Trooper Down! (4 page)

That March night, Louis's shift began as a routine patrol.

Louis left the house around midnight in his unmarked cruiser, checking on duty through the Newton Communications Center.

“F-138, Newton,” he said, identifying his call number. “I'm now 10-41 (beginning tour of duty).”

“Ten-four,” the telecommunicator replied,

Since the patrol was short-handed in both Burke and adjoining Catawba County, troopers shared the responsibility of patrolling long stretches of Interstate 40. So for the next hour, Louis headed west before turning around at the McDowell County line (which also adjoined Burke) to backtrack east.

About midway on his assigned route, he clocked several tractor-trailer rigs exceeding the fifty-five speed limit. One trucker was barreling along at seventy, so Louis pulled him over and, after arresting him, took him to the Morganton County Jail where he was fined forty-seven dollars for speeding, and released.

Heading back toward the interstate, Louis should have patrolled the stretch of highway he had not yet covered. Instead, without knowing why, he turned and drove to the same location he had just patrolled. When he reached the McDowell County line he crossed over as he had done earlier, cruising toward Morganton.

Moments later he spotted a light gray 1978 Cadillac in the westbound lane going much too fast. Using his radar, Louis clocked the driver at seventy-four miles per hour and crossed the grassy interstate median to pursue him. Nearing the McDowell County line, he caught up with the car, activated the blue patrol light, and turned on the siren. But the driver sped forward.

The chase continued across the county line until the Cadillac finally slowed, then eased onto the right emergency lane to stop. Louis pulled up behind. With the engine still running, he stepped out of the patrol car. The air surrounding him was gray and foggy, heavy with the threat of a bone-chilling rain.

In his left hand he carried a patrol-issued flashlight. Inside the car lay his bulletproof vest, slung carelessly across the front seat. Hot and bulky, it was an optional piece of equipment that Louis and other North Carolina state troopers seldom bothered to wear.

As soon as his feet hit the pavement, instinct took over. Something
told him not to move too quickly, for this would be a traffic stop like none he had ever encountered. Yet he still had to act.

Slowly and methodically, Louis moved to the left rear door of the Cadillac. The back window was halfway down, and he could see a portion of the driver's head. At first he thought the man was wearing an orange hat, then realized that what he had seen was a thick, curly mop of reddish hair.

Neither the man nor his passenger spoke, moved, or turned around. The trooper felt a sudden stab of fear.

“Driver! Put your hands up on the steering wheel!” Louis demanded.

Without warning, the man turned and fired a single shot from a .22-caliber revolver. The bullet passed through the half-opened back window and struck Louis in the left side of the chest, glanced off a stainless steel pen in his shirt pocket, and entered his lung.

Staggering backwards, he fell to the ground, then got up and ran between the patrol car and the Cadillac. Grabbing his .357 Magnum, he intended to fire at the driver, but as he reached up to aim, he saw the passenger get out of the car and aim a .22 revolver at him. The man fired six times, hitting Louis in the upper left leg, right knee, and right side of the stomach. Seconds later, he jumped into the Cadillac and the car sped away.

Bleeding heavily but still conscious, Louis managed to fire all six rounds from his gun. Two bullets shattered the Cadillac's back window, but missed both occupants.

Alone now and seriously hurt, Louis struggled to return to the patrol car radio that would link him to help. On the pavement behind him lay his hat and the flashlight, along with the scattered remains of numerous .22 shells.

Crawling towards the safety of the patrol car, he was engulfed with a sense of shock and anger. This wasn't supposed to happen to him. As he climbed into the driver's seat, he looked down. There was little pain from the wounds but he could see thick red stains seeping across the front of his shirt and trousers. Afraid to examine himself further, he concentrated on getting his gun back into its holster.

Despite his condition, his first thought was, “I have to get my gun back where it belongs.” Over and over he tried replacing the weapon, but each time, the empty holster on his hip swung round and round.

Finally, still holding the gun, he picked up the radio.

“Signal 25, Newton,” he gasped into the mike (I need immediate assistance). “This is F-138. I've been shot.”

