Trooper Down! (24 page)

As Ray was talking to Worrell, the driver in the second van walked up to see what was going on. When he did, Ray told him he needed to see his driver's license too.

“My license is in my luggage and I'll have to go get it,” said Timothy Lanier Allen. Riding with him was his older brother, thirty-four-year-old Alex Allen.

While Timothy Allen went to retrieve his license, Ray took Worrell to his patrol car and settled him in the rear seat. Then he climbed in front. Though it was early morning and the start of a working day for most, for Ray the hour was late. He had put in a long night and was tired, perhaps too tired to realize that by not monitoring Allen more closely he had just placed himself in a very dangerous position.

In the shadowy darkness, a figure approached and, as was his custom, Ray reached over to open the front passenger door.

When he did, Timothy Allen pointed a .38-caliber gun inside the car and fired three shots. One struck Ray on the right side of his head behind his ear, one punctured his hand, and the other hit him in the left middle finger. Immediately all three men—Allen, Worrell, and Green—ran and jumped back into the van with Alex Allen and took off. The abandoned van was left with its motor running.

As the men were driving away, one of them glanced back and thought he saw the trooper lift the police radio to his ear.

But all was quiet inside the patrol car. The first bullet had ruptured a major artery in Ray's neck, leading to a quick death.

At the Williamston radio center, telecommunicator Linwood Cowan, Jr., was trying desperately to get Worley back on the line. Several minutes had passed since Ray's transmission informing the station he had stopped two vans. No one had heard from him since.

After twenty-five or so attempts, with no response, Cowan called the Enfield police department, the closest law enforcement agency to Ray's location, telling them they needed to check on a trooper. In turn, the Enfield P.D. called the N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles on Interstate 95 and asked them to send someone from the weigh station. Don Davenport answered the phone.

“Normally, we monitor the troopers' radio broadcasts and would have known what was going on,” he said. “But that night our monitor was broken.”

The Enfield dispatcher told him that someone from Williamston
had been trying to contact Worley for the past thirty minutes, then asked Davenport if he would drive to the spot where Worley had stopped.

Accompanying Davenport was Cecil Alston, a weigh station employee and former telecommunicator. The two men set off for mile marker 163, ten miles north on Interstate 95. En route, they tried raising Worley on the radio.

They could see the patrol car well before they reached it, its blue light, four-way flashers, and inside dome light glowing. The white van, engine still idling, was parked in front.

“There he is,” said Davenport. “It looks tike he's doing some paperwork.”

Once again they tried reaching him on the radio. But there was no answer.

“Something's wrong,” said Davenport.

Alston started out of the car and Davenport told him to be careful. For all they knew, the parked van could still be occupied.

With gun drawn, Davenport walked toward the patrol car on the driver's side, while Alston approached from the right.

Shards of glass lay scattered on the pavement and Davenport could see the jagged edges that remained of the driver's window. Then he saw the blood and Ray's erect but lifeless form.

“Oh god! He's been shot!” he told Alston.

Alston jerked the passenger door open.

Davenport reached through the broken window and felt Ray's neck, looking for a pulse. There was none.

Alston, overcome by what he'd seen, leaned over the car hood and put his head down on his arms. Then he raised up and looked at Davenport. Both men were badly shaken.

“I'll go check the van and you call Williamston,” said Davenport.

Assuring himself that no one was lurking inside, Davenport walked around the van, while Alston—who had notifed Williamston that Ray was dead at the scene—stood near Davenport's car, listening for radio traffic.

Suddenly Alston spotted a small-caliber revolver lying next to the guardrail. Neither man touched the gun, aware that it was a prime piece of evidence.

With nothing to do now but wait for law enforcement officials to
show up, they paced. Alston, dressed in a blue, short-sleeved summer uniform, tried to keep warm. The sun had not yet risen on that stretch of the interstate and the morning air felt damp and chilly.

As Davenport walked back and forth in front of the parked cars, his mind churned with questions.

