I joined the Army Reserve in 1988. I was on the delayed entry program, so I joined about a year before I graduated high school. And because I joined the Army Reserve, the unit where I would drill was about 15 miles away from my town. And so, before I even went to boot camp, I spent nine months drilling one weekend a month at the unit and learning a lot of fundamental stuff, so it made Basic easier. I met my friend at that time and we became really quick friends. He was Native American and that’s super common there, and so that’s maybe important later on.
I went off to boot camp the summer after I graduated in 1989, and we were all combat arms, we were 11 Bravo, so infantry; and so, as part of training, you get to do a lot of fun stuff like fire grenade launchers, machine guns, that sort of thing.
And so, the point is me and him both knew our way around firearms well. And so, about a year or two into going to college--I think it’s 1991--he had come by my car while I was in class and left a note to come by the house, it was a Friday night. So, I went over there, and we were drinking beer, but not a lot of beer; like I had had maybe two or three, he had had maybe four or five, watching TV; and his father had also been in the military, he did maybe two or three tours in Vietnam, and so his father owned a lot of firearms as well. He had an M16 that we messed with a little bit; and one of the things you learn to do is always check a weapon when it’s handed to; you always clear it and make sure it’s not loaded. So that was a normal thing when someone would hand you a firearm, you’d go through the motions, right?
And we checked out a couple of different firearms and he had a .32 pistol, a little shallow, short-nosed revolver. He handed it to me, I checked it out, and I handed it back to him. I did not check to see if it was loaded, or I didn’t even think about it. And so, a few minutes passed and I’m in the living room, and we’re getting ready to go out, and he walked into the room and looked at me, and held the pistol to his head, and he smiled, and pulled the trigger. He fell; kind of just slumped fell on the living room floor. There was a little hole in the side of his head, and it looked like his skull would have just been full of blood because blood was shooting out of it like you would maybe puncture a gallon of milk or something, and so just this stream of liquid coming out; and it smelled like burnt hair and skin. He started foaming at the mouth.
I went into another room in the house where his sister was in there watching TV and just kind of ignoring us. Got her, had her cover her eyes, and got her out of the house. The hospital was literally almost across the street maybe half a block away; and so, I just ran to the hospital to get help because back then, it would have taken a little bit to call. And so, I ran into the emergency room, yelled for help and they were there almost immediately. This is in a small college town, about 5,000 population. So, within just a few minutes, there were maybe 20 cop cars in the area; it’s just... it was insane.
I was arrested for murder. And when this happened, the town mayor even came down. They wouldn’t let me touch my hands because, later on, they would do a gun powder test on them to see if I was the one that had fired the pistol. And this is just standard procedure, I think; they weren’t trying to be mean or making a big deal out of me, but they did let me know that that’s the process that we needed to get done. My friend was still alive at this point and already in the hospital, and they were working on him. So, I went to the hospital as well; I was in an adjoining room. A detective that we both knew from the police department was there with me and they did the gunpowder test on my hands, and I didn’t have any powder on my hands. They checked his hands, and he did; just making sure they could show that he fired the pistol.
My friend passed away and I remember the detective telling me and I was just... just numb, like I couldn’t feel anything. And he told me it was all right to cry and I just friggin lost it. I mean just... it was rough. At the time, I was completely convinced it was an accident; he was a little buzzed and he was screwing around, that’s the kind of person he was, everything was a freaking joke and it wouldn’t be out of realm to hold a gun to his head joking.
It’s not necessarily from his death, but I did have PTSD to the extent that when I was driving down the road, I thought someone would pass me and shoot me in the head. I mean it’s really a bizarre thing and I didn’t--my family, everyone in the South, my parents were conservative, you didn’t go get mental help back then, and so it wouldn’t be until years later that I understood all that. I’m sorry, what was the question? Oh, whether he meant to kill himself. So, a psychologist told me at one point that anytime you point a gun to your head, loaded or not, or whatever, it’s a suicidal thing to kind of be doing, right? It would maybe be in a plan or something. So, at this point, I do believe he meant to kill himself.
