S2 Ep4 FBI Hostage Rescue Team Child Kidnapping Rescue

Hello everyone, welcome to the TeamCast. I'm Coleman Rua's Director of Performance at the Mission Critical Team Institute. And the TeamCast is a show where my colleagues, Dr. Preston Klein, Claire Murphy, Harry Moffitt and myself, along with our guest, discuss all things Mission Critical Teams. Mission Critical Teams are teams of four to twelve people who are indigentously trained and educated and who solve rapidly emerging complex adaptive problem sets. MCT's work in immersive environments of 300 seconds or less, where the consequence of failure is death or catastrophic loss. Regardless of whether you're on a mission critical team or not, we aim to bring you the broadest range of topics and guests as possible. Thanks for joining us, and I hope you enjoy the TeamCast. Welcome back to the TeamCast. This is Dr. Preston Klein. We're joined today by a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, HRT. We won't be divulging his name today, but we will be talking about a very specific case, a case of the Dothan Alabama child kidnapping case. The reason we're doing this, the reason it's on this TeamCast this week or this period, is because right now, nationally and internationally, there is a growing dialogue about the role of law enforcement and policing in society. And one of the narratives that often gets left out or lost is of the people that aren't actually allowed to speak, aren't actually allowed to tell their story because they are required to live in a certain amount of secrecy. And we have to remember that as a democracy in our pursuit of happiness, that we require of our citizens a certain percentage of our citizens to be of service to the country, whether they be teachers or firefighters or military personnel or law enforcement. Without them, we actually don't have a democracy. And the challenge is that too often in our society, the loudest voices are the ones that are heard on either side, both good and bad. I'm never going to tell you that every human in law enforcement is a good person. That would be a lie. That's not true in any society. But what I will tell you is that there's a lot of extraordinary humans whose stories will never get told because they can't be told. So what we did, if we reached out to the FBI and we asked permission and they given us our permission and they are reviewing this tape, to tell a story that has not really been told publicly prior to this. And that is of a child kidnapping case, a pretty well-known child kidnapping case that happened. What I want to express during this particular teamcast is the humanity of it, the humanity of the child, the humanity of the person who committed the crime, the people that were injured as part of the crime, but also the law enforcement personnel, the people that were responding on behalf of our democracy in order to maintain a sense of justice, a sense of law and order. And that matters, right? Because without that, a lot of the other things we take for granted go away. Again, this is not an apology, it's not an explanation, it is just an exploration of the human side of being of service to the country in the form of law enforcement. So with that said, as a preamble, I'm going to introduce who I will be referring to as DAX for today, that's not a real name, who is an operator with FBI's hostage rescue team and has for a while, but I'll let him do the introduction. So DAX, thanks and welcome to the show. Thank you, Preston. I appreciate it. By way of background, grew up in Nebraska, kind of the lineage of some Western ranchers moved around a bit as a child ended up joining the Marine Corps. Did about 10 years with the Marine Corps. I'd say that's probably my most formative years as far as prepping me for a continued life in law enforcement. Joined the FBI in 2008, hostage rescue team in 2011 and been with them ever since. I did take a small break for about two years, got to take a knee and catch my breath, then came back and I've been on probably another three years back with the team. Okay, that's awesome. Thank you very much. Why don't we just jump right into it? And so it's January 29th, 2013. We'll start at the particular site. It's in Midland, City, Alabama, or it's Dothin, Alabama, and a gentleman approaches a bus we should probably start there unless we want to start anywhere else. No, that's a great place to start. Okay. One of the main characters in this story is Jimmy, Jimmy Lee Dykes. And he had a long history of, I think smaller crimes. On the particular day that this kicks off, he was actually doing court because he had, he was either brandished to weapon or killed a neighbor's dog or both. Yep. He was supposed to be in court, but instead he kicks off what ends up being almost a week long hostage standoff. He had basically conditioned the bus driver to come to his property almost every day. Usually the end of this gravel road, they'd have to kind of do the Austin Powers. 17 point in turn. So he built in a U-shaped turn on his property. Okay. He would lure the bus driver with he'd canned vegetables and all this up, but he conditioned him so that on the appointed day, he would deliver basically the hostages that he needed. Okay. And normalized all that behavior on the day of he handed the bus driver a note, which he read. And it required him to turn over two kids. Said this is all for a good thing. Nobody's going to be hurt as long as everybody complies. And to his credit, Mr. Polin, the bus driver, you know, who was not trained for this, never expected this refused. A gun was brandished. His life was threatened and he still refused refused. He wanted two kids. I was certain age, very healthy. So thought process, we came up with after the fact was he probably won one to make an example of. Yeah. And then still have one for negotiation. And because Mr. Polin didn't comply, you know, to shoot Mr. Polin and then grabbing the kid that was closest, which ended up being Ethan, a five year old child with Asperger's syndrome, who sat behind Mr. Polin because that's where he felt safe on the bus. Yeah. So let me pause you there. So Mr. Polin is a bus driver just going to work every day, not a high paying job. No, he suddenly placed in the scenario where somebody comes onto his bus with a gun and demands children. And he puts his body in front of the children in order to try to protect them, just an average citizen and get shot. And is he killed? He has killed. He has killed. And so at that point, a child with Asperger's is taken into this man's custody, basically, as kidnapped by this man. Correct. And so what's interesting right is that everybody's the hero of their own story. So this guy, Mr. Dykes, I guess, in his mind, he is justified in what he's doing. It's I want to pause here for a second because this is where things get, I think, philosophically