Bo Ross sat in his
patrol vehicle, in the parking lot of the Ezee Stop in Yared. It was
three a.m. and the store was closed. In fact, everything in the
entire county was closed at this time of night. Still, someone had to
be out on patrol and the midnight to eight a.m. shift fell to him and
two other deputies. Prior to “the incident” Bo had been the chief
of patrol, but afterward the Sheriff decided there was too much
publicity and too many distractions for Bo to continue in that job
and reassigned him as shift leader on the midnight shift.
“The incident” was
the term the Sheriff used to describe the day Bo was almost
killed. In all the movies the person shot suffered traumatic memory
loss, but Bo remembered the incident about as clearly as anybody
could. The Sheriff had saddled Bo with three of the least reliable
deputies in the department for court security. In fact, the reason
that he did not escort the Pahl brothers back to their holding cell
personally was that Judge Isom called Bo back in chambers to voice
his displeasure. By the time Bo left the judge's chambers Boyd and
Carr had already taken everyone out of the courthouse.
Bo followed as quickly
as he could and found everyone lounging in the alley. He walked off
the porch and started over to the prisoners, while he told Carr to
clear all the civilians out of the alley. He had just started walking
over to get the Pahls moving toward the door to the Sheriff's
Department when there were a series of loud noises and the Pahl
brothers were both thrown backward into the building behind them.
More shots followed and the civilians scattered. The two other
deputies took cover behind the propane tank that provided fuel to
heat the courthouse.
Bo turned and ran back
to the courthouse door. It was the only way out of the alley that
could be reached without letting the guy with the firearm have a
clear shot. He had just gotten his key in the door when a
sledgehammer hit him in the back - several times. He was slammed
forward into the door and fell off the side of the porch behind bins
in which trash and recyclable materials were kept. At first he was
just stunned. Through a haze, he heard more gunfire and then there
was a huge explosion which he felt more than he heard.
This time he was
knocked out. When he came back around all of the plastic bins were on
top of him and he was covered in trash. He dug out from under them
and found himself in Hell. A huge how was blown into the side of the
Sheriff's Office and there were flames everywhere. Everywhere he
looked in the alley he saw a man with multiple bullet wounds or
serious burns. He grabbed the first person he came to, one of the
Pahls' attorneys, and started hauling him back to the safety of the
courthouse. When they got up on the porch Bo's keys were missing. He
looked around but they were nowhere to be seen, so he just started
going back and grabbing other men and laying them on the porch in
front of the door.
When he had all the
casualties around the door, he started banging on the it and yelling
for Sergeant Qualls. He didn't know how long it took, but eventually
Judge Fleming opened the door and Bo started moving all the
casualties inside. A couple of Mount View police officers arrived,
but the fire had gotten too intense for them to come down the alley
to help. After he got the wounded inside, he started perform first
aid as best he could although he doubted any of it had actually
helped except for the tourniquet he put on Attorney Lasley's arm.
When the judge touched
Bo's arm he realized that the gunfire and explosion had made him
almost deaf. Judge Fleming was yelling something Bo could barely
hear as though he were at the end of a long tunnel filled with a
ringing silence. After a couple seconds, Bo shook his head, told the
judge to call for help, and told him to get Qualls to check to see if
anyone else needed help. Then he went back to trying to render some
sort of first aid.
The Paramedics took a
long time to arrive and they pulled Bo off, gave him a quick once
over, and sent him off to side, out of the way. He sort of collapsed
once he sat down in a corner with nothing to do and the next thing he
really remembered was being helped onto a gurney so the medics could
transport him to the hospital.
Now the FBI and State
Police were saying that the whole thing was a plot to kill him by
five of his fellow deputies. Worse, Brad Dollerby, the local
Commonwealth Attorney, had decided that he was going to prosecute
everyone involved in the incident himself. Even worse, the Sheriff
was circling the wagons and seemed to be taking steps to marginalize
the people he did not trust in the department. And, clearly Bo now
fell into the untrustworthy category.
It did not sit well
with Bo that someone had shot him and he was getting blamed. It
did not sit well at all.
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