bad day at Eagle Peak:
THE TENTS WERE DARK GREEN AND WET WITH RAIN...
THE TENTS WERE DARK GREEN AND WET WITH RAIN...
AND THEY WERE PITCHED IN A GROVE OF PINES NEXT to a road not far from a lake. Young boys and girls ran from tent to tent in the rain. Near a chicken-wire fence surrounding the enclave a member of the Colorado State Highway Patrol stood at the gate with a colt revolver tucked under his poncho into a soft pistol case holstered on his hip. I know this seems a little odd to you, Pastor, having guys like us hanging-around a youth camp, but it's the only option we have at this point, said another member of the Highway Patrol. His name was Murray and he was in his late 30s, with graying black hair, he nodded at the man next to the chicken-wire fence and took me into his tent. We were in the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range 4 miles from the town of Eagle Peak, Colorado which lay about 10 miles north-west of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs at a Lutheran Youth Camp.
Anguished looking parents were everywhere. All of them gathered outside the tent, men dressed in suits and women in fashionable dresses standing beneath umbrellas, along with several police detectives with wrinkled suit jackets that did not match their trousers. The camp staff immediately made calls to all of the parents, I said. We evacuated as many children as we could after we received the call from your office in Commerce city, shut down the cabins, and set up the tents on the hill above the camp shortly before you arrived. More parents are on their way now.
Murray replied, They can enter the grounds only if they're allowed through, Pastor. The road's been blocked by State Police and we can't evacuate the remainder of the children or their parents until we have some idea where this guy actually is. He then looked directly at me. Are you the only Pastor left? I am, I said, my fellow Pastors took as many campers as They could in our bus and several cars into Colorado Springs. When did he escape? Last night, Murray replied. He apparently made his way out of the prison hidden in a laundry truck and they didn't know he was missing until a head-count was taken prior to the evening meal as the prisoners entered the mess hall. He had hit a guard over the head with an iron, took his pistol, jumped out of the truck, and went through a lethal fence that should have killed him. He then rose from the tan foam camp chair he had been sitting in and motioned for me to do the same. He's armed-and-dangerous. In other words, he's a very sick guy and since the prison in Canon City is only 30 miles away for all we know he could be up in the hills right now looking down at us, he added as we both exited the tent.
He was obviously proud of being a Major in the Highway Patrol and as such a District-Branch Commander. When we came into view of the others, he moved easily through the milling crowds of parents and frightened children. I asked him, How do you know he would come here? And Murray replied, He's a convicted child predator and this camp was one of his old hunting grounds. There are three others. We've got them staked out too. My hunch is that he's here. He grew-up on a farm near Eagle Peak. His eyes moved easily through the crowd and consistently looked up at the mountains above, then added, After he had raped them he strangled one of the girls to death. The rain had now turned into a fine drizzle. One of the teenage boys came over with two small cups of plastic coffee. He asked the boy how he was doing and where he was from. The boy replied that he was from Pueblo and that he was frightened. That was the growing reality for all of us.
As nightfall began in earnest, searchlights had been set-up by the Highway Patrol and were now roving over the campground like in a prison movie I had once seen called Stalag 17. Other Patrol Officers were preparing meals for the parents and children on several rusted-out camp stoves. As the rain grew heavier, I spotted a woman who sat at the corner of one of the tents alone in the with a young child cradled between her knees. She just sat there silently blinking up at the rain. She is a mother of the girl he raped and killed. Murray said. She somehow got wind of his escape and immediately drove here because she figured that this was probably headed. She wants to see him dead. We argued. She won. So I let her stay only if she promised to keep out of my way. Which is against protocol and my superiors will probably chew my ass for doing that. He shook his head. But I can't even begin to imagine how she feels.
Another woman, fat and bulky, came up to Murray and whispered quietly in his ear. He listened gravely, nodding his head, his arms across his chest. He then spoke to her for awhile and she went away. She wanted to leave right now, he said. I told her that she would have to wait awhile, until it was safer. She then asked what would happen if shooting began. What did you tell her? I asked. I said we would try to protect everyone, he replied. But if we somehow missed seeing her that she should just duck down for cover and pray like the Devil.