pretty complicated for everyone involved, right? Because the narrative in the country right now is we want to think in terms of binary. There's good and bad and everybody's good. And some people make some poor choices. I will say as a backgrounder, a background, this is Dr. Preston Klein again, that my start in my career was in juvenile justice. And in that time and in the years that have since passed over just a few times in my life, I've met what used to be called a true sociopath. And the problem is that if you've never encountered that kind of predator, you don't really understand that there is a type of person who is truly truly dangerous. Dangerous not to be reasoned with, not to be discussed with, they are rational in what they do. They have given it, they're often very intelligent and they scare the bejesus out of me. And so when I think about law enforcement, I think about law, I don't think in terms that everybody's a good person, just some people make decisions. I think there's a wide continuum. There are people who just have a bad day. I've gotten speeding tickets. I've had bad days. And then there's all the way to what I just describe, which is a sociopath. And not everybody's a sociopath, not all bad guys are sociopaths. And then there's the mentally ill, right? And they're not necessarily out there, you know, trying to become supervillains. They're just in their own little world and their reality is merged with our reality and order to protect the populist. We've got to intervene. And so I'll stop there and just ask you to sort of comment on some of the, as a law enforcement officers, some of the complexities of having to navigate this space between what we'll call good and evil, right? That it's not as binary as a movie is what'd like to make it or as people or politics would like to make it. It's messy and it's complicated, but you still have to do what you have to do. True. And we usually say, we are paid and trained and selected because of being able to swim in the gray. Yeah. And this is one of those situations where, you know, it's gray. It's unlike patrol. It's unlike some other jobs, but it's swimming in that gray and throttle control because sometimes it's black and white. That might only be fleeting. Yeah. Now it's back into the gray. And this story, you know, Dyke went from, you know, that what I just talked about in the beginning with the bus, like that's very black and white. Had we been on scene, it makes your decisions very simple. What needs to occur. Right. Later in the event though, there were times where it's purely in the gray. One of the things that makes this unique is it was so protracted. We usually are called in after a crisis and it's, we, you know, we resolve it within a couple hours. This one lasted several days. So there was a lot more to process. And I think the human factor played a heavier role on us as individuals, but also with Dyke's. He's a human being. He's not a subject like we knew his name. We read through, you know, hours of transcripts from the negotiators talking to him like, you had a human face for sure. Yeah. And it's a really good point. We'll move to the rest of the story, but for you, those are where we were listening. It's a really interesting inflection point. I know many of our listeners, what you would say, but for many of our listeners who may be in medicine, this may be the first time they've considered such a question. But if you're standing outside of the bus and you are called into response with a weapon and there is a man looking to kidnap a child who's just shot a bus driver. What do you do? And in those scenarios, that's when a lot of the philosophical debates go away and you're left with very binary choices. And that's often the part that that's misunderstood in this larger argument. So he has the child. He now goes back to his house. Is that right? So he over the course of the preceding year, it actually hand dug a hole in the ground and built himself a bunker. Okay. So he was living, I believe in it was like a trailer or something, but he had pre-planned this, you know, we're assuming at least up to a year to include the normalization and the grooming of the bus driver to bring his victims. But he takes Ethan back to a bunker. He calls law enforcement and identifies himself says what he did and then directs them to a speaking tube. Basically a PVC pipe tube. I think it was 120 feet away from the bunker. Was that a gate just off the main road where he wanted law enforcement to then begin the not so much negotiations, but to come to hear his terms. Okay. And at this point, the other children are still in the bus. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There are several. The bus was mostly full a couple of the kids that actually called in 911 as well. Okay. And, you know, of course, we heard the recordings from the dispatch, but yeah, there are several kids, both I think texting and calling this in in real time as it's happening. Okay. So we're actually going to pause the story here and actually jump now to Quantico or to wherever you were at the time. So you are doing your normal workup, maybe training or doing some other things and all of a sudden the call comes in. So what's going on there? So oftentimes in these situations, you know, we have different intel streams. Yeah. There is an official request that occurs from that office that has jurisdiction. And in this case, you had local law enforcement that initially responded. It was the sheriff's department that was initially called. They had a good relationship with the local FBI office, which then they called them for assistance. And then that office had to wear with all to quickly look at the situation, look at their assets on hand and realize that they needed assistance. So it was pretty rapid that we got our official notification. However, because our operators come from all over the country and you end up doing two to three years in a field office anyway, there's usually some free like indicators and warnings of, hey, we got a thing going on. We're asking, you know, our leadership to give you guys a call and have you come in. So on this one, we did have a little bit of warning. Hey guys, bring it into the key. We called the cages. Yeah. Kind of start prepping with your gear. We anticipate we're going to get called in on this thing. And then do you happen vans, you get in the helicopters, you're going to planes. So on mission cycle, which we have three cycles, training, support mission, but on mission cycle, you're on a one hour tether. Okay. From getting the phone call. I was on compound already. Yeah. So didn't need to come in. But once we get that, we have a whole kind of standard up here, operating procedures as far as loading out certain vans and vehicles. And then we drive to an airfield and then we get on a plane. And then that plane