Trooper Down! (34 page)

“‘Yeah.'

“So she stands up in the line of fire, jacks a shell into the shotgun chamber, and yells toward the woods, ‘Chicken!'

“She got real brave when she realized we were just as scared as she was.”

Daylight broke Wednesday morning with more of the same lousy weather.

Around noon, the clouds began to lift and highway patrol officers at the command post agreed the patrol helicopter should go up.

A Jet Ranger with a five- to six-seat capacity, the chopper—purchased from the Pennsylvania state police for $112,000—was worth its weight in gold, particularly in the mountains, where dense, rugged terrain often made searching on foot a difficult task.

The pilot was Warrant Officer Ken Thompson, a sixteen-year veteran of the highway patrol. Riding with him was Sheriff's Deputy Larry Harris and Trooper David McMurray, still recovering from the leg injury he had received when Shornook had ambushed him on Tuesday.

“I was told to stay off my feet for a few days,” said McMurray, “yet I wanted to remain on duty. Going up in the chopper seemed the most useful thing I could do.”

With him, he carried a Henderson County sheriff's department radio so he could relay information to officers on the ground.

Below him, tactical teams composed of State Bureau of Investigation agents, county law enforcement officers, city police, and other agencies, including the highway patrol, were scouring the mountain, searching every house, cabin, barn, and outbuilding they could find.

“As soon as we got in the air,” said McMurray, “one of the detectives on the ground called and asked if I could see him in a large group of people walking up the mountain. I answered yes, and he explained they were on their way to search two deserted barns. So we dropped down and started flying in circles, close enough to see them, but not so close that we became a distraction.”

A few minutes later, the same detective contacted McMurray again
and told him there were shots being fired from one of the barns. In fact, he said, they thought they had Shornook contained inside the building and wanted to know if—from the air—the perimeter around the barn appeared secure in case Shornook escaped. McMurray assured him it looked contained.

While scores of officers waited, State Bureau of Investigation agents Steve Myers and David Wooten approached the barn. Treading lightly on the hay-strewn floor, they could see a row of wooden stalls, each one with a door, all firmly closed.

Guns drawn, Myers and Wooten kicked the doors open, one by one.

The first three stalls were empty.

Hunkered down in the fourth one was Shornook. As the door swung backwards, Myers could see Shornook's gun pointed right at Wooten's head.

In one swift motion, Shornook turned to his left and fired, wounding Myers in the arm, then turned to his right and shot Wooten in the stomach. As both men fell, Shornook ran from the barn and toward the woods.

McMurray spotted him and radioed from the helicopter that he could see a lone figure running down a ridge, away from the barn.

“Then I corrected myself,” he said, “explaining that from the chopper I couldn't identify him as Shornook, so they needed to make sure all law enforcement officers were in their assigned teams.”

This time there was little chance that Shornook would get away.

Not only were the barn and surrounding area filled with law enforcement officers, but a four-man tactical team was heading up the ridge as Shornook was coming down. Having heard the shooting, they were ready for anything.

Fifty yards from the barn, they saw him coming their way. Shornook stopped, raised his weapon, and started to say something. His words were cut short when one of the police officers opened fire. The bullet entered behind his left ear and exited the right side of his skull, killing him instantly.

Found near his body were a .30-caliber carbine and a .45-caliber handgun. He was wearing blue jeans, sweat socks, and a heavy camouflage jacket. To the officers who had seen only mug shots of Shornook, he looked older, more physically mature, and stockier than the boy portrayed in the photos.

It was 1:15
P.M.
, Wednesday, November 26, nearly four days since the manhunt had begun. Only one day away from Thanksgiving.

SBI agent David Wooten, twenty-seven, who underwent surgery for the stomach wound inflicted by Shornook, fully recovered. Steve Myers, also twenty-seven, was treated and released for a gunshot wound to the arm.

Despite all the hullabaloo about Shornook's skills as a “survivalist” and a “Rambo,” the autopsy report showed he hadn't eaten in days.

