I completed my U.S. Coast Guard Public Affairs Specialist training at the Defense Information School (DINFOS) in Indianapolis, Indiana, on January 31, 1991. This is a famous world-wide school for military and government civilians to learn photojournalism and media training. Today DINFOS is located at Fort Meade, Maryland. Some of the more famous graduates include Walter F. Mondale, Rob Riggle, Pat Sajak, Al Gore, Dan Quale, and Adrian Cronauer. David Letterman attended while in the U.S. Navy but never graduated. 

            My orders as a Coast Guard Third-Class Petty Officer were to report to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut and I arrived there on February 21, 1991, for my first assignment. I was excited to get started and try out my new-found literary skills. Things started off very well and I was learning a lot in my trade. I had good leaders that taught me a lot about public affairs, media relations, community relations, photography, and news writing. I had settled in and started to get comfortable in my new position.

            However, on the night of April 17, 1991, I was in my uniform, just finished work about 9:40 p.m., and wanted to mail a letter to my mom at the post office in New London. There was a slight wind blowing as I walked out to get into my 1987 black Nissan pick-up truck. It was a little chilly that time of year, but nice. The air was crisp. After growing up in Indiana, you get used to cold and snowy winters, so this weather did not bother me much.

            I drove downtown, turned the corner, and parked in front of the post office. I went in and dropped the letter in the mailbox and started out to the truck. 

As I started driving, I rolled my driver-side window down to enjoy the fresh air, pulled up to the stop sign, looked left to see if there was oncoming traffic, looked right and as I turned to look left again – wham! 

Two African American males grabbed me around the throat! One of them quickly yelled “give me your f--king wallet!” Both men had me around the neck and were squeezing very hard. My breathing became labored. 

Thinking they had a gun to be so bold to attempt this robbery only two blocks from the police department, I thought this is it. I’m going to die right here because they are not getting my wallet. I yelled “f--k you!”, shifted in to first gear, popped the clutch, and pushed on the accelerator, the truck lunged forward, as the men grabbed me tighter around the neck. They started yelling at me to stop the truck! 

Quickly shifting into second gear, the small truck with a 2.4 liter cubic inch engine sped up very quickly to 35 miles per hour. I leaned over and punched one of the men right in the eye.  His head jilted backwards. His eyes grew very big. He was scared now because he saw I was ready to fight for my life! The other man threw a punch at me while I was driving, but I turned, and he missed. I Shifted into third gear, the truck accelerated to 45 miles per hour. Both men tightened their grip around my neck. It started to hurt. I could barely breath! 

I punched the other man in the face, and he almost fell from the truck. Then the other man tried to hit me, and again I turned, and he missed. Then I hit him in the face while driving ever faster! 

This time he was dazed, and he was getting tired of hanging on to me and the truck, but we were going too fast, and his legs were dangling along the side of the truck. 

The other man reached around and grabbed my throat again and really started to squeeze like he wanted to squeeze the life out of me. I grabbed his hand and punched him in the face, he fell back again with only one hand holding on to me. But he did not fall from the truck.

The other man started to scratch me with his hands, and he had very long fingernails. He started at the top of my throat and scratched me all the way down to my lower stomach and it hurt like hell. He drew blood, and I started bleeding quite a bit. He kept his grip on me and held on as tight as he could because his legs were dangling from the side of the truck as well, and he was afraid to let go because I was going fast.

I kept driving faster and was now moving at 55 miles per hour down past the post office in town! I reached over, hit him in the lip and blood flew from his mouth. I heard him groan because I had busted his lip! I quickly threw another punch and hit him in the nose and blood flew again. I saw his eyes water. I busted his nose! I kept driving faster. My adrenaline was very high at this point! I could feel my blood racing through my arteries and wanted to inflict as much punishment on these thieves as I could. I took another swing at the other guy who had me around the neck and hit him in the eye. He groaned very loud because it was a direct hit in his eye. He almost fell off the truck. Still, he held on tight.

Now I was like a wounded lion and was going to try to hurt these two men who wanted to inflict injury upon me and try to rob me! 

