Editors note: We are pleased to give our readers the first hand account of Elko Sheriff’s Deputy Lenwood Van Natter of his near fatal shooting while attempting to arrest Peter Mark Coca in Wells last February. Van Natter’s story will be published over the next three weeks.
There was term Americans once used in older, more rustic times when referring to a soldier seeing combat for the very first time. It was said that once you stood in the battle line for that first time, shoulder to shoulder with your compatriots, facing a live enemy who was standing directly across the field some fifty yards in front of you, and he put his rifle to his shoulder, and you to yours, and you both fired on command and at least one of you survived, you had seen the elephant.
I saw the elephant myself one cold night, on the evening of February 24, 2011, in the small high desert town of Wells, Nevada. I took five bullets from a .223 carbine in an unprovoked ambush during a domestic violence call, and I survived. My story is not a particularly heroic one; I faced a determined armed foe and I lost the only gun battle I’ve ever been in.
I have not lose the fight, however. What makes this a story of ultimate victory, and not of defeat, is a story of how mind set, some equipment modification, training, the support of family, friends and strangers, and sheer Scot/Dutch stubbornness, the willingness to go as far as I could and keep going, has seen me though my devastating injury and subsequent long-term recovery.
This is what I saw.
[media id=1 width=320 height=240]
I had been serving as a Nevada peace officer, in one capacity or another, for just about nineteen years at the time of the incident. I have had some run-ins during that time with the usual dirt bags, scrounges, and other less savory types who all thought they were smarter than me, or tougher, or just more stubborn, but I have always prevailed, winning every battle that was attempted against me. I hate to lose. Little chaps my hide more than the thought of losing at anything, especially on the job, as a peace officer. It gets especially
chapped at the thought of losing to a POS.
I have always played by the rules, too. We are the good guys, and we are supposed to live by the rules. That is how we should alway roll, and that is always how I’ve operated. Always! No exceptions!
As everyone knows, working within the rules, laws, policies, and regulations makes a cop’s work more challenging, to say the least, but I firmly believe these are very necessary to differentiate us from the killers, cretins, perverts, rapists, and the other nasty two-legged creatures who prey on the weak and on the unaware, who kill, maim and destroy with little remorse, and who would take our society back to the Dark Ages, if it were not for a thin blue line of dedicated, hard-working, unforgiven men and women who keep those nasty creatures of the night at bay. This is the nature of the beast, and I have always believed that the fight must be taken to the bad guys in any and every way that is lawful, ethical, and within departmental policy.
This has, over the years, hardened my resolve to help those who cannot help themselves. I have always wanted to get those who hurt others who were usually guilty of nothing more offensive than being in the way or available, and put them away. I have seen far too many dead children, the victims of abuse and reckless endangerment. Too often, nice people are horribly victimized, their trust betrayed and abused by selfish, evil persons who care only for themselves, nasty types who want nothing less than constant instant gratification. This perhaps explains my mindset that night and how I got myself hurt.
On the night of the incident, I was assigned to patrol the City of Wells. It was not my regular beat, so I was not entirely familiar with it. I was normally assigned to the Elko/Spring Creek patrol area, an area with a larger population and one that covered many more square miles than little Wells. Several deputies, myself included, had been temporarily assigned to the Wells area for shift coverage one night a week, for shift coverage. The Wells division was undermanned, and a portion of the Elko resources were necessary to help alleviate the manpower shortage.
I was still becoming familiar with the town and the surrounding area, even after being sent there to patrol several times throughout the previous year. Learning Wells, and its citizens, was not as easy as one might think, as there could normally be only one one or two calls a night, if any. The few calls I got in Wells prior to getting shot there had been the ones that warranted reports, however. In the two weeks prior to my shooting, I had made a domestic violence arrest each time I went to Wells.
So here it was again that I was being dispatched to another report of a violent domestic disturbance. This one had been reported as being in progress at an unknown address on a quiet residential street in town. A fellow deputy, Mark Hawkins, and two troopers from the Nevada Highway Patrol, Ben Jenkins and Jeff Howell, were in town and they, too, responded to assist. This would later prove very fortuitous to me.