The woman with the child cradled in her arms was still sitting there alone, beyond communication, when we walked past her and down into the camp. Over to the left was a small outside toilet, long abandoned. A mound of orange peels, empty soda cans, and flattened milk cartons lay soaking in the rain along the pathway in front of us. As we made our way up some steps and opened the door into the camp mess hall, rain pelted the windows and the wind made a ghostly sound. We will put a first aid station in here just in case we need it, Murray said. We left the mess hall cabin and began to make our way back up the hill. There were a couple of Highway Patrolmen sitting aimlessly on a large wet rock. We started up the hill, and suddenly the fat and bulky woman ran toward us through the mud waving her hands.
He's here!!! she screamed. Oh my God, he's here!!!
About 50 yards ahead, we saw a man in a horizontally striped prison uniform running through the pine trees and diving into a ditch alongside the chicken-wire fence, and heard the snapping of small arms fire coming from the pistol of the Colorado Highway State Patrolman who had been standing by the gate. It was then that the fat and bulky woman slipped and fell and plopped face down in the mud, attempting to get back up onto her feet as the two of us ran past. Other Patrolmen were firing now, a mixture of rifles and pistols, but there was no return of fire from the ditch. Then, as quickly as it had begun, the firing mysteriously stopped.
Murray and I looked down into the ditch. The man lay face-up dead in a gully filled with mud and blood with rain spattering against his open and unblinking eyes. I looked around, the woman with the child cradled in her arms had now come up and was standing by our side. She looked down, spat on the dead man's face, said thank you to Murray, then quietly walked away through the rain and into the darkness of the night.
In the pre-dawn awakening of the sun, an ambulance came up the mud filled road and took away the corpse, parents and children began to vacate the campsite, the rain came to an end as the wind pounded hard against the swaying branches of the pine trees, drowning out the din of the camp where the Highway Patrolmen and detectives were packing up up their rifles and putting them neatly into the trunks of their cars as they were barking orders at one another.
Murray walked me back to the gate near the chicken-wire fence and into the small parking lot beyond, shook my hand and wished me a safe journey. The road was heavy with traffic, there were two Highway Patrol cars in front of me, and a truck covered with a wet green tarpaulin. A Jeep with and Idaho license plate came from the other direction and paused to look at the camp . The man on the driver's side of the Jeep rolled down his window and asked, What's going on? I looked in the opposite direction and did not reply because I didn't know what to say...
...Or how to properly explain to him that I had just seen a man laying dead in a ditch filled with mud and blood looking up at me with unblinking eyes...
...And praying to God that I would never see anything like that again...
Anguished looking parents were everywhere. All of them gathered outside the tent, men dressed in suits and women in fashionable dresses standing beneath umbrellas, along with several police detectives with wrinkled suit jackets that did not match their trousers. The camp staff immediately made calls to all of the parents, I said. We evacuated as many children as we could after we received the call from your office in Commerce city, shut down the cabins, and set up the tents on the hill above the camp shortly before you arrived. More parents are on their way now.
Murray replied, They can enter the grounds only if they're allowed through, Pastor. The road's been blocked by State Police and we can't evacuate the remainder of the children or their parents until we have some idea where this guy actually is. He then looked directly at me. Are you the only Pastor left? I am, I said, my fellow Pastors took as many campers as They could in our bus and several cars into Colorado Springs. When did he escape? Last night, Murray replied. He apparently made his way out of the prison hidden in a laundry truck and they didn't know he was missing until a head-count was taken prior to the evening meal as the prisoners entered the mess hall. He had hit a guard over the head with an iron, took his pistol, jumped out of the truck, and went through a lethal fence that should have killed him. He then rose from the tan foam camp chair he had been sitting in and motioned for me to do the same. He's armed-and-dangerous. In other words, he's a very sick guy and since the prison in Canon City is only 30 miles away for all we know he could be up in the hills right now looking down at us, he added as we both exited the tent.
