My most unforgetable survival story
This is a survival story I will never forget. While working as a paramedic in a very dangerous part of Metro Kansas City, I was sent out on a shooting call at about 0100 hours. When we arrived we found a male in his 20s in the back seat of a car with a very neat and lethal entrance wound in his temple and the large exit out the other side. Powder burns showed it was at close range. As we told the police there was nothing that could be done for him, we were informed there was another victim…. the shooter. We were being directed to a City Power truck where in the front seat was a very frail and very battered little old lady. Her first question was, “Is he all right?” I didn’t wish to tell her as we were helping her to our ambulance, but my partner, being very inexperienced at the time told her the man was dead. She began to collapse. We got her to the stretcher and began to assess her wounds. Major facial trauma and marks around her neck showing she was being strangled. As we traveled to the hospital…. she wanted to tell me what happened. I was glad to listen.
She was the widow of a Highway Patrolman who had died a few years prior. She had many health problems including cancer and was just waiting her time to join her husband. Once a month when she received her check, she would go up late at night and buy one coke, one candy bar, and one magazine. When she left the convenience store she didn’t realize that someone had gotten into her back seat…. that neighborhood had been where she had lived safely for decades. The young man popped up as she was driving and began using his fists to beat her about the head. She stopped the car as the man wrapped an article of clothing around her neck and began to strangle her. She begged for her life, telling him to take her car and money. He retorted that he would, after he killed her…he had done it before.
Sidebar: There was a rash of elderly being killed and no one had any idea who was doing it.
She realized he meant it and as he went into a killing frenzy…. she got her late husband’s service revolver from under the seat…loaded in one bullet…. and pulled the trigger until it hit the chamber with the bullet. The thug seemed so engrossed in killing her slowly he didn’t even realize what she was doing…until the gun went BAM…and he was gone. Being in shock, she immediately tried to give him aide and then went to find HIM help.
All the way to the hospital she kept saying how sorry she was. I kept telling her that I wasn’t sorry that she had won that battle. She had a right to her life and no one had a right to take it. Everyone told her that at the ER. Doctors, nurses, police, and the two of us told her how happy we were that she was alive and NO ONE would hold it against her for the actions she took. City Prosecutor got out of bed and came and talked to her…telling her that what she did was lawful, her late husband would have been proud, and she probably saved the lives of others who would have been victims of this predator had he not been killed.
I stayed by her side for a couple of hours until her relatives arrived. She asked me if I thought God would be angry with her. I told her that when she went to meet her husband, God would be there to tell her, ”You did what you had to do. It was your right to keep your life until I called.” A few months later, God did call her and I imagine the hug she received from her husband and the pride in his eyes. She left on God’s terms... not some soulless thug’s.