“Ten-four,” the telecommunicator responded. “Can you give us a description of the vehicle and the direction it was traveling?”

Louis provided what details he could and in turn was reassured that help was on the way.

Convinced he could help himself, Louis turned the wheel of the patrol car and started east on the interstate, unaware in his state of shock that he was driving in the westbound lane. The last thing he remembers was slamming on the brakes as the guardrail rushed towards him. It was 1:36
A.M.

Less than a mile away, John Angley and his wife were sound asleep when the police scanner next to their bed relayed a message that a highway patrol officer needed assistance on Interstate 40 near Dysartsville Road. An emergency medical technician and paramedic for the McDowell County rescue squad, Angley was on call as a “first responder” to any crisis that arose within his district during the night.

Without a word, he got up, dressed, and was out the door. Randall Brackett, McDowell County fire chief, and Bruce Gwyn, another local fire fighter, had also responded to the call. All were en route to Louis at about the same time.

Angley and Gwyn arrived at the scene simultaneously. As they ran towards the patrol car, both men noted it was stopped in the wrong lane, with all four headlights burning. The blue light, sitting atop the dashboard, was still spinning, and a blood-splattered bulletproof vest was draped across the passenger seat.

Angley saw Louis slumped forward in the driver's seat, his gun still in his hand. Turning to Gwyn, he cautioned him not to open the door until they had clearly identified their purpose.

“Sir,” said Angley, leaning towards the patrol car. “We're here to help you, sir. Can we open the door?”

Louis's head moved slightly and he mumbled.

Reaching into the car, Angley gently pulled the officer back against the seat to check his vital signs. He could tell by the trooper's ashen color and weak pulse that he was in deep trouble. Louis was also having difficulty breathing. As he gasped for breath, he looked up at John and asked imploringly, “Am I gonna die? Am I gonna die?”

“Not if we can help it,” said Angley.

The Burke County rescue squad was the first ambulance to arrive.
Emergency medical technicians Tommy Waters and Phillip Reece began preparing IVs while Angley and Gwyn administered oxygen to Louis. As the medics were lifting the trooper out of the patrol car and onto the stretcher, he suddenly vomited and stopped breathing. Angley quickly repositioned him and Louis took one breath, then another.

A short, stocky man in his late thirties, Angley took his work seriously, sometimes getting emotionally caught up in the traumas he witnessed as an EMT. He hoped fervently that the trooper would make it and the night would end on a happier note.

At Grace Hospital in Morganton, nineteen miles from where Louis had been shot, doctors, nurses, and other emergency medical personnel were waiting for the ambulance to arrive. They had already been notified that a highway patrol officer was badly wounded and would probably require immediate surgery. Among the operating room nurses off duty that night was Scottie Rector, Louis's thirty-two-year-old wife.

The call came shortly before 2:00
A.M.
Scottie, a medium-built woman with brown hair and a soft, lilting voice, picked up the phone. A registered nurse, Scottie couldn't understand why the hospital was calling her when she wasn't scheduled to work.

“It's Louis,” said Scottie's nursing supervisor. “He's been shot and you need to come to the emergency room.”

“Are you kidding?” she said. “How bad is it? How bad is he hurt?” She sat up in bed, now wide awake.

“I don't know,” answered the woman.

He's dead, Scottie thought. Louis is dead and they don't want to tell me.

“I'll be right there,” she responded. Dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a sweatshirt, she drove through the rain to Grace Hospital, certain that all of her fears over Louis's job had finally come to pass. At home, their daughter, Chanda, twelve, and son, Bryan, eight, slept on.

In the hospital emergency room, John Angley and the ambulance crew had completed their job and were waiting for word on how Louis was doing. Almost immediately, he'd been whisked into a trauma room and surrounded by physicians and a well-trained medical staff who knew exactly what to do. The E.R. was teeming with law enforcement officers, reporters, hospital personnel, and patients.

Almost immediately after the telecomrnunicator at Newton received word that Louis had been shot, highway patrol officers from Burke and surrounding counties were alerted to stand by for emergency duty. Many off-duty troopers donned their uniforms and checked on voluntarily so they'd be ready when the first official orders came through.