“What son of a bitch would do something like that?” he fumed. “What happened here? What caused them to do it? And where are they now?”

Law officers and the ambulance crew arrived almost simultaneously. Detectives from the State Bureau of Investigation confiscated the gun, while the rescue squad checked the trooper for vital signs. Photographs of the crime scene were taken and other bits of evidence collected. As the medical team was removing Ray's body from the cruiser, a plastic card fell to the ground. Someone picked it up and showed it to a highway patrolman, Sergeant F. W. Horton. It was a driver's license belonging to Antonio Worrell, Ray's back seat passenger.

Now began the process of notifying family members and friends.

Sergeant John Wood was sleeping soundly when his phone rang at ten minutes till six. It was Alexander Jones, a telecornmunicator from Williamston.

“Sergeant Wood, bad news.”

“What's wrong?” said Wood, still half-asleep.

“Ray Worley's been murdered. All we know is that he stopped two vans. Then he quit transmitting. Everyone's being notified right now.”

“I'll be on my way shortly,” said Wood, shocked into silence.

As he passed Ray's home, he glanced towards the house and wondered, “Who's the unlucky person who will have to tell the family?”

He was more than halfway to Interstate 95 when Williamston radioed him to turn around and go to the Worley residence. It was he who would have to relay the news. And he had no idea what he'd say once he got there.

Erwin Marshmon was off duty that morning. When the call came at 6:20
A.M., 
he knew it must be an emergency.

Like Wood, Marshmon could not, at first, believe what he was hearing. It had been less than a month since he had returned from Giles Harmon's funeral in western North Carolina.

Marshmon dressed quickly and went outside to start his patrol
car. Almost immediately, he saw a black man of medium build walking north on the highway directly in front of his house. Turning on the patrol radio, he caught a portion of a broadcast giving a description of a possible suspect in the shooting—a black male carrying a brown bag, wearing dark pants and a light shirt.

Marshmon stared at the man walking along the highway, then picked up his radio.

“Would you repeat that description?” he said.

When the information was relayed again, Marshmon ran back into the house, grabbed his service revolver, and called his sergeant.

“I just saw a man fitting the description of one of the suspects,” he said. “He's walking right in front of my house!”

“Get him!” said the sergeant. “But be careful. He's armed.”

Marshmon pulled out of the driveway, tapping the horn to get the man's attention. The suspect turned around, looked at the trooper, but kept walking.

“Stop! I need to talk to you,” Marshmon called. But Alex Allen continued on.

Marshmon positioned his cruiser between himself and the man so he would have some protection in case he was fired upon. Then he got out of the car, his .357 Magnum in his hand.

When Marshmon pulled the hammer on the gun, Allen stopped.

“Turn around,” instructed the trooper. “Face me and get down on the ground.”

Allen did as he was told, but placed the bag he was carrying in front of him, so that he could lie on top of it.

“Why is he doing that?” thought Marshmon. “What's in there? What's he hiding?”

Marshmon approached cautiously, grabbed Allen and placed handcuffs on both his wrists. Then he searched him.

“What are you stoppin' me for, man? I ain't done nothing,” Allen snapped.

“We just had a trooper killed and you're a suspect,” said Marshmon.

“Man, I was just walking up the road.”

“Sure,” said Marshmon, patting him down for weapons. His hand struck a hard metal object tucked inside Allen's belt. Marshmon yanked it forward: a .38 revolver with two spent cartridges and one live round.

“I'm taking you into custody,” said Marshmon.

Once inside the patrol car, Allen began cursing the trooper and demanding to know why he'd been arrested.

“What are you messing with me for?” he said. “I was just hitchhiking. What the hell did you stop me for anyway?”

The litany went on and on. Finally, Marshmon—still reeling from the news of Ray's death—could no longer tolerate Allen's presence.