“It sounds good, even dramatic, to call him a ‘Rambo,'” said a city police officer, “but the truth is, he was just a kid who happened to know how to handle himself in the woods—much like an experienced hunter.”

“He had eluded people in this fashion before,” added another policeman. “And he thought it would work again. So there was a logical explanation for everything he did.”

As troopers and other law enforcement personnel gathered around their car radios listening to reports of Shornook's death, a calm began returning to Sugarloaf Mountain. Finally, the fear and the worry was over, as well as the sheer weariness of manning posts and traipsing through the cold and the rain, wondering if Shornook was lurking nearby, ready and willing to shoot them.

“I'm just relieved it's behind us,” said one trooper, speaking on behalf of his fellow officers.

“Yeah,” said another, pumping the shells out of his shotgun, “now it looks like we'll have Thanksgiving after all.”

"As the longest serving governor in North Carolina history (sixteen years), I worked closely with troopers all over our state. They are the best, period. They were the best when I became governor in 1977 and are even better now. How fortunate we are to have them enforcing our laws and saving our lives across North Carolina." —
Former North Carolina governor Jim Hunt, January 2012

It's been more than two decades since
Trooper Down! Life and Death on the Highway Patrol
was first published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Since then, the North Carolina Highway Patrol (NCHP) has undergone numerous internal changes, from the implementation of specialized training defense courses and advanced communications to the adaptation of new technology and weaponry. Computers and cameras are standard equipment inside today's patrol cars. An officer can stop anyone in the state and determine if an outstanding warrant exists, a far cry from the days when the system allowed only county-by-county criminal histories.

The pay is better too. The top salary for a North Carolina highway patrol officer in 1988 was $34,000. Today's master trooper can earn up to $56,330.

The seventeen-hundred-plus sworn officers in 2011 (up from eleven-hundred in 1988) drive sleeker, more powerful cruisers (Dodge Chargers) and carry smaller, more accurate handguns. Nonlethal weapons, from Tasers, a type of stun gun that applies electrical current, to handheld pepper spray are issued alongside lightweight, mandatory bulletproof vests. Emphasis today is on subduing aggressive violators from a distance as opposed to up-close-and-personal potentially deadly encounters.

Structurally, the NCHP has changed as well. In 2003, it brought the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) into its fold, allowing for 220 DMV officers to become state troopers. The current patrol also has its own medical staff and a self-supporting Emergency Medical Service (EMS), with more than a hundred troopers who are EMS certified. Its Members Assistance Team provides counseling and other services throughout the state, reducing the stigma that once dogged officers seeking help for personal or professional problems.

Eleven different colonels have headed the organization since 1988, including Col. Michael W. Gilchrist, commander since 2010. He answers to the North Carolina governor, Beverly Perdue, who declined comment for this update due to strict conflict of interest ethics. However, most officers believe she has a positive view of the organization and continues to support it, despite the occasional internal scandal. Troopers provide security detail for the governor and staff.

When troopers do get into trouble, from sex on the job to blatant thievery, it's widely reported in the media. But in truth, wayward troopers represent only a small fraction of the highway patrol's total number of personnel.

“Our disciplinary issues constitute less than one percent of our structure,” says Sgt. Joseph S. Batchelor, who has served fourteen years in the NCHP. “I would stack our ratio of incidents against any corporation measuring its own disciplinary actions. And of course, the media concentrates primarily on that one percent. But that means ninety-nine percent of our officers are outstanding citizens of North Carolina.”

Many of the original officers in the 1988 edition of Trooper Down! have retired or moved on. Joel K. Reece, whose story opens the book, left the organization in the 1990s to serve as a drug enforcement agent (DEA) for the federal government. Elizabeth “Dee” Parton, among the first women troopers in the state, works as a probation officer in Haywood County in order to be closer to home.

James J. Kilpatrick, a renowned social conservative and columnist for the
Washington Post,
wrote the foreword for
Trooper Down!
He died in August 2010 in Washington, D.C.

