I was in a shooting in the summer of 1990. Luckily, I wasn't injured. Today is the anniversary.
It was June 1 in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and I was 18 years
old, looking forward to entering college.
It had been an eventful summer already, with the robbery of my home a
couple months earlier. I had worked with
a sheriff's detective to identify the three teens who had kicked in my door and
robbed the place while I and my family were away, and I helped identify their
motive (they pawned our things to pay off a drug debt to a biker called
"Concrete"). I had also had a
job working nights as a custodian at a local health club. I was healthy, happy, and had a lot to look
forward to. With all that had already
happened, I figured I had another couple months or so to relax and enjoy the
warm summer nights of Arkansas before hitting the books in college.
I was getting ready to go to my night job that night when I
got a call from my best friend, Jason.
He told me that a mutual friend, Ryan, was at the mall and was about to
get jumped by some bullies. He implored
me to go and get Ryan and get him out of there, since I had a car and he did
not. I reluctantly agreed, since the
mall was on my way to work.
It was getting dark when I got to the mall. I looked everywhere, and over an hour
later was about to leave when I finally found Ryan at the south entrance. I told him my "mission" and tried
to get him out, but he refused to leave until he had watched something that was
happening just outside the entrance, in the parking lot. Annoyed, I followed him and found a large
group of teens clustered around a car.
Night had fallen, and everything was bathed in the yellow light from the
parking lot poles.
A large boy, whom I later found out was an 18-year old named
John Raper, was standing by the passenger side of a Mercedes talking to a boy
inside the car, and I couldn't hear what was being said. The boy inside was a slim 16-year old named
Mark Haynes, as I later learned, more commonly called "Skater Mark." He was clearly intimidated by the larger
kid. The large group of teens circled
around them were expecting a fight. I
had never met either boy, nor particularly cared about them; I just wanted to get Ryan and get out in time
to get to work. Much later, I learned
that John and Mark had a feud over a girlfriend. I also learned later that Mark had been
drinking.
The argument between the boys became more hostile, and they
raised their voices. Not only was Mark
visibly intimidated by John, but he no doubt felt he had to do something now
that he was being scrutinized by a growing crowd of peers. Mark suddenly threw open the door to the car
and jumped out. A shoving match
began. Mark was obviously frightened,
but John didn't appear the least bit concerned.
He crossed his muscle-bound arms and smirked at the smaller boy.
That's when Skater Mark pulled out a black semi-auto handgun. Everyone screamed, and the crowd pulled away. Some kids ran. I and another boy crouched behind another
car. A newspaper article later said the
gun was a .9mm.
"I've got a gun, motherfucker!" Mark screamed at
John, "and I'm not afraid to use it!"
John acted nonchalant, not raising a hand at Mark, but not
backing down either.
"These are real bullets, motherfucker!" Mark
screamed, wanting to scare John and seeming to fail. He ejected the clip to show John, then
slammed it back in the gun. "I'm
going to fucking shoot you!"
John's demeanor didn't change. If he said anything at all, I don't remember
it.
Then Mark raised the weapon and fired a shot into John's forehead.
I was only about six feet away.
The next few moments seemed to pass in slow motion. John's head flew back. His hat went flying. His body fell backward against the side of
the Mercedes and then slid down and slumped to the pavement in a sitting
position.
Everyone screamed and scattered. I and the other boy crouched lower and
watched as Mark got back into the passenger side of the Mercedes.
I told the boy next to me to help me remember the Mercedes
license plate number, thinking that Mark would speed away. Instead, Mark jumped back out of the car and
started off away from the mall, staggering, dazed and seeming to make a run for
it.
I and some other kids ran over to John. He wasn't moving and wasn't breathing. I pressed my fingers to his neck, trying to
read for a pulse and desperately trying to remember my Boy Scout first aid
training. He was clammy, and I couldn't
feel a pulse no matter how I tried.
"I think he's dead," I said to a girl next to me. There was a bullet hole in his forehead. Strangely, I don't remember there being much
blood at that time.
I looked up, and Skater Mark was now half-way across the
huge mall parking lot. I blurted,
"We've got to catch him!" I
ran to my Bronco, which was parked nearby, and drove off after him, not really
thinking about what I would do when I got to him. It was a foolish thing to do, but I was
young. There is no way I would support
someone doing such a dangerous thing now.
Seeing me, he started running, and dashed across the busy
five-lane highway next to the mall.
I didn't see exactly where he went, but managed to get
across the traffic in my vehicle. I
flashed my lights at some bushes on the property of a church, and he darted out
again, this time running back across the highway, back toward the mall.
Again, I managed to get across the traffic and found the boy
next to a car full of teens, likely trying to get them to give him a ride. This time I drove back across the parking
lot, back to the scene of the shooting, where I saw that the police had
arrived.
