We got a call while I was still in training at Kerrville Police Department, reporting a suicide. A man had committed suicide, who was apparently the brother of a former deputy sheriff, and a man highly respected among the law enforcement officers in Kerr County. My training officer decided to take me by the scene of the suicide as a “training exercise,” a thinly veiled excuse to go rubbernecking. This was not uncommon for my newly assigned training officer, who was also the Chief.
The suicide had taken place in the living room of the man’s house. He had been standing in a corner diagonally opposite the front door when he had put the muzzle of a 30.06 rifle into his mouth and pulled the trigger. The result had been that the explosion had broken the top of his skull free and the intact brain had been blown out of his head. It had sailed across the room and landed just inside the front door of the house.
We arrived and gingerly took our tour of the house, then quickly left. Chief “Coop”, known behind his back as “Squeaky” for the fact that his voice habitually broke when he got excited, had decided to also rubberneck. He arrived just after my training officer and I had left. Of course, as chief he had even less business there than my partner and I did, but that never stopped Coop from barging into a scene.
And barge in he did. As we heard the story at debriefing that evening, Coop had jumped out of his car and went barreling into the house without even looking. Immediately upon interring, he stepped squarely on the brain lying on the floor just inside the door. His feet flew out from under him and he went sprawling. Although I was too new to know much of the department, the contempt in the officers’ voices as they laughed about the incident was my first clue that ol’ Coop was not a good chief.