He was obviously proud of being a Major in the Highway Patrol and as such a District-Branch Commander. When we came into view of the others, he moved easily through the milling crowds of parents and frightened children. I asked him, How do you know he would come here? And Murray replied, He's a convicted child predator and this camp was one of his old hunting grounds. There are three others. We've got them staked out too. My hunch is that he's here. He grew-up on a farm near Eagle Peak. His eyes moved easily through the crowd and consistently looked up at the mountains above, then added, After he had raped them he strangled one of the girls to death. The rain had now turned into a fine drizzle. One of the teenage boys came over with two small cups of plastic coffee. He asked the boy how he was doing and where he was from. The boy replied that he was from Pueblo and that he was frightened. That was the growing reality for all of us.
As nightfall began in earnest, searchlights had been set-up by the Highway Patrol and were now roving over the campground like in a prison movie I had once seen called Stalag 17. Other Patrol Officers were preparing meals for the parents and children on several rusted-out camp stoves. As the rain grew heavier, I spotted a woman who sat at the corner of one of the tents alone in the with a young child cradled between her knees. She just sat there silently blinking up at the rain. She is a mother of the girl he raped and killed. Murray said. She somehow got wind of his escape and immediately drove here because she figured that this was probably headed. She wants to see him dead. We argued. She won. So I let her stay only if she promised to keep out of my way. Which is against protocol and my superiors will probably chew my ass for doing that. He shook his head. But I can't even begin to imagine how she feels.
Another woman, fat and bulky, came up to Murray and whispered quietly in his ear. He listened gravely, nodding his head, his arms across his chest. He then spoke to her for awhile and she went away. She wanted to leave right now, he said. I told her that she would have to wait awhile, until it was safer. She then asked what would happen if shooting began. What did you tell her? I asked. I said we would try to protect everyone, he replied. But if we somehow missed seeing her that she should just duck down for cover and pray like the Devil.
The woman with the child cradled in her arms was still sitting there alone, beyond communication, when we walked past her and down into the camp. Over to the left was a small outside toilet, long abandoned. A mound of orange peels, empty soda cans, and flattened milk cartons lay soaking in the rain along the pathway in front of us. As we made our way up some steps and opened the door into the camp mess hall, rain pelted the windows and the wind made a ghostly sound. We will put a first aid station in here just in case we need it, Murray said. We left the mess hall cabin and began to make our way back up the hill. There were a couple of Highway Patrolmen sitting aimlessly on a large wet rock. We started up the hill, and suddenly the fat and bulky woman ran toward us through the mud waving her hands.
He's here!!! she screamed. Oh my God, he's here!!!
About 50 yards ahead, we saw a man in a horizontally striped prison uniform running through the pine trees and diving into a ditch alongside the chicken-wire fence, and heard the snapping of small arms fire coming from the pistol of the Colorado Highway State Patrolman who had been standing by the gate. It was then that the fat and bulky woman slipped and fell and plopped face down in the mud, attempting to get back up onto her feet as the two of us ran past. Other Patrolmen were firing now, a mixture of rifles and pistols, but there was no return of fire from the ditch. Then, as quickly as it had begun, the firing mysteriously stopped.
Murray and I looked down into the ditch. The man lay face-up dead in a gully filled with mud and blood with rain spattering against his open and unblinking eyes. I looked around, the woman with the child cradled in her arms had now come up and was standing by our side. She looked down, spat on the dead man's face, said thank you to Murray, then quietly walked away through the rain and into the darkness of the night.
In the pre-dawn awakening of the sun, an ambulance came up the mud filled road and took away the corpse, parents and children began to vacate the campsite, the rain came to an end as the wind pounded hard against the swaying branches of the pine trees, drowning out the din of the camp where the Highway Patrolmen and detectives were packing up up their rifles and putting them neatly into the trunks of their cars as they were barking orders at one another.
Murray walked me back to the gate near the chicken-wire fence and into the small parking lot beyond, shook my hand and wished me a safe journey. The road was heavy with traffic, there were two Highway Patrol cars in front of me, and a truck covered with a wet green tarpaulin. A Jeep with and Idaho license plate came from the other direction and paused to look at the camp . The man on the driver's side of the Jeep rolled down his window and asked, What's going on? I looked in the opposite direction and did not reply because I didn't know what to say...
...Or how to properly explain to him that I had just seen a man laying dead in a ditch filled with mud and blood looking up at me with unblinking eyes...
...And praying to God that I would never see anything like that again...
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