“I was upset, crying, angry, and hurt,” he recalled. “Knowing Ray had just gotten killed and knowing that I could be holding the weapon that did it, then having to listen to this guy, made me feel very uncomfortable about having him in my patrol car. I knew I was about to lose my temper. So I did what I thought was best. I called another trooper and asked him to transport the suspect to jail.”

Marshmon followed them to the county jail, returned home to pull himself together, then drove to the crime scene. As he stood at the spot where his friend had been killed, his only thought was, “Did he suffer?”

When the four men in the stolen van had left the scene and watched Ray lift the radio to his ear, they were convinced he was alerting authorities. Afraid they'd be seen on the interstate, they took the first exit they approached, turned right, and headed down a rural, two-lane highway towards the small town of Enfield, where Trooper Marshmon lived.

Coming upon a graveled driveway that led to an open field, they turned, drove the van into a secluded pull-off, parked it, and took off running. Deciding his chances were better if he went alone, and knowing he had the weapon that killed Worley, Alex Allen headed down Highway 301. The others ran towards the Seaboard System railroad tracks in an attempt to make connections north.

All four had been spotted by a farmer coming to check on his crops in the field close to where the van had been ditched. Realizing that something wasn't right, the farmer stopped at a nearby store and told the owner he'd seen four black men fleeing from a van parked in the bushes on his property, one carrying a brown bag and wearing dark pants and a light shirt.

Local authorities were notified and the perimeter tightened around the Enfield area, east of Interstate 95.

By 9:15
A.M., 
four hours after Ray was killed, police helicopters had spotted the fugitives at the railroad tracks and law enforcement
officers moved in for the capture. The men surrendered with no resistance.

Indicted by a Halifax County grand jury, they were charged with two counts each of possession of stolen property. Timothy Lanier Allen was charged with first degree murder. The other three men were charged with being accessories after the fact.

Ray Worley was buried in Northampton County in the family cemetery behind his home.

Throughout the trial, held six months after the slaying, Timothy Allen showed little emotion or remorse for his actions.

Jackie Worley, Ray's widow, attended the proceedings every day. There were painful moments—especially when Ray's blood-soaked shirt was passed around for evidence—but she had a purpose in being there.

“I went because there were things I wanted to be sure of, questions that needed answers. I had to know they had the right person because at the time it happened, no one knew who did what.

“I didn't take my eyes off Allen. At times, I tried to stare a hole right through him. But he would not look at me. His attitude was, ‘I'm here, but I really didn't do anything.' Did that make me angry? Yes. Even now I get mad. I'm still coping with it.”

After four weeks of listening to evidence and more than a dozen witnesses, the jury convicted Timothy Allen of first degree murder. He received the death sentence (now on appeal). His brother, Alex Allen, received sixteen years' imprisonment; Mack Green, fifteen years; Antonio Worrell, seventeen years.

Most troopers felt the sentencing—particularly capital punishment for Timothy Allen—was fair. Some believe, however, that Worrell, Green, and Alex Allen should be serving more time.

For officers who knew and respected Ray Worley, the shooting left its mark in one way or another.

Sergeant John Wood, who notified the Worley family that Ray was dead, said that for months he woke up every morning at ten till six—the exact time he was told of Ray's death.

“Everyone in our district kind of walked around in a daze for a while,” he said. “It was so hard to believe it could happen here, happen to one of us. The new survival training we've gotten from the patrol since then has helped a lot. But we all realize now—it's easy to get killed on this job.”

For Erwin Marshmon, another of Ray's close friends, and the trooper who captured Alex Allen, the murder left a strong sense of misgiving about his fellow man.

“For a long time afterwards, I had trouble trusting people,” he said. “At one point, I became paranoid about stopping anyone. When I did, I could ‘see' them pulling a gun.

“I don't carry on a lot of conversation with people I stop anymore. I watch their hands, watch everything they do. I don't perceive anything as routine because I know that no one is your friend when you stop them on the road. Instead, they pose a potential threat.”

Despite such well-founded cynicism, most troopers—like most people—still assume that terrible things will happen to others, but not to them.