delivers us to wherever we go. Got it. So I'm going to, unless there's anything pertinent about the training, I'm going to now transport us to the site you arrive on the site. What do you encounter? So the scene had already been contained by the local Sheriff's Department and then the local FBI office. So prior to us showing up, they had discovered that in that speaking tube was an IED. Okay. It was simple, but actually quite effective. So they ended up sandbagging that, putting up some speakers to make it remote. Try not to indicate to dikes that they discovered it. But it was a further data point that this is a pretty sophisticated guy. Like he's not not intelligent. Yeah. Very intelligent guy. And that we're all kind of playing into his plan. Yeah. So when we first get in there, we do a turnover, get the lay of the land, those that have been on the site, you know, kind of walk us through. But we do this turnover phase of we assume. So we switch out their snipers for our snipers. We switch out their emergency assault plan with ours. Usually if it sounds, you just adopt it. And emergency assault just means like, as we're walking around, if we need to interject right away, what does that plan look like? You know, the 20% solution, but it's executed now. And then we start to figure out what are our obstacles and shrink the problem. There were several other structures on his little compound. And when we say shrink the problem, it's we utilize different tech or canines or something else to make sure that there's no further IEDs. Okay. And then that buildings off the list. Now we can pass it without happen to worry about it. So it's same type of thing. It's if you see in the movies like, you know, with the mind sweepers and that, but we shrink it down to just the hatch of the bunker. And that occurred over the period of a couple days. Concurrent with that is we're starting our deliberate plan, which is what is the best intentional plan leveraging all our assets and tech to maximize success, which is, you know, rescuing the kid. Yeah. Just to make it simple. What's going on with the child right now? What's their lived experience? Well, these days are passing. So luckily for us, the negotiators were fantastic throughout this entire thing. But they were successful in getting dicks to communicate with them and utilizing some of our our technology. But in that, it incredible data points in like incredible real-time intelligence. So we could learn status of the child. One of the things that was unique about Ethan is he required a medication. And instead of giving him all, it was negotiated that we could deliver the medication, you know, three times a day, which that's three times a day that we get to do analysis of the target. And so concurrent with the delivery would be us trying to figure out pieces of the puzzle. Yeah. You know, that we could use to our advantage. And starting to develop a routine, dicks would spend like four to six hours in in blocks, speaking with the negotiators. And as they're listening to him, they, you know, would elicit certain information about the construction of the bunker, his grievances, his demands. And to sum up his demands, he wanted a certain reporter, a specific female blogger, reporter that he would exchange for Ethan over the period of three days. He would tell his story, which are behavioral analysis, analysis people. I did find him as a grievance collector. Yeah. And because he was in his sixties, he had a lot of grievances. But he was also a promise keeper, which means much like his demands with the bus driver. If they're not, he doesn't make idle threats. Yeah. He will act on what he said. Yeah. So, um, obviously, probably, it's reasons like delivering another victim to the site. Yeah. Not what we do. But it helped establish a somewhat of a routine actually. But it was very intentional on our part that every time we went up to do a delivery of food or the medicine, we learned something new. Yeah. So talk to me about the team for a second. If I'm on the team, and there is a child trapped in a bunker with what I think is a crazy person. That's not a technical term. There's going to be a certain amount of anxiety for me or urgency for me that is going to be a hard to temper. So as a leader, are you having to deal with any of that? Or is that all just HRG does is operating at a level above all that? No. We're humans. Most of us are fathers. Our demographic is older. Yeah. You know, I think at that time, most in my late thirties or early forties. And that's probably the demographic of most of us. It can be quite personal. I mean, like I said, we're reading detailed dialogue between the negotiators and digs and getting more information on Ethan and his medical condition. And so it was unlike anything we had done before. We're usually the timelines really rapid. And there isn't time to process that type of stuff. But we did. So I wouldn't say we're no different than any other humans as far as having to deal with that stuff. But because it's a mission and it's our job and there was always work to be done by, I say day two or three, we had established a rotation. So each unit was given a eight hour block. And within your eight hour block, you come in, you do a turnover with the last team. What did you learn? What questions are you exploring? We turned that over and then we'd use our whole eight hour block doing more problem solving, everything from buying materials, you know, to recreate the bunker, rehearsals, different techniques to try to access that hatch and the bunker surreptitiously going through different contingencies. So there was a lot of work to be done. And you try to keep it compartmentalized and sterile. But I think the stakes that we're at hand, you know, people's lives helped keep guys very, very focused. So during this time, what is the relationship between Dix and Ethan? So that was interesting. So obviously Ethan's a hostage, right? And Dix is a hostage taker. However, because of the unique attributes of Asperger's, Ethan fell right into a role of like the child. And it was almost eerie, a grandfatherly grandson relationship kind of started to develop. And, you know, you could, you know, tell from again, from the transcripts of that, it almost seemed like there was bonding going on. Okay. Which then led us to think, or at least me to think that maybe we're going to get a peaceful resolution. Maybe he's going to back off this and he won't, you know, follow through with at this point implied threats. Okay. To a hostage. So I think that was, that was very atypical of anything that we've dealt with in the past. Got it. Because usually we don't get to that phase. So this has gone on for a couple of days now. There's some hope that maybe this can be a peaceful resolution. There's this relationship building between the two of them and then what