I was eating at a local truck stop prior to the call, and Mark had rolled into town about half-way through my shift, having been assigned to help cover the town after I had made those two domestic arrests in the previous weeks. He met me in the diner and we BS’d as I finished eating. Trooper Jenkins joined us, and we were shooting the breeze with him, when dispatch gave me the call. The dispatcher advised that the female caller had fled the home with a house phone and they had lost contact with her. Before losing contact, the caller claimed that her husband had a gun and he was going to “get the cops”.
This was a red flag. It was a very big red flag. It was one I noted, and then filed away.
I am quite willing today to admit that I pretty much ignored that red flag after I filed it away. I cannot do anything more than warn others today to be alert to the red flags that may pop up from time to time during the course of any call. Ignore them at your own risk, as I found out later that night.
We searched the general area of the call for more than a few minutes, covering several city blocks, but we unable to locate the alleged victim. It was as if she had been swallowed up by the earth. This was another red flag, I now realize, one that I did not identify that night. It should have caused me to approach the call differently, realizing that it is not normal for an victim to hide on these calls, but in my mind that night, a woman was in distress and I was focused solely on finding and helping her.
I remember following Trooper Howell’s unit down a dark alley that ran parallel to a property in the area, which we all later discovered belonged to the couple involved in this disturbance. Unbeknownst to me, and to the other officers on scene, her husband sat hidden in the darkness on the roof of his garage, directly over our patrol vehicles as we drove down the alley. He was armed with a rifle and he watched us drive past.
It was later said he was laughing at us.
I had no idea who was involved, where any of the parties were, where they lived, nor what we were facing. I felt, after many minutes of fruitless seating, that we were not going to find the victim, and I had had made up my mind that we could clear from the call. I was going to advise dispatch that we were unable to locate the alleged victim, when Mark broadcast that he had located an armed male suspect on the roof of the garage I had driven past just a few minutes prior.
There are times in our lives when we come to those special forks in the road which, when we choose to take one road or the other, take us down a path toward a life-altering and unforgettable experience, one that changes us physically and emotionally, if we survive that trip. I was now facing such a fork in the road, faced with a couple of courses of action that could determine the outcome of the event, for better or for worse.
I was in an intersection about seventy yards to the east of Mark when he made the call. I could see the lights of Mark’s unit, and those of Trooper Howell’s unit, illuminating the garage. At this point, I had two ways I could have handled this. On one hand, I could have stayed at the intersection, taken up a position, and covered the other officers directly at the scene with either one of the thirty caliber rifles I carried in my unit.
Or, I could rush headlong into the kill zone, going blindly where no cop should go unprepared, and maybe help my buddies.
Yeah, I opted for the second choice.
On retrospect, I think I chose rather poorly. I rushed in without a thought toward any alternative. This was because of mind-set, a mind-set I had developed over the years on the job. My choice greatly affected my ability to do my job. It also affected the outcome of the incident.
At that time, I was a trained sniper/observer and I had the tools and the skills to affect the outcome of most any critical incident from a long distance. However, at that time, in my hurry to get into the fray, I was locked in patrol mode. I failed to consider the other options that may have been available to me.
The really bad thing about rushing into a scene is that once the sh## hits the fan, or once the bullets start flying, you are in it and you quickly realize it is very difficult, if not impossible, to safely get your ass out of the fire and take up a better, safer position. Once you’re in it, you’re in it and you have to suck it up: your options have become very limited. You are in the sh## and it stinks.
Still unaware of my potentially deadly mistake, I parked my vehicle behind another one on the street across from the end of the suspect’s garage. I could not able to see him, as a tall camp trailer was parked directly across the street from me, obscuring my view of him. I put my unit into park, advised dispatch that I was on scene, and then I opened the door.
That was when I heard long string of rapid gunshots.
My immediate response was of disbelief and shock. Was someone actually firing a weapon? Who in his right mind would do that in the middle of town? Was he shooting at me? Is this really happening?
I figured out I was not the target right then, as no bullets were hitting my unit. I yelled “Shots fired!” into the radio mike and I bailed out, running around and taking up a position on the other side of my vehicle. I searched for the shooter but I could not see him.
It was very disconcerting, not knowing where he was. Someone had fired shots, and I had no idea who, where, and why.
I had drawn my sidearm, but I still felt very vulnerable. I could tell by the volume of shots that the shooter was firing a small caliber semi-automatic rifle.
Silly me, bringing a pistol to a rifle fight!
There were, perhaps, a couple of dozen of rapid shots fired, and then it got very quiet.