I was sweating like crazy, and my hair was wet, but it was about 34 degrees outside. I could feel the warm blood covering my shirt but could not look down to see how much I was bleeding because I was driving and watching for traffic, but there was none. There was an eerie silence in the air. There were no people around. I thought this was very strange. There was no one that could help me.

Both men were bleeding but still hanging onto my neck to keep from falling off the truck.  I was in a lot of pain and wanted to get them off me! So, I kept throwing punches trying to hit anyone I could reach. I hit the man who was closest to me three more times and he looked really dazed. He was barely hanging on. I could see he started sweating as well. I took a swing at the second man, and he turned, and I missed. It was hard to hit them because I was driving with my left hand and throwing punches across my chest with my right hand. But when I hit them, I made it count. His eyes grew very wide as if to say he knew he had made a mistake by trying to rob me. His eye had started to swell shut, it had a cut and was bleeding.                           

I was bleeding, sweating, hurting, pissed off, my shirt was torn and soaking wet with sweat and blood. I knew it was time to finish these men off! Driving 55 miles per hour I decided to sweep next to some parked cars and scrape them off on the side of them. I was so mad and did not care how they ended up at this point. When you are fighting for your life, you do whatever it takes to win and save your life. And that is what I was going to do.

I was breathing hard because they cut off my air, but I could not give up yet or it might mean my life. It was very strange but while all of this was going on, I had a thought in my head about how was I going to explain this to everyone in the morning. 

I was not scared, just concerned how to explain this situation, and knew I was going to survive. My skin would be peeled down to my lower stomach, and people would see the scratch marks on my throat, and it would look like I had been mauled by a lion!

I steered the truck toward the parked cars on the crowded street and the man closest to the cars looked over at me with fear in his eyes because he realized what I was trying to do. He started swinging and flailing his arms like he was trying to decide what to do. I took another swing at him and scored a direct hit on his chin, and one of his hands lifted from my throat. He was trying desperately to hang onto the side of the truck and hold his legs up at the same time. Both men were getting tired of being hit in the face, while trying to grab my throat and hold their legs up to keep them from dragging on the road. I got some good punches in on them, and their faces were starting to swell up around their eyes. Their noses and mouths were bleeding too.

A car was jutting out from the other parked cars, and I made my decision to scrape these guys off my truck at that moment! As I angled the truck toward the car the man closest to the cars jumped because he knew he was going to get smashed between my truck and the parked car and it would have killed him, but I didn’t care.                                                      

He hit the ground with a very loud thud! I was hoping he got hurt after what he tried to do to me. The other man was grabbing my throat tightly because he had more room to maneuver, but I could see the fear in his eyes while we were still going about 55 miles per hour, and he knew if I hit him on one of those parked cars it would kill him. And that is what I was trying to do. 

At this point, it was about winning and getting rid of these two losers and teaching them a lesson. I wanted to give them something to think about before they tried this with someone else. I wondered how many times they had done this to people.

Suddenly, I hit the brakes real hard, and the truck slid toward the left and swung back violently to the right and the other man went flying off the truck. I heard him hit the ground very hard and he moaned. I was not done with him yet. I hurried up and put the truck in reverse and hit the accelerator hard! 

I started driving fast in reverse and the truck was moving quickly and I looked in my rear-view mirror, I could see the man on his knees, bleeding and holding up a hand as to motion for me to stop. I kept going as fast as I could. I wanted to hit him in the mouth with the tailgate of my truck. Right before I got close to him a shot rang out!

Then another and I hit the brakes real hard and came to a jolting stop. I turned my head to look to the left and then to the right to see where the shots came from, but as I turned my head a third shot suddenly came through my passenger side window and exploded in my face! Glass flew everywhere and was imbedded in my face. The bullet struck me across the end of my nose and grazed my left cheek bone just below the eye. I could hear the bullet whizzing past as it grazed me and flew out the driver-side window. This move literally saved my life. If I had not turned to the right when I did, the bullet would have hit me in the side of the head!

I was soaking wet with sweat and my face was bleeding profusely. I could not see out of my left eye because a shard of glass was stuck in it and blood was flowing from my head, face, throat, and stomach.                    

