Yesterday at work
Here's the basic story. I had come out of my building and saw a man carrying a woman by her throat, savagely pummeling her as he dragged her toward his pickup truck. I shouted at him, the gist of which was to stop, that he couldn't do this ...to people, that this was wrong, that it's not okay for him to do this, that he had to knock it off. He threw the woman into the passenger seat and slammed the door and turned to me, screaming and swearing at me. He walked up to me and cursed me out, telling me to get out of here before he f'ed me up. I simply continued to say, "Man you've gotta stop! This is not okay! You can't be tearing people up", etc. He screamed and shouted at me, and I actually thought he was going to hit me. I went onward toward my car and tried to get my cell phone out to take a photo of his license plate. He saw me do this and ran to his truck cab and got a handgun, a glock-style pistol. He pointed it directly at me at arm's length and came at me shouting at me again. "What the F are you gonna do? Get the F out of here before I blow you MF'ing head off!" I told him, "I'm out, man. I'm done. I'm not in your business--I'm leaving." He continued to hold the gun at me and walked me back to my car; I walked backwards to keep facing him. When I got to my driver's seat, he turned and ran back to his pickup. He'd torn out of the parking lot before I even had my seat belt on. I called my coworkers, who put me on speaker phone and called 911 so that I could talk to them while this was being reported to LE at the same time. I began to drive randomly around the area, and saw his pickup truck at a light. I took a photo of it while trying not to be seen in his mirror (so the photo is obscured). I talked to an officer and texted my photo to him. I gave him a detailed description of the man and his car. About 20 minutes later, the officer called me back and said, "I just got the guy! I got him, got the woman, got his gun, got his truck." He told me to come identify the guy by sight within an hour, so I turned around and went back. It was him. The officer told me that the description had been so detailed that he'd been able to spot the guy driving, because by sheer luck the guy had been stopped at a light while the officer drove past. The woman was beaten and her face had a very long cut from top to bottom on it. I had to fill out a report, and the officers told me that the guy will be charged with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and one count of kidnapping. They regard me as one of the crime victims, and plan to use my statement to help convict him. The woman gave a statement to police too, which corroborated my account, and the guy was taken to jail and is ineligible to bond out. After all this happened, the woman got out of the police car and ran up to me, saying "Thank you! Thank you! He was going to kill me!" She wasn't exaggerating; he had left a 4-minute message on her phone telling her he was coming to kill her, that she was a dead woman, that she needed to dig her grave, etc. Turns out, this guy has some prior issues with larceny and violent offenses.
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What I meant is that I was recognizing that how I acted was because, then I tapped the back of my head, and realized that I had a concern about him having a gun and acted accordingly. So I just thought the whole thing was sort of syncratic when I got home and read what happened. The fact that you were there is most likely why she\'s alive.
Are you trying to think about how one should intervene? How you would recommend intervention. It would be nice to know that if you had just called the police everything still would have worked out right> You followed your guts ... and that\'s probable the best way. Bravery and courage working together.
I read this, then I left. I mean, I left IT. I walked away and got in my hot tub ot water and I sat there and imagined a world without an EmpoweredOKC, and I cried, and I became very, very angry. Not AT you...but, you were somehow a target of it...sorry, I am being revelatory here as well as honest. You see, I think the fear of the \"what might have been\" sank in, and it hit me what foolish and evil people we are inflicted by each and every day, but we just don\'t see it. They weave in and out of our lives, ane we are just us...doing just \'us\' things. Then...Oh God, then some fucked up idiot with nothing to lose...and nothing to live for strikes out. And when that happens, we all lose. Well, this time, we didn\'t, but the mother in me knows how close we came, and if I could....I would wrap you up in a huge blanket and hold you tight...as much for me as for you. I want you to promise me you will pull Tonya extra close tonight..and the boys, and find your way to a sweat really soon.
Sorry. I didn\'t really explain my anger and how it involved you Matt. I think it wasn\'t so much anger as shock, and the \'what ifs\' and the...\'doesn\'t he know how much we all need him?....\" Yeah...selfish huh? I\'m sorry. If it makes you feel any better, each and every time Dr. Chandler has left town I have told him quite pointedly that he simply must be very safe and return without fail, because, as much as I want him to continue to enjoy his life, I am simply not finished healing yet, so...he has to stick around. So, I am an equal opportunity selfish woman! I love you. My love prevents me from thinking that it wouls somehow work out to the good in the end....we would all still do \"this\" just as well - no, we wouldn\'t. We would try. We might even have one more attempt at a retreat to try to honor all you had done for us...but we\'d find, without you, it wouldn\'t \"feel\" right. All these thoughts ran through my mind. That, and how quickly our lives can be taken from us...and we can join those whom we love so dearly who have gone ahead of us. I even imagined your Mom...touching your head like she mush have when you were a boy...celestially confused by the mark left by the bullet, but happy to see her boy...not realizing it had been more than a few moments since she last saw you. My mind went every direction Matt. And yes, I asked, out loud...\"How stupid could you be?!\" I asked, \"Don\'t you know crazed men with guns don\'t hear reason the way regular men do?\" I asked, \"Don\'t you fucking read the headlines Matt?...What the Hell were you thinking?\" And THAT is the rambling anger that brought me to my earlier post to this...I know exactly what. You didn\'t \"think\" you acted - quite naturally, as you would for any person in trouble. You stepped up when a stranger needed you to. You did give her hope, because, I guarantee, as that truck pulled away, her mind was racing, but she knew...she knew you were calling for help, and that was more hope than she had a second earlier. Matt, I know it has troubled you that the things of your recent past might somehow have changed the man you believed yourself...had always tried to be -- this is your answer! Nothing can change the fabric of who you are. You are beautifully and wonderfully made, and nothing in this life can change that! I am so proud of you, and Matt, can you ever forgive me for yelling at you - even if it was hundreds of miles away?
