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During the latter half of 2004, one of my older sisters was living in the basement apartment of my house, after divorcing her husband. She needed a leg up for a few months, because establishing your own household after twenty years of marriage can be just a little challenging, and it's the least I can do for the sister whom I credit for saving my life in a quite literal sense more than a few times.
At Christmas, her oldest daughter Marie* came over with her boyfriend Parker, who I knew to have had brushes with the law & problems with... lets just call them 'chemical refreshments'. They came to see her mother for Christmas, and over the course of a few hours, it came out that he had been kicked out of his parents house, and had nowhere to go. When she asked my sister if they could stay on the couch for a couple of nights, my sister referred her to Uncle Ted. I asked if he was currently using, and she said "no", and assured me that there would be no problems.
I was presented with a dilemma because here it was Christmas, the season of giving, the time of year we are focused on our Lord and Savior. Although the 'cop-alarm' was going off in the back of my head, I rationalized: "What would Christ do?" Of course, I relented and gave my consent for him to sleep on the couch for a couple of days.
Nothing out of the ordinary took place for the next day and a half, but things went south at approximately 11:30 on the evening of the 26th. I was asleep in bed when a loud noise and voices woke me up. I got out of bed and padded down the stairs to see what was going on. I knew that my oldest son Nate*, my nephew James*, and my niece Laura* were playing video games & I thought that they were getting out of hand.
I walked into the downstairs living room, and saw that my niece and her boyfriend were in the living room, so I proceeded to one of the bedrooms, trying to locate the three kids I thought were behind the disturbance. I walked in finding them quietly watching a video, and asked what the noise was. They all pointed back at the living room, saying "it was them!".
I walked the few steps back down the hall to the wall dividing the kitchen from the living room, and abruptly stopped when I realized that Marie was standing up on the couch, leaning into the corner, with her hands covering her face. Parker was standing in front of the couch, trying to talk to her. At that moment, she jumped past him off the couch, and walked around through the kitchen. She headed past me down the hall to her sister's bedroom, and shut the door. As she passed me, I noticed that her sweatshirt had been ripped at the neck, that her tank-top and bra strap had been pulled out through that rip, and had been pulled all the way down around her arm. Just as it would appear if someone had grabbed her shirt by the neck, started throwing her around, and maintained his grip on the tank-top/bra strap as the sweatshirt ripped away.
Having been woke up, my senses were just now getting up to speed, and the penny dropped - that noise had been Parker throwing my niece around the living room, which was disheveled. Furniture was out of place, the video game system was strewn around, and it looked like a rumble had just taken place.
Options for Parker's slow, painful death started to flood my head.
Parker held up his hands, backing away, saying "Hey man, it's cool. We were just arguing..." For my part, rational thought took over, and as I pointed to the door, I told him "OUT!" He quickly grabbed his shoes and headed through the kitchen, towards the door. He stopped halfway through the kitchen, dropped his shoes, then started walking towards me while saying "look, I need to go talk to her..." I replied "No, you need to get the hell out of here, right now!" My wife appeared behind me, having run down the stairs carrying the phone when she heard me yelling. She started dialing 911. Parker kept walking, and tried to push past me, but I pushed back, telling him "No, get out of my house!" He pushed again, but a bit harder. I pushed back, even harder, yelling "GET THE F$%# OUT OF MY HOUSE!" The rounds of pushing and yelling went back and forth a few more times, each push getting harder, each shout getting louder. After I shoved him back about 4 feet, Parker came back again, but this time instead of open palms ready to shove, he had his hands balled into fists.
It's time to show this punk who rules this roost.
As he comes with his arms wide, fists swinging up from the outside, I stepped forward inside the arc of the fists, reaching up and grabbing his shirt with both hands between the neck and shoulders (blocking his swinging arms with mine), and dragged him in for a head butt - right on his nose. Having broken his nose, and still holding his shirt, I continued with the momentum of my forward movement and threw him across the kitchen, where he fell across the table and face first into the wall.
In my limited fighting experience I have found that unless someone is a boxer or into some kind of martial arts, breaking a nose usually takes the fight right out of them. As such, I thought we were finished, and was feeling pretty proud of myself. I had forgotten that Parker had serious addictions to 'chemical refreshments', and subsequently was surprised when, high on something, Parker got up and rushed at me.
