Bang-Bang!
Case File #032: Four Shots in SE Washington, DC circa 1987
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Audio Version
Bang!
Bang-bang!
Bang!
That cadence. I can still repeat it exactly, 38 years later.
Late summer of ’87. SE Washington, D.C. The crack cocaine wars were just beginning to show their teeth. I could feel the city changing.
I was sent to Southeast to wait out a subject and serve him a subpoena. Nobody knew where he spent his days, but he always came home at night.
Eventually.
He was a Black male. About 6’ tall. Around 210 pounds. Early 40s.
He lived on one of the alphabet streets off 18th and Minnesota. Modest house. Trees spaced like they were planned by a committee—every 35 feet or so. Cars parked tight on both sides of a summer-hot street with that blacktop that holds heat long after the sun gives up.
I was in one of those cars. A black Ford Escort. Windows down. Music off. Watching the house three doors up.
My car blended right in.
My skin color, not so much.
An occasional dog walker would past in the dark and notice me. They’d pause half a beat too long. Then keep going. Sometimes they’d circle back on the other side of the street like they were suddenly very committed to cardio.
If the walker was younger, or in a group, you’d hear it: “Five-O.”
Don’t bother me, I won’t bother you. That was my motto.
One hour turned to two. Two was almost three. It was about 11:20 p.m. and still no sign of my subject.
Honestly? I was bored.
Then it happened.
Bang!
Bang-bang!
Bang!
For a split second, my brain tried to explain it away.
Firecrackers? No.
Shot? Yep. That sounds like a .32 caliber.
No more than twenty-five, maybe thirty yards away. Close enough that on the last bang I swear I saw a flash in the corner of my eye as I whipped my head around.
I grew up with guns. Of course I did. I’m from Kansas, right on the border with Missouri. Weekends were at my grandparents’ place in Rich Hill, an old coal strip-mining town dying a slow, inevitable death. The Suzie-Qs from the local burger joint still pull me back from time to time.
Most Saturdays or Sundays we’d shoot. Rifles. Pistols. Shotguns. I started around eight years old. My uncle drilled safety into me.
And I’m not repeating his exact line, because it’s not a sentence you put in print and feel good about. But the lesson was clear: treat it like it’s loaded, respect it, don’t get stupid.
I’d heard gunshots thousands of times growing up.
But this was different.
There were no bottles or cans.
This was real.
Did I freeze? No.
Did I run toward the gunfire? Definitely not.
I’ve learned over the years, between 22 year old kid I was then and now at 61, that I have a fight response, not flight or freeze. But that night? I didn’t have training. I was young. I wasn’t sure what the “right” action even looked like. And frankly, it took me two or three seconds to realize what was actually happening.
Should I stay on the surveillance or leave the area?
Or should I investigate the shooting?
I never saw the shooter at all. I never even saw my subject that night.
I was there to serve a paper, not get involved in a shooting. Fifteen dollars an hour to surveil and forty bucks for successful service to get shot? No, thank you.
So, I made a decision: I’d come back another time.
You could say I was afraid. You’d be right. Who wouldn’t be?
But what surprised me later was how cold I felt at that moment. Like some part of my brain shut a door and said, “Not tonight.”
I wasn’t panicked. I was unsure. Hyperaware and thinking quickly once the shock wore off.
I turned the key. Kept the lights off. Put the car in D. Foot on the brake. Hands on the wheel, slick with sweat.
Then the sirens started coming from all directions like the city had been holding its breath and finally exhaled.
I was 22 years old.
I didn’t sign up for this.
I took my foot off the brake, rolled forward, flipped on my headlights like I belonged there, and drove east, crossing a perpendicular street as a police cruiser bore down and careened to his left behind me, heading toward the shots.
I worked my way to Pennsylvania Avenue and crossed the John Phillip Sousa Bridge like it was a border checkpoint. I didn’t stop until I got to 2nd Street.
In the moon shadow of the Supreme Court, I finally pulled over, gathered myself, and started writing detailed notes.
DNS. (Did Not Serve.) Time of arrival. Shots fired. Surveillance terminated. Time/Date.
Two and a half miles.
That’s how far the violence is from the Supreme Court. Two and a half miles, but a world away. The world’s beacon of freedom just stone’s throw from poverty and gunfire.
The next morning at the office, I told the story. The older investigators barely looked up.
“You get out quick?” Tony inquired without even looking up from his newspaper.
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
Tommy, the one who brought me in, leaned back in his chair like he was settling into a porch swing. “You go back?”
“Not yet.”
“Don’t. Give it a couple days. Let it settle.”
That was it. No drama. No debrief. Just: you got out, good, wait a couple days.
Three nights later, I went back.
Same street. Same house. Same black Ford Escort.
This time the subject came home around 9:30 p.m. Walked right up to his door, calm as could be.
I got out, walked up behind him.
“[NAME REDACTED], I’ve got a subpoena for you.”
He looked at the papers. Looked at me. “Yeah,” he said. “I was expecting you. Heard you were in the neighborhood the night of the shooting.”
I let the moment breathe. He was matter-of-fact. Comfortable, even.
“You know who it was?” I asked.
“Nah,” he said. “None of my business.”
He went inside.
I went back to my car, wrote the time, and drove to my last service of the evening.
The Split-Second Decision
You hear gunshots. Twenty-five yards away. You’re sitting in your car on a dark street. What do you do?
A) Leave immediately
B) Stay and observe
C) Call the cops
D) Something else
A Chris Writes, LLC Publication
Not legal advice / not professional guidance / do not imitate tactics
Fictionalized/composite/altered details + no identification intended
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