courthouse.

“Your son is sitting in the back of the courtroom listening to a case that's being tried,” said the caller. “And he's hearing things he probably shouldn't be hearing. I'm going to send him home.”

An only child, he lived in an eighteen-room motel owned and operated by his parents. It was here where he learned how to deal with the public, and here where his early values were instilled.

“We kept the cash register unlocked in the lobby, but he never got into it without asking me first,” said Bonnie. “And we always insisted he work around the motel. He said there wasn't a kid in Brevard who made as many beds as he did, filled as many drink machines, or raked as many leaves.”

A handsome boy with a sideways grin and a stocky build, Giles was adored by his parents and grew into a happy-go-lucky youth who struck an immediate rapport with almost everyone he met. Active in football, wrestling, and other sports, he maintained good grades through high school and could have been successful in a number of careers. But law enforcement remained his first choice.

To gain some initial experience, he joined the Brevard police department, working first as a telecommunicator, then as a part-time policeman. In 1980, he graduated with a degree in criminal justice from East Tennessee University. Now twenty-one, he was eligible to apply for the job of state trooper.

The only thing that worried him was his height (just over five foot seven) and his nearsightedness. He was afraid both would keep him out of the patrol. He'd already been turned down once because of his vision, but he persuaded a doctor to write a letter telling the patrol his eyesight was correctable by contact lenses and would not hamper his job performance.

In August 1980, Giles learned that he had been accepted into the highway patrol. Like everyone else who entered cadet school, he found the going rough.

“One weekend he came home and told us about using tear gas during a training exercise,” said Bonnie. “Since he wore contacts, the experience was very painful physically. But he wouldn't think of quitting. I told him it was okay to give up if he wanted to—that he had already proven himself by getting into patrol school.”

“‘Mother, you
are 
kidding, aren't you?' he said.”

Once out of training, he was assigned to Buncombe County, where he proved an eager, exuberant rookie.

Patrolman Gib Clements recalls his first meeting with the irrepressible Giles.

“I had just been transferred to Asheville. I was doing a breathalyzer test one night, getting everything set up. There were several troopers in the room.

“‘Is this the way you do it?' I said, off-handedly.

“Giles jumped up. ‘Here,' he said. ‘Let me show you how we do it in Brevard.'

“And he'd only been out of school a week! I looked at him and thought, ‘Who the hell are
you
?'

“After I got to know him, I realized he was sincerely trying to help. He was the type of person you couldn't stay mad at for long. If he had to fight a drunk while arresting him, they'd be buddies by the time they got to jail.”

“Giles bubbled with enthusiasm,” said patrol captain Charles Long, now retired. “He'd come into a room filled with soreheads and the place would light up.”

Such praise would normally set the stage for intense rivalry among the tightly knit troopers, but Giles—who wore a smile you couldn't beat off with a hammer—had a way of turning people's attitudes around.

“He was so damned likable,” said one officer, “even when he stayed on your ass about something.

“‘Man,' he'd say, ‘you smoke too much.'

“‘And you grin too much,' I'd tell him. Which just made him grin all the more.”

Tuesday morning, April 9, Giles slept in. Melinda had worked the night before and they had both stayed up late, talking, watching TV,
and playing with their dog, a white miniature Eskimo spitz that was a gift from Bonnie.

The couple, married two years, seldom disagreed, but when they did, it always revolved around the highway patrol.

“He wanted to be the best trooper around,” explained Melinda. “It drove me crazy because I knew he was doing so well. But it was, ‘I can do better. I can do better.' The first year we were in Buncombe County, he topped everyone else in the number of arrests he made. After that, he began to feel the stress of having to stay on top, which in turn, made him want to try that much harder.”

It even affected their plans for the future.

Giles wanted to start a family, but because of his extreme attachment to the highway patrol, Melinda wanted to wait. They'd argue about it; at least Melinda argued. Giles, who hated confrontations, mostly listened.

“It was hard arguing with Giles because he didn't have a temper— which really bugged me. I'd get excited about something and he'd say, ‘Don't yell! Let's sit down and talk.'

“He wanted everything to be perfect and smooth all the time. I think that's why he got into so few fights on the road.”

Nor did he seem overly concerned with the dangers inherent in his work, though he and Melinda did discuss the possibility that he could be hurt or killed on patrol.

“If anything ever happens to me,” he said, “please don't let anybody blame my job. Just tell them I was doing what I loved to do.”

Gordon Conner, Giles's training officer, was at the weigh station on Tuesday when Giles drove past on his way to the tunnel. Now in his second day on the new assignment, Giles was scheduled to report by 3:00
P.M.
It was already past two-thirty and there was still a long way to go.

“I saw him come through,” said Conner, “but he didn't stop, and I knew he was running late.”

Then he heard Giles's voice come over the patrol car radio.

“You think I'm gonna make it?” he said excitedly. “I figure just about a mile a minute!”

Conner grinned. Knowing Giles, he'd be right on time.