Parker is 5'11", with a slight build. At that time, I would estimate he was maybe 160 pounds. I am 6'1", and was about 280 pounds at the time. Even with that weight advantage, Parker began to throw me around like a rag-doll. I was managing to block punches, but his fury was such that I could not get a punch of my own in, and in between swings he would push, shove, and throw me. He threw me into the kitchen counter. Then back across the kitchen into the stove. Then back across into the counter again, all the while trying to land punches which I was blocking, but only barely. As he threw me around, I was truly frightened - not for myself as much as for my wife, who was standing a few feet away where she was giving a play-by-play narrative to the police dispatcher, and for my kids and my nieces & nephew. If Parker got the better of me, my family was at risk. Then fate, luck, or Providence intervened.
As I crashed yet again into the stove, my hand fell upon the handle of an aebleskiver pan which my father had given to my sister for Christmas the day before. Aebleskiver pans are heavy cast iron pans with cups built in used for cooking the Danish aebleskivers:
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| Top of Aebleskiver Pan |
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| Bottom of Aebleskiver Pan |
As Parker dragged me from the stove, my fingers closed around the handle, and as he was shoving me back to the counter again, I brought the pan down on the back of his head, just behind his left ear. His head split open, and the blood that gushed out just added to the blood coming from his nose in splattering all over the floor. He stopped for just a second, reaching up to his head & feeling the fresh wound. His anger showing in his gritted teeth, he looked ready to redouble his efforts when I yelled out "Come on, you son-of-a-b@#$*h! Let's go!" I had brandished the pan somewhat like a baseball bat, ready to swing.
He turned, ran to the door, and ran out. He was dressed in nothing more than a t-shirt and jeans - he had never put his shoes on. Marie had come out of the bedroom, and ran outside to him. From outside, he screamed and taunted me, trying to get me to come outside to continue the fight. I stayed put, knowing that I had gotten him out of my house, and that my family was safe.
Sirens began to sound, and he ran off. I began to worry at that point that I would go to jail - smashing his head with a pan may have been self defense, but it would have been reasonable for arriving officers to let the prosecutor and judge decide, as is standard protocol in most domestic incidents. As it was, the dispatcher had heard me yelling at him to leave, and had heard much of the scuffle, and had relayed that information to the responding officers. One of them told me that the dispatcher's information from overhearing the incident and the obvious restraint I had shown in not going outside to respond to his taunts had played a very large role in their decision to not take me in.
For his part, Parker ran barefoot and wearing only a t-shirt, in the middle of the night on December 26th, at least 5 miles across ice and snow to get to his father's house in neighboring Lehi City. He turned himself in to police the next day after detectives contacted him.
The funny part of the story is over, but there was significant aftermath.
I found myself being very emotional, easily frightened, and having panic attacks - typical of someone who has been in a violent incident, but I considered myself above such things. Here I had been a police officer, had worked in the maximum security unit of the State Hospital, and had been in many violent incidents. Walking into a room where a 300 pound man who thinks he is Jesus is throwing furniture and taking him down isn't exactly a walk in the park. So why the teary-sissy stuff? After a couple of days, I went to talk to the Physician Assistant at my doctor's office. He had done his internship up at the State Hospital, so he knew and understood what kind incidents I had been involved with at my former job. He patiently explained to me that with all of those other incidents, I had been doing my job. I could go home at the end of the day, and most of those things just brushed off once the adrenaline rush was over. This incident had been in my own home, with my wife and children just feet away. As such I had much more at stake than my own safety, and that was the crucial difference in the severity of psychological trauma.
After a few days (and with a little help from Xanax...) I got control of myself.
My relationship with Marie, however, had been damaged. She was downplaying the whole incident, and took Parker's side. She said I overreacted, and described the incident to family and friends as a 'misunderstanding'. I had always had a very good relationship with Marie, but this was too much to take. We didn't talk much for a couple of years. Even then, when we patched things up, we avoided the subject of Parker and by mutual agreement decided to not talk about it.
Marie finally saw Parker for what he was, and left him for good around the time we patched things up. And I am very happy to report that this very afternoon, she is marrying a wonderful young man who I am very proud to accept into our family. He is one of the people who brought this story up this week, asking if I had a pan on me at a family function just a couple of days ago.
*Names have been changed to protect the innocent. Except for Parker. Feel free to look up that bastard's criminal history. He can rot in hell. My GameCube got damaged when he was throwing Marie around. Maybe I'll sue him for it...