happens? So each time we made a delivery and again, the negotiators are fantastic. The primary job is peaceful resolution. If that can't be attained, then it's trying to shape the problem to give us the tactical advantage. Think I have the terrorists come peek out the window with his phone and, you know, make a nice target. So in this one, they were working with Dikes and giving him encouragement. He had developed a relationship with one of the local sheriffs that we took with us up to the hatch each time. And I think maybe between the dialect, you know, the Southern dialect, there was a familiarity and like a mutual respect and almost a cordialness. And so he kept opening the hatch. It had a elaborate system to make sure that we just could throw it open and go guns blazing. But each time we made deliveries, the delivery's got a little bit bigger and bigger. And the hatch kept coming up more and more and more, which, you know, per our deadly force policy, which is the reason, blinous way. You know, it would have set the conditions for us to end the situation. However, he kind of saw us before we saw him. And the reality, like all that cordialness and all that rapport just kind of came crashing down. He realized that we were there to end the situation. And he started to spiral really quick. So I'm going to pause there, right? Because this is often where the sort of armchair pundits will say, "Oh gosh, the SWAT team, they rushed the scene too quickly." Or they trip the wire or they scared off the suspect or whatever else. But let's remind us all that there's a child that has been kidnapped in a bunker that's already shown deadly force and the use of improvised explosive devices. The likelihood this is going to end nicely is mostly about you being a good person and hoping it ends nicely. But the actual context we're operating in any rational person would say, the likelihood of this ending nicely is pretty low. And so decisions have to get made, situations have to be constructed. And so I say all of that just to remind everyone who's listening that it's often easy to sit back and judge a scenario without being there and come to conclusions. And you always have to remember the entirety of the context. So now that he's seen you guys and it's escalated a little bit, what starts to happen now. So one other piece just for context is he had told us, but he had helped or he had started teaching Ethan how to detonate the ID that he had, okay, inside the bunker as well. So as far as that context goes, I mean, we've already met our threshold for deadly force. Every time we go up to the bunker, there's a potential that he could detonate that thing and we don't know what it's yield is and not to mention the fact that he's armed. But after that incident occurred, negotiators immediately trying to, you know, talk him down. And with very little results, he's back on his initial script. He wants his demands met. And then this is the first time for my recollection that he gives a deadline. And he gives a hard deadline of like 530 and starts giving threats about, you know, it's the classic, you know, hostage shaker. This blood's not on, you know, my hands, it's on your hands. You're the ones that, you know, if you don't meet my demands, it's your fault. And then he also starts to dehumanize his relationship with Ethan, okay, which was very alarming to, you know, to everybody and it indicators to us. And even for me, right? Because I thought for a while, hey, this might come to a peaceful resolution. Nope. He's right back on script. Ethan is a tool. And as a promise keeper, like, he'll follow through. Yeah. So it ramps things up really quick. We went through getting our authorizations from headquarters. If they came up with this plan that involves, you know, another delivery, Ethan being in the farthest place of the farthest corner of the bunker, which it's six by eight hole in the ground. Yeah. You know, 12 feet down. So it's not a whole lot of room, but he was in an area that would minimize any effects from a specialized charge. Yet we had built to defeat the bunker and hopefully disorient dikes why we could make entry. And those conditions had to be met before we were going to be authorized to, you know, execute the rescue. And then we move up. We rehearsed this thing multiple times. I remember just my entry team, we probably did this thing 12 times, trying to come up with every contingency we could think of and go through that as a group. We rehearsed it at least remember to where all the comms are, the leaderships involved. Everybody, you know, is playing their part. So we had a pretty good idea of what was supposed to happen. We're all in place. And then the delivery's going. There was another piece of, I'll call it like some tech that was delivered to dikes. And we had some events that needed to occur. And once those did, that was going to be the green light to execute. And so walk us through so the teams gathering, teams prepped ready to go. The scenario presents itself. I assume. And how did it how did it evolve that way? So I remember, you know, I'm taken a knee and I'm listening to everything over the radio, you know, all the pieces that are supposed to be set. And there's a narration going on for everybody's where it was all. And my basically the green light was going to be the sound of the charge going off. Okay, if the charge goes off, you know, it's game on. Charge goes off. My entry team runs up. Breachers had a little bit of trouble getting the hatch open. It was handmade. It's got some cables and stuff. There was a few things to fight through. And then we had also developed like a specialized breaching tool that we made. Yeah. Get that thing in place, jump down in who jumped down in. I was the first one. You were the first one in. Okay, jump down in. And immediately not according to plan, I'm stuck. You know, per the plan with this breaching tool, I would, it had like a small rope that would help me kind of do a controlled fall. Yep, the 12 feet. And I'm stuck in something. And there's already the smoke from the charges. And then I start seeing flashes from Dikes and shooting. Okay, stuck in this little like a little basket. Yeah, no that at the time. Couldn't fight my way through it. Yeah. So we're called back. I'm being shot at. I'd like to say I yelled it, but I've probably screamed it. Yeah. Then we all come spilling out of this thing. And immediately, you know, we lost momentum. Yeah. So just so I can say this back for everybody, you open this bunker. You breach it open with explosives, use some tools to crank the hatch open. You dive in feet first or head first, feet first, feet first, feet first, using a line, a rope to slow your descent and immediately get caught in some kind of snare or web or something. While you're stuck there in mid air, suspended above the ground, I'm probably sure