Iraq Comes Home: Wounded Warriors Return to the Thin Blue Line

Iraq Comes Home: Wounded Warriors Return to the Thin Blue Line

Jordan Smith


The Austin Chronicle

Oct 01, 2008

September 19, 2008 - Investigating a report of an armed combat in a nearby neighborhood, two officers cautiously approached the scene. As they came in sight, one of the fighters broke and ran. In quick pursuit, the officers chased him to a footbridge and across a highway, as he ran toward a crowded marketplace. They yelled for the man to stop, but he ignored them, running faster, soon to disappear among the crowds of shoppers. Suddenly, one of the pursuing officers pulled his weapon and began firing. He fired three times in all, into the marketplace – until his partner finally yelled for him to stop and holster his weapon.

A few minutes later, they caught up with the fleeing suspect and subdued him.

The Firefight

On March 14, 2007, a little after 8am, Austin Police Officer Wayne Williamson heard veteran Officer Lonnie Edwards on his radio, requesting backup. Edwards was responding to a call of two men fighting in the street on Purple Sage Drive, just off Ed Bluestein Boulevard. One man, possibly high on PCP and dressed in a black muscle shirt, his arms a canvas of tattoos, had left the scene and was allegedly armed with a knife. Williamson and another officer, Chris Davis, finished up the mental-health call they were attending to, got into their separate cars, and headed toward Purple Sage.

At 8:18am, Williamson and Davis pulled into the parking lot of the Chevron station at the corner of Purple Sage and Ed Bluestein, near an overhead pedestrian footbridge that spirals up three stories, crosses the road, and turns back down again, into the Springdale Shopping Center across the busy boulevard. Edwards, still on Purple Sage, came back on the radio, saying that the possibly armed suspect was now on the pedestrian bridge and headed toward the shopping center. Williamson and Davis drew their firearms and headed toward the bridge. Williamson scanned the bridge but didn't immediately see the suspect (later identified as LaCharles Williams); finally he spotted Williams, peeking over the side of the bridge ramp. "Austin Police! Stop, or I'll shoot!" the officers yelled, Williamson later told Internal Affairs investigators. He could see Williams from "about the shoulders up," briefly, before the suspect's head "drops back down." Williamson could not see Williams' hands or any weapon.

Weapons drawn, the two officers began moving up the ramp. "We make the first turn and look at the second level; there's nobody on that level. So we continue forward," Wil­liam­son told investigators. The officers continued up the spiral ramp to the top, where the bridge, enclosed by chain-link fencing, spans the road. "As we're approaching the last turn to get onto the bridge, I see the individual running west on the bridge," Williamson recalled. The officers again yelled for Williams to stop; he kept running. "So we get up on the bridge. As we get up on the bridge, Davis passes me. So the individual is about three-quarters of the way [across] the bridge. Davis is passing me, and I'm still running."
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