He Shot at Me

Case File #059: A close call on a service of process.

This is a true(ish) story of the Process Server Chronicles. Names, dates, exact location and trackable details are altered to protect privacy. But the spine, the emotions. Yes, those happened.

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Hyattsville Maryland
1988

“Your hands are shaking,” the Prince George’s County police officer observed. A Black woman, young twenties, in a cleanly pressed uniform and assigned to be with me, but not to question me. Someone else had already questioned me and I knew he’d be back for more.

She followed her statement with, “Were you scared?”

I looked at her incredulously. As I was about to say something, a white man, forty or so, in his Maryland State Trooper uniform and hat, grabbed me by the arm and walked me about fifteen feet away before stopping. “I’ll just save you from saying something you will regret.”

About twenty minutes earlier, I had a gunshot in my general direction. I’m not going to say he meant to hit me. But close enough.

Earlier that day, I had checked into the Rockville, Maryland firm I work for and was given an assignment to pick up four different legal docs from three different law offices. This wasn’t unusual. So far so good.

The best news? All the law offices were within the blocks around the Montgomery County Courthouse, so I didn’t have to go to DC today and fight tourist traffic. Two of the serves were for two resident agents who were attorneys, so those would be easy. One serve was to a business, again it looked standard, though I didn’t read it. And the last one would be a serve I’d have to make this evening because it looked like a home address up off Georgia Ave in the Aspen Hill area.

This seemed like a fairly routine day, and the three daylight serves were always my favorite. They were normally simple, one-attempt serves, and I could be home to have dinner with my wife before going back out to get the Aspen Hill doc served somewhere around eight or nine, when most people are home on a Wednesday night.

The first two serves to the Resident Agents went like clockwork. In, out, log in my notebook. Next.

If you are not familiar with Resident Agents, just know that every company out there has one. It’s the person who is designated to receive correspondence, legal or otherwise, for the business for which they are the R.A.

The third serve I would do after a late lunch because when I made a pretense call to see if the subject was in, I was told he was at lunch and would be back in about forty-five minutes. Since Hyattsville was right down Route 1 from College Park, I figured I’d find a place to park around the University of Maryland and walk a bit and find a place to eat. Then I could make the serve, and turn right around and go back up Route 1 to Laurel, where my apartment was.

At this point of my life, I wasn’t that much older than the kids walking the campus, earning their degrees and trying to figure out what they were going to do with the rest of their lives. Most of them would get jobs in fields where they would probably never meet a process server like me. If they even knew what a process server was.

Because, in college, I certainly didn’t.

I found a local place and ordered a hamburger and fries and found a discarded copy of that day’s Washington Post. Between the news and commentaries, I liked to keep up with what was going on. And, the WP always had the best sports section. Kornheiser. Wilbon. Boswell. Povich. Jenkins. I could go on.

The powerful days of newspapers have been swept away like a cigarette butt by a street sweeper.

After arriving at the location for the third serve, I found a place to park and looked the place over as I casually walked to the front door. This was an industrial type office building that served a purpose beyond who had the most expensive necktie. In fact, I doubted I’d even see a necktie once I opened the door.

After entering and while approaching the receptionist, I observed a partially open door to her left. On the wall to the side of that door was the name of the subject I was there to serve. Inside the office of the partially opened door was a man on the phone, sitting behind a desk that had a name plate sitting where I could see it. Again, the name matched the name of the man on the subpoena.

As I started to greet the receptionist I noticed he was just hanging up the phone.

Experience over a hundred completed serves taught me not to ask the receptionist for permission to meet with the subject. That ask just added a layer of friction. It could also be embarrassing for the subject if anyone in the reception area heard my request and reason for seeing a subject. My style was to be low-key in a service so that the four people in the reception area would not know who I was or why I was there.

Lastly, receptionists often acted like gatekeepers and they would do their best to keep me from completing my assignment.

In mid-step I pivoted toward the open door.

“Sir, can I help you?” the receptionist called from behind me.

I didn’t answer.

Rather, I simultaneously knocked on the wall of the office with the open door, and walked through it.

“Mr. [Name Redacted], I have a subpoena for you.” I said quietly as I laid the legal document on his desk. My voice was direct, mild and quiet enough that I knew no one outside his office would have been able to hear a word I said.

The courtesy I thought I was extending was not received as a courtesy at all.

The moment turned immediately hostile. He stood up, showing me his height and weight, which were considerably greater than mine. There was no question who would win a fistfight.

As I was turning to exit his office and the front door, I caught a glimpse of him reaching into his desk. An alarm went off in my head. But in retrospect, I don’t think I reacted quickly enough.

Ten or twelve steps outside the front door, I heard a very loud gunshot from behind me.

I stopped. Turned. Stared at him. He was pointing a gun at me as another man came running in from behind him, calling out his name.

The two argued for a moment and then the running man, now stopped, slowly took the gun away and walked the subject back into the office.