in a little bit of pain, that probably hurt to land in that stuff. You're also getting shot at and it's dark and smoky. Correct. And I've got the other guys in my entry team like on top of you. Yeah. Right. And they also want to get in there because the whole thing was about momentum. Right. And they're trying to push me out. Yeah. So in the end, we've got a reverse, pull everybody back out. Right. And then what happens? So although we rehearsed multiple contingencies, yeah, that was never one of them. Yeah. So we come all the way back out. It's smoky. We're looking in the hatch. Dikes are still firing at us. Yeah. Slow rate of fire, but he's still firing at us. We're trying to evaluate what was, you know, what ended up keeping me from getting in. Yeah. Let nobody know, you know, hey, I think it's down, you know, so many feet and then we're getting the smoke out. The team leader, who was very calm and collective, very simple commands the entire time, but very confident and clear and concise says, let's get the dog in. So we use canines. We tried to lower canine in, even she couldn't get through. Turns out it was a series of bite cables that were set into like a net configuration. So we couldn't get her in. So we pull her out, but between her tail and her paws, it moved enough of the smoke that we could see these bite cables. Yeah. And at that point, we get in with the breaching tools that we all, you know, always bring up on target. We're starting to get those through our master breacher comes through with a specialized shotgun, cleans out the eyeballs. Yeah, or holding the cables. And then it was a moment of like, okay, there's a hole now, you know, what do we do? So it was my job to be number one the first time. So figures probably the second time too, asked for a flashbang that gets thrown in, try to ride that in and then jump back into the hole. So you jump now 12 feet or using a rope this time? No, uh, the tool was somewhere else somewhere else at the time. So you're making a 12 foot jump. Yep, 12 foot jump. Were you injured from the previous event? No, okay. Amazingly, I did not get shot, but I think I was super hopped up on adrenaline. So I didn't know at the time. Okay. This time went in, hit my elbow. Okay. On the frame of the door, yeah, McGon goes flat out of the hand. My hands end up in a pile at the bottom. Yeah, luckily I knew the bunker turned to the left. Yeah. And per our plan before, yeah, in those confined, you know, spaces, my job is always just to get hands on dikes. Okay. And then two and three would come in and, you know, neutralize. But in this, I did two big lunges, you know, in the dark and in smoke, trying to get a hold of him. And I ended up touching the, you know, Ethan. Yeah. So as soon as I had a hold of him and he is the mission, throw him underneath me, you know, ball myself up. Let the guys behind me know how you have clear fields of fire, you know, and I got the boy. Next two guys encounter dikes. It was so smoky and dark in there. The first guy that encounters him, thought he bumped into me and then realized once he's, you know, getting yelled at and fought with, that it wasn't me. Those two are in a very close, you know, yeah, gun exchange, not a gunfight, but gun exchange. Number two, you know, comes in assists with that piece. And then other guys, that were behind us, started tugging on Ethan. We push him out. Yeah. He goes out. We don't know how many guys are, you know, down in there with us. Yeah, smoky at stark. We get accountability. And then because there's an IED in there, we get out. Yeah, as fast as we can. So just to recap, here, you jump in, you're sneered the first time, you jump in the second time, drop 12 feet into a dark, smoky room, feel around trying to get dikes instead. Fine, Ethan, rapeseed and underneath you, while people behind you are in a close quarter gun battle in a bunker, cement bunker that's six by eight. And so the whole idea here, right, is that you're to a certain amount you want to catch any bullets, so they don't, Ethan doesn't catch them. I mean, because you're without a gun at this point. Sure. Yeah. So at this point, the other folks come in and I'm assuming shoot dikes. Yes, they do. Okay. And so dikes at this point is no longer a threat. Correct. So that fight all occurred pretty much on top of Ethan and I. So I knew it was happening. Yeah. Everything's quick. You know, it's loud, it's chaotic. But as soon as we knew he was neutralized, we knew it was safe to move him out from underneath me. And how's Ethan doing with all this at this well, well, he's underneath you? He was incredibly calm. And I just, you know, was repeating to him like, Hey, you know, you're going to be okay, you're going to be okay. You're going to be okay. Thinking I was trying to distract him from what was going on. Sure. On top of us. But afterwards when our medics took him to the hospital, you know, they said he really didn't probably didn't respond much to any of that at all. He had just asked like, you know, what happened to that guy? I know the guy you don't need to worry about it. Yeah. And so you're a father, yeah? Yes. And so as a dad, what's what's the impact for you on all this? Like you're jumping in this hole after a child, you wrap a child up a gun fight's going on? Is that is any of that occurring to you at that time? Or are you really just focused on a mission? At that time, I think I was just focused on the mission, but the days leading up to it, you know, you had a lot of time to think and process about that. You know, my kids at that time were younger than Ethan, but it's still you have all the same parent emotions and drives and it was never a parent child thing. It was a it was significant that it was a child. Yeah. Absolutely. So everybody gets out of the the hole. Any injuries? Anyone on your side injured? No. So because, you know, we're all kind of in a pile. We did have, you know, blood. Yeah. All over all of us. Super amped up on adrenaline. And you know, our doc came over and he's like, you know, are you hit? Are you okay? I'm as honest. I don't know. I'm so amped up right now. I have no idea. Yeah. So they do their, you know, we kind of do you do robe and they check our skin and, you know, pull and peel and make sure that we're we're not hit. And then of course, the next day later, because it was blood, you know, we got tested to make sure there wasn't, you know, anything and stuff. And they took a look at my elbow. It was just bruised up, but we were very fortunate that none of us had any injuries. So it's interesting with all the gunfire, right? Then that small space you guys jumping in there. Nobody's hit. So that's that's pretty extraordinary. It is. I have a photo where I basically got in the same position that I was when I was hung up. And there's a kind of like in the movie Pulp Fiction. Yeah. There's the