The scene of the shooting had perhaps two hundred people
around it now, mainly teens, with police and an ambulance. I stopped my car and ran to what I thought
was a police officer, but turned out to be mall security, and tried to tell him
where I had last seen the shooter. The
man was a moron and refused to listen to me.
Annoyed, I looked around for an authority to talk to, when suddenly
everyone yelled and pointed. "There
he is!" they shouted.
Skater Mark had returned to the scene of the shooting and
tried to blend into the crowd. The
police quickly caught him and put him in the back of a cruiser.
I spent the next half hour or so at the scene, comforting a
couple of other witnesses and watching in horror as paramedics tried in vain to
resuscitate the victim, who was now lying in a pool of blood. Then they loaded John on an ambulance and
drove off. He was later pronounced dead
at the hospital.
It was during this time that I discovered the 14-year old
younger brother of my friend Jason, named Jeff, in the crowd. He, too, had witnessed everything.
I gave my information as a witness to a police officer, and
he asked me to take Jeff and go to the police station to be interviewed, which
I did. I waited at the station all night
long with a couple dozen other teens, including Jeff and Ryan. There had been another fatal shooting that
night, which was gang-related, which delayed the police investigators. We waited and waited, with local ministers
coming to help comfort some of the kids. Finally, around maybe 3 AM, I was the
last of the witnesses to be interviewed by the two weary detectives. I identified the shooter from a photo lineup
and gave my account of what happened. I
agreed to be a witness at the trial, if subpoenaed, and was released just
before dawn.
During the interview, I finally learned some details about
the shooting, like the victim's and shooter's full names, the reason for the
argument, and the caliber of the gun.
I also learned that the gun had jammed and was found in the
Mercedes. No one knew who Mark had tried
to shoot the second time. John, again? Himself?
A witness? Me??
Weeks passed. Unlike
the other witnesses, I wasn't plagued by nightmares, nor afraid of the scene of
the shooting. Maybe it was because I
didn't know the shooter or the victim, or maybe it was because this wasn't my
first encounter with gun violence (a friend had committed suicide three years
before), but I was able to get past the trauma.
I was subpoenaed, as expected, but didn't have to go. Skater Mark pleaded guilty, and I got to go to
my college freshman pre-orientation instead.
I quickly immersed myself into college life and put my
traumatic summer behind me. Because of
this, I'm sorry to say, I never learned what Mark's sentence was. Since I wasn't family of the victim or the
shooter, I wasn't allowed information from this juvenile case, even now.
The shooting was just one in my town that year, a town
overrun with gang violence, so the community quickly grew numb to what had happened. The blood was cleaned up. The blurb in the newspaper was forgotten
(click on the photo to read it). The
only remnants left were the traumatic memories of the witnesses and the
shattered lives and families of two teen boys, one dead, the other in prison.
What lessons can be learned from this event? Where did the gun come from? The shooter had been drinking. Where did he get his alcohol? Why did he feel it necessary to carry a
gun? If he knew a fight was coming, why
did he go to the mall? In our gun-crazy
society, was he bolstered into using a gun by the popular image of a powerful,
gun-wielding underdog? Why didn't he
just leave the fight? Why did he feel it
necessary to pull the gun? Of course,
these questions may never be answered.
Mark bares the responsibility for his actions, but the
mistakes made by others that night don't need to be repeated. Wherever the gun came from, it clearly wasn't
locked up away from this young shooter.
Every gun in the hands of a child must first pass through the hands of
an adult -- a careless one, in this case.
Alcohol likely dimmed Mark's senses and increased his risky behavior, so
another adult enabled that aspect as well.
And if anyone else knew that Mark had a gun that night, they failed to
alert authorities to it. They are
responsible in their own way, too. And
lastly, why didn't John back off, instead of continuing to intimidate
Mark? Was he drunk, too? Didn't he realize his peril? He had risky behavior of his own, in bullying
Mark at the start and continuing to egg him on, even after the gun was drawn. There was a time in America when a fight like
this would have been handled with fists, and no one would have had to die. Why is it so easy for children to get their
hands on guns? And why do they feel it
necessary, all too often, to use a gun to solve their problems?
Now I'm a father. I
work hard now to try and prevent shootings like the one I was in, prevent guns
from getting into the hands of those who shouldn't have them, and encourage
commonsense gun regulation through education and legislation. If we do it right, my children will never
need to witness what I did.
It's time to
make a new trajectory for our nation,
away from gun violence.
UPDATE (9/10/16): Here is another eyewitness account of that shooting, by David Hill, who was age 13 at the time: http://tinyletter.com/davidhill/letters/the-devil-you-know
UPDATE (9/10/16): Here is another eyewitness account of that shooting, by David Hill, who was age 13 at the time: http://tinyletter.com/davidhill/letters/the-devil-you-know