Adrenaline had filled my body. All at once. I was on hyper-alert. And more than a little confused. After all, this was the first time a gun had gone off where I thought I was the intended target. I stood there for a moment, then turned to go to my car. I was able to hear everything around me. I knew no one was following.

Did he actually shoot at me? Or was he firing an anger shot into the air?

In the moment, I simply didn’t know.

As I got into my car, almost immediately, I began to hear police sirens. While I kept one eye on the front door of the building, I reached for my notebook to add notes, as was my routine. My hands were not steady. They were so unsteady I found it hard to write even the date and time, the two items I start every note in my logbook with.

When the police arrived moments later, I was careful to sit in my car, windows down with both hands on the top of the steering wheel. Two Prince George’s County police officers came straight to me. The woman I wrote about at the top of this page had her gun drawn. The other was an older white man, who had his hand on his holster.

The experience difference was obvious. He was calm and purposeful in walk and instructions. She was clearly on edge, her voice much higher and filled with tension.

Which, of course, makes sense.

Fight or flight is real. So is the value of experience.

What followed was being questioned by the senior of the two officers, then being questioned again by a detective and, finally, being questioned by a Maryland State Trooper who stopped in support. The interviews all happened on site. The interviews all took place over about seventy-five minutes.

Between the first and second interview is when the young PG County police officer said to me, “Your hands are shaking. Were you scared?”

Was I scared? Yes.

Or, I’m not sure. To be honest, I didn’t know he’d shoot at me. I can tell you that when I turned back to him, I had a choice that, happily, I didn’t have to make. His coworker or friend or whatever was on the scene lickity-split and defused the entire situation. It wasn’t one of the men I had seen in the lobby.

The officer designated to stand with me was correct. My hands were shaking. Almost a steady vibration. My body had flooded with adrenaline and now it had to burn it off, somehow, some way.

But her tone when she asked set me off. Was I scared? Probably. But her question came when I was definitely still in “fight” mode.

I’m glad the state trooper put his hand on my arm and quickly walked me away. It was almost like he’d seen this before.

I don’t begrudge the officer her inexperience. Thirty-eight years later, I realize she probably saw worse as her career developed. Experienced worse. But it was also obvious those experiences were still in her future.

I honor her willingness to serve. But it is also important to note the wisdom and restraint the state trooper showed in that moment.

Because, yes, I was scared. More afterward than in the moment. I really cannot explain that.

The Behavioral Detective. What did you notice?

I’ve reflected on this many times in the subsequent thirty-eight years.

Q1: What were my actions that contributed to this man losing his sanity, even if only temporarily?

Q2: What should I have noticed during the serve that would have told me he’d behave this way?

Q3: What actions would I take in the future to make sure this didn’t happen again?

Before I answer these three questions — and there are more — let me be as transparent as I can from my perspective. Being in a shooting is not casual. Such an event changes how I look at everything. Thirty-eight years later I still notice important details about how a person is reacting.

If you read an earlier entry, Case File #036 Crash! Pow! Rattle, then you can figure out two things. One is that even if you are aware and even if you know that people can react erratically, you cannot always predict when.

Q1: What were my actions that contributed to this man losing his sanity, even if only temporarily?

In retrospect, I could have checked in with the receptionist, and I could have waited. The problem: sometimes when I did those “proper” things I then created a lot more expense for the people that hired me. Yes, even Resident Agents would make themselves very, very difficult to serve, if they were of a mind to.

Usually, I was making a judgment call in the moment. And, usually, I got it right. But sometimes…

Q2: What should I have noticed during the serve that would have told me he’d behave this way?

When he stood up immediately to intimidate me, I dismissed his behavior. That was a critical mistake that could have cost me dearly. I should have stood there and looked to de-escalate the situation.

I could have pointed out that this is routine and said “Give this to your attorney.” I could have noted that no one knew who I was and that no one could possibly have heard me.

I could have immediately raised my voice enough to create a spectacle that would put the subject on notice that there were a lot of people that would see and hear everything from this point forward.

There are a lot of things I could have done.

But, please, also remember. This was the 1980s in Maryland. Most people didn’t carry a gun or have one at the ready. Or maybe I was too young and too inexperienced myself to realize how violently people could react to their financial security being threatened.

Q3: What actions would I take in the future to make sure this didn’t happen again?

This is the one that really got my mind working. I’m sure more than a few readers are like many of the others that I’ve told this story to would say, “Well, I carry a gun so…”

Or they advise, “You should carry a gun…”

Well, what if I had been carrying a gun that day?

In general, I didn’t and still don’t carry a gun. You can say they are for self-preservation and I’ll listen to the argument. But that day, if I had one, would one of us be dead or badly wounded within seconds?

If you know me, you know this isn’t the only shooting I’ve written about or will write about. One was long after I was a private investigator. In each occasion, it was my brain that got me out of the situation. Alive.

Or luck. Or Godly intervention. You decide.

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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