Incoming cadets, of which there are still a designated fifty-nine for each scheduled school at the North Carolina State Highway Patrol Training Academy in Garner, now undergo a lengthier, more comprehensive program with special emphasis on advanced accident investigation, field sobriety testing and prevention of dangerous situations. In a course titled “The First Three Seconds,” students learn to immediately recognize the indicators a dangerous assailant might signal and most effective ways to counter a pending crisis.

Training instructor Joe Bright, Jr., says his job is to take these “kids,” aged twenty-one to forty, and turn them into a working unit willing and able to maintain the patrol's paramilitary professionalism. Many of today's cadets, he concedes, are more likely to have college or even master degrees and consider the patrol only one of many options for a lifelong career path. That, in turn, has led to a smaller pool of candidates. But standards and requirements for cadets have remained much the same since 1988, Bright says.

Racial and gender lines have been crossed, though it remains true that only a fraction of the state's highway patrol officers are women. As of 2011, a total of forty-eight officers are female, or nearly 3 percent, compared to the less than 1 percent in 1988.

Among the few female troopers is Alicia M. Elson, a thirty-three-year-old wife and mother stationed in Wilmington, North Carolina. Elson was working a wreck on a warm December day in 2011 after an older woman crashed into a light pole. The officer had just called the tow truck and was on her way to the hospital to check on the woman's injuries. She said she joined the highway patrol nine years ago following a stint in the Marine Corps.

“I always wanted to be in law enforcement,” she says, “and thought the N.C. highway patrol a good fit since I had prior training in the military. I knew it was a long shot, but I made it in 2002. Did I have to be a little thicker skinned to prove myself? Yes, but from the start I hated being labeled ‘female trooper.' I don't see myself that way at all. I'm a trooper, just like everyone else.”

It's all a matter of trust, Elson says, an assurance that comes with time and experience, providing proof she will be there for her fellow officers, male or female. Asked if there's a “sisterhood” of women troopers, she explains that as the lone woman trooper within her county, she seldom sees other female officers, though that doesn't really matter. “I have highway patrol brothers and sisters all over the state. This organization is a family, and once you're in it, you may leave it, but it never leaves you.”

That same sentiment runs deepest when a trooper is down. Along with the three North Carolina troopers killed in 1985, forming the book's title and heart, there are new widows and fatherless children scattered across the state. The convicted killers of the slain troopers killed in 1985 are all still serving their life sentences in prison. And the job's inherent dangers remain.

Since the organization's inception in 1929, more than sixty officers have died on the job, seventeen the result of gunshot wounds, two in an airplane crash, two in a helicopter crash, one in cadet training while boxing, and the rest in motor-vehicle-related accidents, the single greatest cause of on-duty deaths.

“When you think about the number of miles we drive each year,” says Sgt. Sean L. Bridges, a thirteen-year veteran, “our odds of getting involved in a traffic accident are naturally higher.”

Inside the training academy in Garner and at the NCHP headquarters in Raleigh, photos line the walls in memory of those troopers and DMV officers who died in the line of duty. Among those lost just since Trooper Down! was first published:

Cadet William E. Bayless III in a boxing incident during cadet training in 1988. He suffered a heart attack.

Trooper Michael L. Martin, in a car crash in 1988.

Motor Carrier Officer Jackie Daniel, struck by a commercial vehicle while helping a stranded motorist in 1994.

Motor Carrier Officer Franklin D. Perritte, in a traffic accident related to a pursuit in 1995.

Trooper Damion C. Roberts, in a car crash in 1996.

Sergeant Lloyd E. Lowry, killed in 1997, along with a Cumberland County deputy, on I-95N following a traffic stop in which two brothers, suspected of driving a stolen car, opened fire with an assault rifle and one of the officer's own guns.

Trooper William J. Starling, in a car crash in 1998.

Trooper David H. Dees, in a car crash in 1999.

Trooper William B. Davis, in a traffic accident that occurred while responding to assist another trooper in order to execute a felony vehicle stop in 1999. The suspect was accused of driving a stolen vehicle.