Trooper Down! (35 page)

Trooper John H. Duncan, Jr. in a car crash in 2001 while pursuing a suspect stopped for speeding.

Trooper Calvin E. Taylor, in a car crash in 2001 following a traffic stop.

Trooper Anthony G. Cogdill, struck by a tractor trailer that swerved onto the shoulder after the officer made a routine traffic stop in 2003.

Trooper Josh W. Oliver, in 2004 as a result of a traffic collision.

Trooper David S. Blanton, Jr. after being shot during a routine traffic stop in 2008.

Trooper Andrew J. Stocks, in a traffic collision in 2008.

Trooper Kyle P. Barber, as the result of an accident that occurred in the line of duty in 2007. He died in 2009.

Among the most recent officers killed in a fatal assault, David Shawn Blanton, Jr. was a twenty-four-year-old Native American husband and father whose infant boy was born premature and would die only a short time after Blanton was murdered.

He was patrolling on Tuesday night, June 17, 2008, a little after ten when he stopped a GMC pickup truck towing a trailer on Interstate 40. The officer suspected a registration violation when he walked up to the driver, Edwardo Wong II, a convicted felon from Florida passing through North Carolina. It took only four minutes for Blanton and Wong to get into an altercation and for Wong to fire three shots. A passer-by called 911, reporting that the officer was down and that the driver was fleeing the scene. Wong had searched Blanton's body and tossed the trooper's keys over a guardrail before he sped away.

Haywood County deputies chased the vehicle along the interstate, pulling Wong over and forcing him to exit his truck. Inside were illegal drugs and Blanton's weapon, stolen off the dead trooper. Convicted of first degree murder, Wong's jury deadlocked on the death sentence. As a result, he is now serving a life sentence without parole.

Sgt. Sean Bridges, who is married to a police officer, said he and his wife drove to Cherokee in western North Carolina for Blanton's memorial service.

“People lined the streets for more than twenty-two miles,” he recalls. “They were shoulder to shoulder, business owners leaving their shops, vacationing tourists there to see the mountains, even a couple who had just gotten married and were coming out of the church. Small children saluted as the procession moved by. I turned to my wife, who was crying and said, ‘Do you believe this?' It was all for someone they had never met. At that moment, I felt like people actually cared about us not just as troopers but as people just like them. It revitalized my commitment to my career.”

Most troopers say the same thing troopers said twenty-four years ago: We're not the bad guys. And we're not robots in a gray uniform. We're regular people with family problems, marital problems, aging parents, kids, and crazy work hours. Regular people in an irregular profession.

“Despite what people may think,” says Sgt. Robert E. Bowen, with the NCHP nearly twenty years, “we're still primarily a public service. We may write you a ticket, but we also come to your assistance and provide comfort in a bad situation. This job is, after all, about people of all races and genders. A good half of the job is having the ability to just be able to talk to anyone.”

Lt. Don L. Cole, the officer in charge of specialized training, has spent twenty-two years in the NCHP. His family history is full of accounts from a trooper's prospective. Both his father and his brother joined the patrol, and through the years Cole was often mistaken for one or the other. Now he has a thirteen-year-old son who is convinced he too, wants to be a trooper.

“My son has grown up with it, just as I did,” says Cole. “And he knows I still love it. I still drive a marked car by choice and still wear my hat because I worked so hard for both; still love the smell of sweat when I walk through the training center; still get enthused about the job, though I know bad things still happen.”

Sgt. Lloyd E. Lowry, killed in 1997 during an assault, was his friend and his mentor. On the day that Cole learned of his death, his first thought was, “If this could happen to him, it could happen to any of us.”

“I've read the Trooper Down! book several times through the years,” Cole says. “I could read it again tonight and these same stories would still apply. Certain things have changed within the North Carolina Highway Patrol, but we continue to have the same worries, the same temptations, the same challenges, and unfortunately, the same losses both here and across the nation.”

*

Author's Note:
I wish to thank the North Carolina Highway Patrol officers quoted here for their time and generosity in providing the necessary information for the book's updated epilogue, along with Major Troy Butler, Director of Training for the Highway Patrol and Capt. Julian K. Stone, Assistant Director of Training and School Director, who expedited the interviews.

Special thanks to Richard Allen Page and Mark Johnson, Deputy Communications Director for the Office of the Governor. Their assistance in reaching Governor Purdue's office and other legislative contacts was invaluable.

MARIE BARTLETT
January 2012

1. Trooper Joel K. Reece on routine patrol.
Ewart Ball
, Asheville Citizen-Times

2. Louis Rector (third from left) receiving a Distinguished Service Award after being wounded in the line of duty.

3. A woman heads to work as police patrol the streets during the man hunt for fugitive Ronald Freeman.
Bob Scott
, Asheville Citizen-Times

4. James Clegg (right) is escorted to a patrol car for return to Tennessee.
Dan Ward
, Asheville Citizen-Times

5-6. Cadets run as a group before dawn (above) and assist fellow cadets with pull-ups (next page) as a part of training designed to build physical fitness and
esprit de corps.
M. Kent Holcomb

7. Cadets undergo a rigorous course of study during training.
M. Kent Holcomb

8. Cadet is chewed out by his superior officer for an infraction of patrol discipline.
M. Kent Holcomb