One of those troopers was Don Patterson. He heard the news through a telecommunicator who called him at home.

“I went straight to the McDowell County line where other troopers were already securing the area,” Patterson recalled. “We set up roadblocks, stopping to check all traffic going through. Detectives from the State Bureau of Investigation were there too, taking photographs and looking for evidence. Louis's patrol car was still running, the radar unit still flashing 74 mph where he had clocked the Cadillac. Even the commercial radio was on. Then I saw Louis's revolver lying in the front seat. At that point, all we could think of was, ‘What happened here? Who did this? And when are we going to find them?'”  

Nearby, at Grace Hospital, Louis was undergoing emergency surgery. Though he had lost a substantial amount of blood, all four bullets had passed through his body and he was expected to recover. Days later, he would learn that the ballpoint pen had saved his life. Had the first bullet not deflected off the pen, the surgeon told Louis, it would have entered his heart instead of his lung.

While Louis lay in the intensive care unit following surgery, McDowell County deputies, asked to assist in the manhunt, located the ditched Cadillac behind an elementary school in Nebo, a tiny community a few miles from where the shooting took place. There was no sign of the driver and his passenger. Several troopers were dispatched to Nebo where they joined the deputies in sealing off the area. Not yet sure who they were looking for, the patrolmen stopped everyone coming through Nebo and checked their licenses.

Meanwhile, with help from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, the highway patrol office in Morganton began gathering the first important bits of information about the Cadillac's occupants. What eventually emerged was a chilling portrait of two deadly criminals on the run.

The driver was Ronald Sotka, forty-one, better known as Ronald Freeman, a Tennessee prison escapee who was serving consecutive
life sentences for the 1970 murder of his pregnant wife and stepdaughter. A former church deacon from Knoxville, Freeman had maintained his innocence even after he had been found guilty and sentenced to 198 years in prison.

His passenger was James E. Clegg, thirty, a habitual criminal who had escaped with Freeman and three other inmates from Fort Pillow State Prison in Tennessee on February 18. Two of the five convicts had been captured within days. Clegg, Freeman, and a third man were still at large.

Authorities considered Clegg and Freeman “extremely dangerous.” Three days after their escape from prison, the pair had walked out of the woods near Brownsville, Tennessee, and shot and killed a fifty-nine-year-old businessman who was grilling steaks in his backyard. Afterwards, they kidnapped his wife and drove her 400 miles across the state to a rest stop near Knoxville, where she was released unharmed. The fugitives were then picked up by an unidentified woman who apparently harbored them in her home.

From there, Clegg and Freeman drove to Asheville, North Carolina, where they rented a car and traveled to Cleveland, Ohio, to see Freeman's brother, who gave them $1,200. Returning to Asheville, Clegg and Freeman purchased a two-tone older-model Buick for $850. On their way east, seventy miles past Morganton, the engine gave out. The men ditched the Buick and stole a 1978 Cadillac from a Mocksville garage. In an apparent effort to mislead police, they got back on Interstate 40, heading west again, when they were stopped for speeding by Louis Rector.

Trooper Don Patterson remembers the first few frustrating hours of the search.

“In the beginning, we had about thirty or forty troopers working on the scene, in addition to other law enforcement officers. Tracking dogs were brought in, but they didn't find anything. Around 7:00
A.M. 
we realized we were hunting for two Tennessee escapees. We got a highway patrol helicopter from Raleigh but it was too foggy to go up. Later, when the weather cleared, I accompanied the helicopter crew since I knew the area, but that didn't help either. All we could see from the air were patrol cars and roadblocks.”

Troopers at ground level weren't doing much better. Excitement mellowed to boredom as the hours dragged on and the search through rain-soaked woods led to one dead end after another. Bloodhounds
picked up a scent near the abandoned Cadillac, which led to a cemetery half a mile away. Then the trail stopped. At one point, troopers thought they had someone cornered in a house, only to discover that their “fugitive” was an old man who had failed to open the door because he was hard of hearing.