outline. There's a whole outline on my right hand side. I think it's like 22 bullet holes. None of them hit me. So yeah. Yeah. God's hand was certainly at play. Wow. That's amazing. So now let's do what we normally do. We talk a little bit about residue, right? So you had this rich, rich experience. And I'm not going to label it as good or bad. It was just an intense experience. All of the team did. And so how did everybody sort of in the days that follow make meaning of that? Was anyone have trouble with it? Was all pretty clear to them? Was everybody feeling like, yep, that's were all good. Or was anything unresolved or misunderstood? I think one of the things that's incredibly challenging and unique to law enforcement. And you know, I know my own experience is the fact that post shooting, which this was shooting investigation when we shoot somebody is we're told not to talk about it. Okay. Until after we've been officially interviewed, that process took an entire week. And then me being you know, one of the guys closest to the inner, you know, the final resolution. I was interviewed last. And that's incredibly difficult because you want to talk to other people about your, your experience. And so we did break into our team elements. Yeah. Our little, you know, four to six man team elements. And we would work out together and go eat together. But because there's a legal process because you know, we support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And there's we're you know governed by rules. We can't talk about it. And I think that's it's unique and incredibly difficult. Unlike my military experience where you immediately debrief it, you can talk about everything. And we do you didn't get that with this. I think that was significant in the future residue issues. So in the in those five days that must feel pretty isolating not being able to make meaning of all that because there's smoke, there's darkness, there's confusion, there's there's an injury to your elbow, your gun goes out. There's all these questions you probably have like what about this and what about this. So inability to sort of make meaning of that, especially as a community that went with you and experienced that with you. Were you sleeping okay? Were were were able to check in with your friends okay? Yeah. So because we're incredibly tight team and you have to remember, you know, and if anybody you can see stuff online, if you see this hatch, I think it's like a three by four. Yeah. And we're all around that thing. And it was clearly, you know, of course, I spoke mostly about my part, but it was a team effort and there was, you know, a breaching team of the K-9 team and we had a master breacher and like all these different elements that had a singular purpose, which was to rescue the kid. And we all had our peace and I had mine. And yeah, it's incredibly difficult to not, you know, you don't have the whole big picture. And it's like, Hey, who did this? Because that was awesome. It helped me be able to do this. Hey, who solved that problem? Who solved this one? Or even just say the thank yous of, and I did, you know, like the number two's and number three, I'm like, Hey, I really appreciate you saving my life. You know, it's host, you know, because for a while there, you're just kind of waiting for the bullet. But to not be able to do that as thorough as you would like, it's kind of more like wink nod because later you're going to have to account for that exchange and the process doesn't want us making sure that we all are on the same page. It's the same story. And that's the one show behind it. That's the rationale behind it so that our citizens are do their rights and to protect their rights. There's this process and part of that process is that we don't collude and get our story straight for the official statement. And so you got to you got to hold all that until after the process is done and then you can come together and talk about it. So you've got an experience where you almost lose your life, which is a realistic scenario, sort of waiting for the bullet and a life is taken. Regardless of what we think about dykes, a life is taken, right? And there is a cost to that. There is emotional spiritual cost to that. And so the week goes by, you do your debriefing. And is that when you can start sort of talking to your friends and sort of start making meaning of all those things? Yeah, there becomes a period of time and you realize the lawyer was represented through this process because you are potentially the subject of a murder investigation until it is deemed that you were within scope of your duties and that you did apply the deadly force policy per policy. But after that, of course, you know, relationship with my wife and you know, trying to talk to her about these things and you know, in certain veil terms because the families, you know, are famed, this is televised, nationally televised every day. So our families had obviously invested interest in this and they're not getting full context and we can't tell them the nuances of what's going on, you know, day to day. And so it was incredibly stressful on them. And then they're still there's certain conversations that you can't have with your own spouse because you're bound by these rules. And so it creates a terminus amount of stress, you know, on the families. My kids saw it on TV, you know, so it's a significant emotional event for everybody to include the families. And to be honest with you, I get so the things were much simpler on target and then much more complex and messy, you know, after fact. So it's worth noting for everybody that unlike say medicine or military, fire and law enforcement combat is televised. So in other words, it's not happening in a far off place or behind closed doors. It's happening in front of CNN. And the families of everybody who's involved is watching. And so these events for law enforcement and fire around the country. And unlike military where they leave for six months, you go home and, you know, every 72 hours or, you know, every week and or in fire every shift. And regardless of what happens, you gotta go home, you gotta have dinner with your family, you're gonna come back. And those transitions are as hard as the ones after six months deployed. And they're happening more often. And so we often don't talk on teamcast about the team, the family as a team. But we also know from our research and residue that one of the greatest strengths that operators have, one of the great protective factors that operators have is their family because their family knows them the best. The challenge that you're speaking to is they know them the best as long as they can talk about some aspect of the lived experience, right? As long as they share in what happened, the good and the bad. And we often forget that law enforcement is often placed