My buddy Mark ran across the street and said he had returned fire with his own pistol. In his excitement, he asked me if that was okay. I told him that was great! At least someone was able to show this guy we were not entirely defenseless.
Trooper Howell had taken cover behind his Chevy Caprice and had been pinned down. Several rounds had been stopped by hard points in his Caprice, which saved his life. Trooper Jenkins, Mark, and I were across the street, hunkered down behind my own patrol unit.
I still felt very underarmed, in spite of my forty-five, so I decided to get the patrol carbine from my unit. I figured if the bad guy had a rifle, I wanted one, too!
I holstered my sidearm and unlocked my patrol unit. After several seconds of fumbling, during which I felt very exposed, vulnerable, and scared, I managed to locate the switch to the gun lock and I pressed it, releasing my carbine. I charged the weapon and turned on the electronic sight, all of which managed to make me feel a little better. Now, at least one of us was now armed with a long arm on our side of the street.
I have heard that people often do the strangest things in stressful situations and I was no exception that night. Reasoning that I did not want anyone getting into my vehicle and going through my stuff, I locked it up after closing the door!
After some jockeying around in the dark, we took up positions behind the several vehicles on that side of the street. I crouched at the right front corner of a pick-up truck standing across from the very dark property of the suspect. I remember admiring the very nice push bumper attached to the front of it.
After several minutes, to my amazement, several cars drove through the scene during the lull. This freaked me out a bit, which added an even more surrealistic feeling to the event. It has since re-enforced my belief that most people go about their lives oblivious to the potential threats around them, until something bad happens to them. There was a dangerously armed person at large, one who had just shot at a bunch of cops, and these people, being clueless or curious, were driving right through our scene! Incredulously, we watched them go through without incurring any harm. Our shooter did not fire as the each slowly rolled by.
After several more minutes, I noticed the sound of a faint male voice coming from the darkness across the street. I peeked my head up a little and I could make out the outline of a male figure coming slowly out from between the camper and the garage. I could not see if he was armed. Only his head and shoulders were visible, outlined by the light reflected off the garage.
My mind raced: is this the bad guy? Was he hunting us? I then started reasoning, it had to the shooter! He had come from the direction of where the bad guy had been up on the roof earlier. No one in his right mind would willingly enter the scene of a gun battle, right? I had to act, not knowing how dangerous he could be.
I still had my doubts, however, so I thought I would give him a quick challenge. I did not want to expose my position to him, or to anyone else who may have been involved, so I called out to him once.
“Who’s there?”
It was all I could think of saying at the time.
There was no response from him, so I acted. I aimed my carbine across the hood of the vehicle, took aim at the center of his chest, and I fired five shots.
I missed!
Incredibly, at a distance of less than forty feet, I fired at a live standing target and I missed him! My first reaction was of disbelief, as he threw up his arms and yelled loudly, “I’m not him! I’m not him!”
Well, if you are not “him”, who in hell are you, and why are you here?
After that brief moment of disbelief at missing such a close target, with a carbine, nonetheless, my stomach dropped. I realized with horror that I had sent five bullets downrange, and I had no idea where they went! A brief image of my bullets ripping through a baby in a crib somewhere flashed through my mind, and I shuddered.
Then, immediately after I fired the five shots, to my complete disbelief and extreme confusion, a door opened on the house behind the guy I had just shot at, and a man stepped outside and looked around!
“What is going on here?”, was my first thought. Each passing moment was adding to the surrealistic, dreamlike quality of the mess I was in, as nearly everyone across the street were acting much more unpredictably than I had thought possible. Are we humans so messed up as a species that most of us have lost our survival instincts? Who, upon hearing shots being fired and knowing that his house has taken hits from bullets, exposes himself in that manner?
I later learned that the male figure that I had just fired at and missed was one of the suspect’s sons. His father had called him prior to the shooting and told him that the cops were going to kill him that night. The boy, just seventeen, then ran across town to the property, hearing the shots his father had fired at two of us from the roof of the garage. He walked past two shot-up marked police vehicles to get where he was, just before I opened up on him. You would think it very unlikely he could have realistically claimed ignorance to the gravity of the situation that night, that he did not know he was entering a combat zone, but he did, later, in court.
I heard later that he had been bragging at school afterward that he was there to draw us out.
Trooper Jenkins and Mark began yelling at the figure in the dark, giving him verbal commands
continued next week