[I started writing this on 1/26/2011. I've been scheduling time to edit/complete it but never got around to it. I'm going to post it as it as is with no warranty express or implied as I purge my unpublished drafts. Can you believe how much time I spend on this shit? I need to hit the gym].
I'm not going to pretend that I and cop shooting suspect fugitive David Durham were friends. Physically, socially, lifestyley, you couldn't find two more disparate individuals. We worked together at the same commercial reprographics plant. Sometimes on the same shifts, sometimes the same projects/departments. I don't recall having a beer with him or ever hanging out while not on the clock. I sat directly across from him at a company Christmas party; he had a ditzy blonde girlfriend at the time. The girlfriend was told by a waitress to be careful not to set her drink on an unlevel junction where the tables joined under a table cloth. Expectedly, somehow, she did and expectedly her drink spilled. The girlfriend complained that they should "do something about that" because warning her was apparently not sufficient. Dave didn't join his date in her misguided complaints, nor did he remind her that she'd just been told five minutes earlier to avoid the mess altogether.
Dave was not one for confrontation.
And somehow in the last two months he's reportedly degenerated from a lighthearted, genuinely nice guy to a fugitive wanted for two counts of attempted murder, as well as a variety of other charges. As I write this, he's on the run, presumably in the woods in a coastal Oregon town. He's accused of shooting the officer that pulled him over for speeding Sunday as well as a fisherman that David might have mistaken for another cop.
The papers say that Dave worked for the same place for most of the last 18 years. I worked with him for about eight of the first of those years. I remember he was perpetually clad in camouflage. He owned many pairs of cammo cargo pants in myriad patterns and colors. I remember he bought a blue Harley Davidson that he would wheel into a freight elevator to take into our shop's third floor every night he worked graveyard shift. Once I pointed at the bike as he rolled it towards the elevator one night. "Is that a scratch?" I jokingly asked in a deadpan tone. "No... it's not a scratch" he replied with a smile without even looking (I at least hoped he'd look), knowing that the bike he probably cleaned hourly with a toothbrush didn't have any blemishes that he wouldn't know about. We would chat a bit in the break room. I remember one lively discussion about the neighborhood legend of Devil's Ditch.
Devil's Ditch does not warrant its own paragraph in an essay about a man whose life has disintegrated into a best outcome being life in prison. Having said that, Laurelhurst park in Portland, Oregon had a grass valley yielding a dirt path landscaped by various BMX bikes of the seventies and eighties. It's probably still there, I haven't checked. You know the ramps off of which ski jumpers launch? That's what this was, for bicycles. You would walk your bike as high up one side of the hill and then pedal down as fast as you could, gathering speed to jump as high and as far over the adjacent walking path and onto the field on the other side. I remember being surprised that Dave, seven years my senior, had ridden the same jump. As if somehow my "generation" of BMX cyclists had been solely responsible for discovering this landscaped phenomenon. If there was a magazine called "Kickass Bike Jumps of the Northwest," Devil's Ditch would be on the cover of at least 11 out of 12 months. Maybe every month, it's hard to tell.
As the story stands: Dave, with his dog, is on the run from an ever growing force of local, state, and federal authorities. Armored vehicles and armed troopers are ubiquitous in the small, quiet town of Waldport, Oregon. Officer Steven Dodds, who was shot while pulling over Dave's SUV for speeding is in "critical, yet stable" condition at Legacy Emanuel Hospital in Portland. There's been so many shootings recently that it's become easy to emotionally distance oneself from the tragedies occurring in other states, towns, or even neighborhoods. I think it's horrific when anyone gets shot. I absolutely don't ever want to get shot by a gun. Police officers are amazing in that they face the chance of getting shot every time they clock in. I certainly can't imagine being a cop searching for a suspect that seems to be out to kill any cop that he may come across.
I and certainly his friends, family, and coworkers don't see David Durham as someone who could shoot anyone. His story is eerily reminiscient of Daniel Butts, the 21 year old accused of shooting Rainier Police chief Ralph Painter. Daniel Butts, according to OregonLive "had slid into wild mood swings in recent weeks, becoming increasingly erratic before the fatal confrontation at a car stereo store." Associates of David reported similar recently changed behavior. I think there's even an ended relationship involved in both cases as well.
For whatever reason David Durham or Daniel Butts decided to snap and do these horrific things, we want an answer as to why. Why did the gentle David Durham become so paranoid and delusional? Why does he think authorities are out to get him? Was it the pain from his degenerating bone disorder? Was it the pain medications making him crazy? Was he always an asshole deep inside? Is there something we're not finding out in the extensive news coverage?
[And here's where the story ends. At least my story. Dave's still out there, on the run. He managed to escape on foot and elude 250 members of various law enforcement agencies (and America's Most Wanted). There's speculation that he might have gone to the Carribean or to the Phillipines. The story is all but forgotten, save for the families of Officer Dodds and David Durham. I used to hit refresh on the Google news feeds whenever I was near a computer, but even I'd let this slip my mind. The media and its consumers may have let this story go away but I've brought it back from my cutting room floor and posted it at the 11:11.]