under these extraordinary limitations where they have to put off their own processing and making meaning experience for them and their families in order for them to protect the entirety of the constitution and the bill rights. Well, however, you feel about that. Is that a fair statement? It's a very fair statement. And it's one of those that you don't give any thought to until you have to live it. And not everybody has to live it. Like I had missions before this one and missions after this one, but nothing quite like that. Yeah. Did anyone struggle with any aspects of it in the days or weeks that followed up the name and any names? What are there any circumstances where yourself or anybody on the team sort of had anything on the result? I can't speak to other teammates, but for myself, I would say, you know, absolutely. And things that didn't manifest until years later. Can you give me example or would we want to sort of talk about vaguely even? No, I try to be very open about it's kind of part of the process. I would say a lot of the classic PTSD type pieces. And like many of the cultures in the MCTI community, it's a very proud culture. And we have a rigorous selection process. We have psychiatrists and we take the batteries of tests and there's a lot of resilience and grit. But I think the inability and some of those limitations as far as self awareness or forced processes to work through some of this stuff, you end up carrying it for a while until you know, certain events occur where you realize I can't do this on my own. You know, you need some kind of help. And we've come a long way, but at that time there really weren't processes, you know, in place, I think long term, it was more of a self discovery and working through some some lows and some highs, but out of it came, it has meaning, you know, the whole thing does now. So let me ask this question. If I take on the beginner's mind and become fully ignoring for a second, and I say this as follows that someone might be thinking about man goes on to a bus, kills the bus driver, kidnaps a child, goes into a bunker with IEDs and he is subsequently shot and the child is rescued. That seems like fair justice. It seems like a good ending to a story. It seems like you guys did your job. So one might ask without knowing the human side of this, why would there be any residue? Why would there be any lingering thoughts or emotions? It would seem to me like, yeah, good job, John Wayne pulled it off that day. What would be the thing that you might hold on to that you might think about that you might keep thinking about? A lot of it's just that not being able to talk with your tribe and your family. Most every other instance in life or car accident or child gets sick or somebody, any kind of trauma, you can talk and with other people and process it and work through it and give it meaning on a quicker timeline. But I think a lot of things that just inherent to this type of work, that's much more difficult and not going into it with a mindset of so I did ask like, we have access to a psychiatrist and he came on scene and I had asked him, "Gah, he look, I'm fine, I'm sleeping okay. This is days after." But can you jump in my head and just give it a quick look because I don't want to take anything home. Part of my ignorance and being naive is within the first couple of months there's probably not going to be anything. It's potentially years later of not processing through it that things will manifest and you'll get a little more detached and some irritability and some other things that you think you can take care of on your own but you need and just simple things. You don't have to be institutionalized. There's professionals. I went to a doctor after this to look at my elbow because it was injured. I'd probably easily could have used that rationale to go talk to somebody else and be like, "Okay, I'm good now but I'm well read. I know what happens in the future. There's going to be some things. I want to get ahead of it." And that's something I didn't do. So let me say that back to you. Do you think that that statement in the future there might be some things going back to what you said before? Do you think that's because you didn't have a chance to sit down with your tribe and make meaning of the full experience that there were still some things they had questioned marks about or still some things that were unresolved. Why did this happen or why did that happen? Do you think that's the driver or do you think it's something else? Just a shared something between you and your team? It's the latter. The shared something. At the time, I don't think, at least for me, I didn't have the clarity of specific things that I needed answered. We had a lot of detail. There was a lot of detail on this one. Between the transcripts that the negotiators would provide to tack to just the length of this thing. There was a tremendous amount of detail. I think it's more just that the human aspect of the shared tribe, you know, were social animals and then not having anything in place for the families. And that having to occur organically, which, you know, I get tremendous amount of training and resilience and all these other things that help equip me, but we do not do that for the families. And that's, I think, the Achilles heel for sure. So if we think about this from almost a methodological point of view, or at least at least an ancient point of view, if a community, right, if the hunters and the brotherhood and the families and the community and the tribe are gathered around and some event happens are a cane, they get invaded or animals attack or they got in a hunt, whatever it is, good or bad. There's always opportunity for everybody in the community to come in, touch one another, say, you're still alive, I'm still alive, we're okay, you're okay. What happened? Are we good? What's going to happen again to sort of sort of collectively not just make a meaning of it, but also to once again get everybody's arms wrapped around everybody and just be like, okay, we're all still here. And there's something that is probably hard to articulate, but is deeply tacit and deeply part of who we are. And that's the part that we often can't forget because it ends up being off in the most important. It is, it's a cleansing ritual. Yeah. And we didn't do it. And I think we've lost that. And it's something that needs to be reintroduced. One of the fantastic things that I got out of going to the MCTS seminar was telling your story. Yeah. It was very uncomfortable. Yeah. Very uncomfortable, but cleared at a tremendous job of teaching us how to frame this, but also the importance of it. Yeah. And now I try to be a more open book, especially as a team leader and, you know, share this stuff so that somebody else doesn't have to not the same mistakes because it was a process and it was a journey, but