There\'s a verse somewhere in the Bible about rescuing those who are being led away to slaughter. I couldn\'t help being reminded of it...that\'s what you did, and it\'s a good and holy thing.
We can torment ourselves with \"what if\" and \"did I do the right thing\". In this case, obviously you did. But it\'s hard to shake that feeling that you came so close to tragedy, possibly even death. Our family had a scary freeway incident Saturday that could have turned horrible, and we emerged completely unscathed. I am so grateful for God\'s protection...for life. One of my friends said she\'s not ready for a world without me in it.
None of us are ready for a world without you in it, Matt. And obviously God is in agreement. I think there is a lot He still wants you to do.
Catroot, I used to be a 911 operator/dispatcher and where I live, and in the greater valley area, if would have been handled very very seriously. If Matt had called me on 911 and had been following the truck, while not alerting him that he was onto him, I would have had about 10 cop cars on him in about 30 seconds.
If Matt had not been able to follow right away, and did not have a good plate, or description, or really a direction of travel, it would have only boiled down to doing a BOLO... there wouldn\'t have been any info to follow up on.
So while I adore Matt\'s bravery and his genuine passion for standing up for those who cannot in the moment, next time I\'d rather he stay away!! Had it been my husband, who is armed all the time and a trained police officer, I would have expected it... As a matter of fact, kidnapping (as well as rape and murder) is a crime where you can shoot someone in the back no questions asked (ok, well some...) without having to worry about escalation of force and warning. By all accounts, had Matt had a gun, he could have shot him and been well within the law.
But Matt doesn\'t carry, and I\'m pretty sure he has no intention of doing so! So in his case, since he can\'t really match the level of force already present, (although being 6\'4\" kinda goes far!) he has no real way of predicting how it may go next time. Which is why, if Matt were my husband, I would be terribly proud, and then threaten that next time he gets his ass in the car and get out his cell phone to call 911!!
Only cause I care buddy :)
John said I\'m being overprotective and that we need to stop \"Monday morning quarter-backing it.\" LOL. He also said that he would have done the same thing and engaged it, but he doesn\'t know why you just didn\'t pick him up by the scruff of the neck and say \"Over here little guy!\" hahahahahaha
i like john...and i like you matt! well done!!!!!! i am proud, impressed and inspired!
John is so right!! But we knew he had good sense -- he married you.
I keep hearing the word \"hero,\" but I don\'t feel it. I feel more like the buffoon who lucked into an outcome that makes a good story solely because luck saves it.
The problem is that I always learn what should be done right \"the next time\" by doing it wrong the first time. My personal curse seems to be that even when the ends are positive and everyone clearly agrees that whatever I did worked out well for the person I\'d tried to help, there\'s still a generous heap of \"you big idiot!\" things I ought to have done differently in hindsight. It causes me to criticize myself constantly--\"I should have done better! I should have done MORE!\"--because I carry a constant sense that if I do nothing I\'ll let someone down, yet if I try to do something, I\'ll do it wrong and still disappoint people (or cause tragedy, in the worst case). I\'m a right-brained person, so my response to a charged moment tends to be visceral and impulsive, not contemplative and logical. It works great in therapy, but not so good in a parking lot with a thug. Of COURSE I\'ll just call 911 next time. And then I\'ll probably rake myself over the coals of guilt then, too, for not having done more to personally assist!
That is my curse: no matter what I do, I\'ll tear it up later with fault-finding. I don\'t do it to any of you, but I sure do it to myself. I think it\'s because I can take *nearly* any criticism, but the one criticism that just devastates me is the \"you didn\'t care ENOUGH when this happened to me\"-type. The very notion of that shames me, and I\'ll even go stupidly overboard to avoid it.
I don\'t want it to be like this. I don\'t want to constantly have to fret that I\'m doing the right thing in the wrong way. I wish just trying to be decent and just trying to be kind were enough. I chastise myself constantly with the whip of hindsight, ruminating on what I didn\'t do, did do, should have done, should never have done--all flung at myself from a place of subsequent insight I never would have had in the moment itself, but which I still judge myself for. I just want being compassionate to be enough, but it\'s not. Even compassion can blunder, and then has to face up to hindsight.
Eh, you\'re did just fine. The woman was fine (relatively speaking) you were fine..THAT is what matters. What would be cool?? If you were on the show Primetime \"What would you do\", with John Quinonios. I\'d be interested to see what others would do. You did good Buddy!
Matt, heres the thing. In a newspaper or somewhere that they dont know you personally, yes... They are going to say hero, good job, more people should take a stand, yada yada. But they dont have the fear that those who know you have that you could have been taken away from your friends and family. That was a scary situation dude...
Yes, you are a hero. A hero stands up naturally against odds that say \"what are you doing?\" You are a natural hero, you do heroic things. Its just your nature, and its one reason you are loved so dearly. Youre just a dying breed ;)
Why do you think just trying to be decent isnt enough? If anything, here I see \"you did what comes naturally for you and we love that... We just worry.\" I dont think youll really get much of a different answer from those who care about you! Is IS good enough, and the fact that is your intention is what makes uou a good.guy.
You don\'t have to be a hero to the world...or even in the world\'s standards...or, even in your own, but I will bet, right now, and for a long time to come, that woman believes you to be her hero. You can do this \"right\" without even trying - just let her have her hero just as he is.
Please don\'t say he\'s a \"dying breed\" ... he\'s a breed rebirthing . I hope.
How can we learn with out being judgmental?
I\'m so trying to follow that last paragraph.
. \"How can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am Human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does \"