The Christmas Failure

      On Christmas Eve, 2003, I was the evening shift patrol supervisor on the north end of the parish. While my chain of command and every other non-essential entity were enjoying the night with their families, my shift and I ensured that civilization did not go extinct. By nightfall, which came early, my deputies alternately went home to have dinner with their families. I couldn’t go home because I lived on the south end of the parish, twenty miles away. The rest of the evening dragged painfully slow while I drove the perimeter of my area.

At 8 pm, I reached the Arkansas state line and turned around. I came south on US 71 through little towns named from women or old families: Ida, Myra, Hosston, Gilliam, Belcher, and Dixie. The Highway was bare, and I was eager to be with my family. I arrived to civilization quicker than I expected, so I drove back north and pulled over on Highway 1 in TV Hills. Back before they leveled the hills and widened the road, Highway 1 had two lanes with improved shoulders, and you could pull over on a hill and catch speeders before they knew you were there, but nothing was moving that night.
I stopped at my office to read a report, but I couldn’t focus. I started over, but it didn’t work, so I cleared my desk, cleaned out a drawer, used compressed air to clean my computer, separated my pens from my pencils, and emptied the trash can. I got back in my car and went south, stopping just north of the city limits, and parked on the side of North Market to remind everyone coming into the parish that we weren’t putting up with any nonsense.

10 pm was too early to go home, so I drove slow. I almost reached the Cross Lake Bridge when the radio blared for the first time in hours, and it wasn’t the dispatcher wishing the evening shift Merry Christmas. Instead, it was an emergency.

“Dispatch to all units...a caller reports a man lying in the middle of Lowery Road with a gunshot wound to his head. Fire District One is in route.”

I shook my head and flipped on my lights and siren. A few minutes later and the call belonged to midnight shift, but now it was ours.

If you live any further west of Lowery Road in Caddo Parish, you’re in Texas. By the time I arrived, one of my deputies was setting up an LZ for the medical helicopter, and another was interviewing the people who found the man in the road. Yellow tape held back a dozen onlookers. Women were crying. A small group was praying. People were scared. Fire trucks blocked the road, the way firemen like to do, and under their spotlights lay a man in the road, slightly north of center. My deputy told me the man was talking to firemen when he arrived. 
      Before I was promoted two months earlier, I was a detective. When detectives arrive at the scene of a violent crime, they worry about killers running loose and putting people in danger. Detectives know the clock is ticking, and the crime scene holds crucial information. That night we were responsible for getting all the information we could. There were beer cans and a Mr Thrifty cup with ice sitting conspicuously in the road. Maybe they were evidence, maybe they were trash, but we collected them. The other evidence was on a back board with an oxygen tube going to his nose and a disposable blanket covering him from the waist down. The firemen told us he had been shot three times, but the wounds weren’t obvious. Despite the cold, he was shirtless. I watched his chest to see if he was breathing, but it didn’t move. Maybe he was already gone.
      The medics were nearby, but no one was excited. They were waiting for the helicopter, and seconds later, I heard it in the distance. Lowery Road was covered by tall trees on both sides, so the helicopter had to land a mile away and the nurses driven to the scene by ambulance. From there, they would load the victim, take him to the helicopter, and send him to LSU Medical Center. I still had a couple of minutes, and if the victim could talk, he might be able to tell us what happened. He was perfectly still, and his eyes were closed. I crouched down beside him. 

      “Hey my man...who did this to you?”
      He came to life, opened his eyes, and moved them up and down until they landed on me. Moving only his lips, he gave me a name, and then closed his eyes, seemingly breathing his last. I wrote the name down but didn’t give up. I spoke again, he answered and then closed his eyes. We repeated the exchange three or four times until I knew about the car that brought him to the scene, the two men involved, and the neighborhood where he lived.
      The nurses from the helicopter arrived and ushered me away. They put him on a gurney, loaded him into an ambulance and took him to the helicopter. Minutes later it was in the air stirring up dust, blowing off hats, and dropping the temperature 20 degrees. When it was out of sight, I jumped in my car and drove to Shreveport. When I got to the neighborhood, I stopped two people on foot and asked if they knew the victim or suspects, but they didn’t. I looked for the car the victim described, but I couldn’t find it.
      It was after midnight when I got home. The kids were asleep. I was supposed to help wrap and put presents under the tree, but I fell asleep. Colleen didn’t wake me. 
      The kids woke us at dawn. We opened presents and had breakfast. To accommodate my schedule, we had an early dinner with my parents and brother’s family. At 2 pm, I left the lights, presents, and family behind to return to the dark world of car crashes, thieves, burglars, wife beaters, fleeing felons, and murderers. I called dispatch and asked for an update on the case from the night before. The detectives were talking to two men at the office. They were the men the victim named the night before. Things looked promising, but the man who had been shot died at 2 am. His name was Curtis Ewing. Fifteen hours earlier I was talking to him, and I assumed he would be alright. The case was now a homicide.
      The night before, I knew the clock was ticking, but I didn’t realize a man’s life was at stake. When he left the scene, he had only two hours to live. He needed to know the wages of sin is death, and it is appointed unto man once to die. He needed to know Christ alone was his only hope, but I didn’t tell him. As far as I know, I was the last person to communicated with him, but I was so caught up in temporal things, I didn’t tell him about Jesus on Christmas Eve. Why didn’t I tell him that God is holy, and in his holiness he created mankind to please himself, but man sinned, and now everyone born of man wants to please himself rather than God? Why didn’t I tell him that God himself became a man, Jesus, lived a perfect life while resisting the same temptations we experience, and gave himself to be crucified so he could die in the place of all who repent of their sin and trust in him?
      I repented and promised to do better if God ever gave me another opportunity.

      Six years later, I was on my way to the office when a man was thrown off his motorcycle in a curve after hitting an eight point buck on South Lakeshore Drive. The crash left him in the middle of the road and sent his motorcycle flying into a fence a hundred yards away. I heard the call on the radio and was the second deputy to arrive. A man with a white beard wearing a helmet and leather jacket was laying across the double yellow line. He was still breathing, but it was the labored breathing of a man in distress. Traffic was passing us, so I ran to the west end and asked a motorist to block the road until a deputy arrived. When I got back to the man in the road, I expected him to be dead, but he was still breathing. 

        I was afraid to move him, so I got on my hands and knees beside him and talked to him. I told him about the God-man who lived a perfect life and gave himself on the cross to pay for our sins. I urged him to repent and trust in Christ. There is more I should have said, and my details were far from perfect, but I encouraged him and gave him the only hope I knew. Ten minutes later the medics arrived. The man never responded, but he was breathing when they took him to the hospital.

        Four hours later, I called the hospital, and the nurse told me the man died. His name was Dr William Steen. During the Vietnam War, Dr Steen was a flight surgeon for the Army. He received the Silver Star, Air Medal, the Bronze Tar, and two Purple Hearts. In 1997, Dt Steen did laser surgery on my eyes.  He was a hero and a genius. The news of his death shook me. I wanted him to live. Those who knew him well say he was a Christian man. Perhaps the last words he heard before he died gave him peace.

https://www.leagle.com/decision/inlaco20100811303

https://www.ktbs.com/news/dr-william-steen-killed-in-motorcycle-accident/article_614eaa7b-d447-5d2e-a9f9-bdaa0d9d7fc9.html