Suddenly, I realized I was stopped in the middle of the street and waiting possibly for a fourth shot that might hit me in the head and kill me right there. The shot never came. I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw the two men had gotten up and tried to run away, but they were both limping.

By this time, I was so mad I wanted to kill them! And through the whole ordeal I realized I was never scared. I just wanted to show these criminals I was going to fight back and would never be one of their victims by letting them rob me. 

At that moment I figured I better get out of there before they started shooting again and get back to the Academy and get myself cleaned up. The fight lasted about 10 minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. I had only driven about nine blocks. It seemed like I had been driving for about 20 minutes. In reality I had only been driving about 10 minutes. And through it – I never saw one person on the street, how odd. I drove straight back to my barracks "and did not see anyone around, so I went to my room and closed the door".

I took my shirt off and threw it away because it was torn and bloody, my scratch was very deep and it worried me because "I thought, what if he had AIDS or some other disease!" I poured peroxide down the outside of my throat and stomach. It fizzled and turned white. I was hoping it was cleaning my wounds good. Then I poured alcohol down the outside of my throat and stomach, it burned bad! Again, I was hoping it was cleaning the wounds. 

I got my tweezers out of the closet and started the painful task of pulling glass out of my face. Starting with the piece in my left eye and thankfully, it came out very easy and did not cause any damage to my eye. I continued to pull glass out of my face for the next two hours. I did not realize so many pieces were in my face. A few pieces of glass stuck in my chest as well.

I had never seen a window explode like that before. I used the peroxide and alcohol on my face after I pulled out all the glass. 

I put some on my cheek bone where the bullet had grazed me and put some on the tip of my nose that was now peeled off because the bullet had taken just a small layer of skin with it, but not enough to do any permanent damage. Later I took a shower and tried to stop the bleeding from my chest and face. I put some bandages on tight to stop the bleeding. Then laid down on my bed and was stirring mad at what had just happened to me and was still thinking of trying to run over those two thugs!

I lay there restless all night and was in pain from the glass and scratches on my chest.  The next morning, I got up and put on my uniform for work and headed to the mess hall to get something to eat. There were quite a few people in the mess hall as I entered, and it got very quiet, everyone started staring at me. One guy looked at me and asked, “What happened to your face?” I started to tell him the quick version of the story and he was in disbelief that this could happen so close to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

I told him to be careful if he went downtown at night and don’t go alone. Moving on to get my food, the cook that was serving me just stared beyond belief. He could not believe how bad I looked. After eating, I went up the hill to the public affairs office and walked in and saw one of my co-workers. As I walked up to him, and he turned around – he saw my face and literally jumped backwards. It scared him. My face looked like it had been through a meat grinder! “What happened to you," he exclaimed. I started to tell him the story and he asked me if I had gone to the police? I told him no because I was trying to get back to the barracks and fix myself up. I told him they could not do anything about it anyways now.

He said, “Well let’s go see the Public Affairs Officer.” So, we walked into her office and as she turned around her face got pale and I could tell she was startled, I really looked bad. She said, “What happened to you?” And I told her the story. She said, “Well I want you to go to the police department and file a complaint about this.”

So, I went down to the New London Police Station that day. I walked in and there was a big police officer sitting at a table. I asked him who I would need to see to file a complaint and he told me I could talk to him. 

He asked me what happened, and I started telling him the story just as it happened. He looked at me and said, “Well you know, we won’t catch them.” And I asked him, “why?” He said, “Well that happens all the time around here.” 

I asked him what he was talking about, and he told me that it was an old scam that started in Cleveland, Ohio, back in the 1930’s. He said, “Yes there are two guys that walk up to a car to rob you and then there is another guy hiding in the bushes where he can see the other men and if there is trouble, he will fire in that direction to scare the people that they are trying to rob." “They call it the 'Clevelander',” he said.

I told him that he did not appear too anxious to catch anyone and he said, “It happens all the time and most of the time they are gone before we even get there.” As I walked out of the police department, I said to myself, “So much for that,” and I knew they would never try to catch them. But if it happened again, they might catch them in the act.

I thought to myself. I could have been killed and this was the attitude, it happens all the time. You don’t even have to go overseas anymore to get shot. You can get shot right here in America, while wearing your uniform!