try to equip them before, you know, beforehand. Yeah. So that if and when, you know, something happens, that stuff's in place. But there's a lot of room to improve. And I don't know if anybody who does it, you know, 100% right. There are a couple groups that have heard of that does a better job of incorporating spouses and some of the stuff and leveraging some of the resources specifically on, you know, like counseling and psychological stuff to incorporate your home tribe along with your team tribe. And they've had incredible successes as far as sustainability and longevity with it. And so I'd like to see that happen, but there's also nuances with every agency as far as your limitations legally and resource wise. But, you know, from my own personal experience and then from, unfortunately, some more tragic experiences, you know, on my own team, there's no attempt to mitigate some of these stresses on the families. It'll drag the operator down, you know, with them. And it's somewhat preventable or at least we can try. As we start to pivot towards closing this this story up, the one thing I will just emphasize, which is what you just referenced is that one of the things that I see with operators in all of mission critical themes is they often see themselves, they often experience themselves as isolated and that their their experiences were unique to them. And the truth is is there some truth to that and there's not some truth to that, meaning that their ability to tell their story is no different than the grandparents of our grandparents and our grandparents is grandparents being able to take their lived experiences and communicate them in stories both to educate, but also to bind also to connect also to connect their lives with our lives. And I think a lot of people who are listening don't want to tell their story because they don't want to burden others or they don't want to brag or whatever else. And what I would remind them is that there's another part to this, which is you have a responsibility to tell your story because you're not the only one struggling and your ability to make meaning and communicate that story in a way that people can both hear and benefit from does more than educate. It also binds them to you and gives them more support than they had before. And so I'll just emphasize that. And then that will lead us into this sort of put you on the spot a little bit. We always ask for sort of what can we do different on Monday? Kind of question. And so when you think about this experience or the experiences since then or before then and you think about your role in working on a mission critical team for our listeners, if you had one or two or three things that you would encourage them to think about to do different Monday, what might they be? So I think one is embrace mental health like deliberately. We spend a lot of time bringing in and spending money and bringing in like the foremost experts on how to be stronger, faster, recover physically. And we're doing a better job now. But is work on those resources for that mental resilience, not just for the operator, but for their whole sphere and their network and all the way back to the families. I know previous to this, I was always looking at ways to be better on the gas pedal. Now I spend so much more time working on the brake pedal. So you know, things like meditation and kind of re-engaging with my faith and that type of stuff. That's what post this type of lifestyle will not just get you through something, but you know, there's the new terms that have post-traumatic stress disorders, that post-traumatic growth. There is growth to it. But you have to be deliberate about it. There is meaning to this. It makes it'll make you a better person, but you have to be really deliberate and kind of put your head down and you know, push through that piece. And then whether it's by example or deliberate mentoring to your point, you owe it to people, to other people so that they don't have to either experience the same way you did or even worse. Yeah. And then read. Yeah. Experience and knowledge equals wisdom and you should always be anybody in this community. Anybody who bothers listening to these teamcasts, yeah, like seek wisdom. And that's knowledge and experience and you have to get into both and be well read. Any books you're reading now that you want to recommend? Nothing right now. I'm actually, I take a break everyone. So I'm doing the the red rising series. Okay, and it's just a nice break. But I will say every year I reread Starship Troopers. Okay. The original one. Not the movie. Yeah. The original one. And what always speaks to me is the commentary on service and being a good citizen. Yeah. And it's of course, it's, you know, it's a sci-fi thing, but I think there's some some really profound words and some framing in there that I like to revisit that well, you know, once a year at least. It's interesting a lot of the operators that I talk about in all domains share my love of science fiction. And so it's not uncommon because of the way that their feral intelligence and the way they weaponize their curiosity to be curious about the next storyline. What's coming in science fiction has always done that. It also allows us to think in some nonlinear ways. And so I'm always an advocate of that stuff. I'm always advocate for reading anything quite honestly. But I want to I want to thank you very much. See if you have any closing comments before I wrap this up and just really grateful for you to be here. No, I just appreciate the opportunity. Thank you, Preston. Thank you. I will close by I think the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the House Address Q team for allowing us to record this story and tell this story. And I just remind everybody that everybody's got a hard job, right? Everybody. And society and this democracy is still an experiment and it's a complicated one. But it's not, there is no such thing as the government or the FBI. It's just individuals. It's made up of individuals with families and in communities doing the best they can. And we should all just take a deep breath and try to remember that that every side of the story is worthy of listening to. And we all just need to take a break and do a little more listening. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. FBI and see everyone next time. Thank you again for listening to our team cast. For more information about the Mission Critical Team Institute, please go to www.missioncti.com or follow us on LinkedIn or Instagram. If you are a mission critical team that wants more information on our courses, please reach out to our Director of Operations, Janice Jackson at [email protected]. That's [email protected]. And once again, thank you Janice and thank you to Shelby Road Productions for helping us produce the team cast. Have a great day.