THE TV INTERVIEW THAT ENDED IN DEATH

It was July in Houston, Texas, that means temperatures in the 90's as well as humidity in the 90's. Step outside the air-conditioned news van and you begin to drip.

My photographer and I were on the 610 East Loop when we heard a police radio call about a shooting near the East Loop and U-S 59 North. We were close so we radioed the news desk and told them we would check it out.

We rolled up in just minutes before the first police unit arrived on the scene. My photographer began shooting film of the scene. There was a VW Bug on the side of the Freeway ramp to 59 and the apparent driver was about 50 feet in front of his car on the ground. There was a woman who had stopped to see if she could help. I walked over to the driver and told him who I was and asked him what happen. He said they shot me. It was not apparent that he was shot, he was lying on the ground, propped up by his left arm. I asked him where he was shot? He said in the back, I looked and he was bleeding from a wound in his back. He had a plaid shirt that was filling with dark red blood. He told me his car had broken down, and he walked down the embankment to get help. He was not from this Eastside area of Houston or he would have known that he walked into a housing project area that was known for its gang members. He told me he went to a small store and used the pay phone outside to call his new wife to bring his truck and pick him up, and they would get a tow truck for his VW.

He said he walked back up to his car and three youths followed him to the car. He got into the VW and they piled in too. They told him they wanted his money and car keys. He told them his car would not run, and he gave them the little money he had. The young man in the back seat did not believe the car would not run. As they other two got out of the car, the teenager in the back seat shot him in the back for no reason.

As I held this young construction worker in my arms waiting for the police and ambulance, he kept saying why did they shoot me; I did everything they told me to do. Why did they shoot me? He told me he had just recently been married and his wife would be there any minute. He said she had to drive from the West Side.

His live blood was still flowing out of his wound in his back, even as I tried to put pressure on it, as I learned in the Boy Scouts. His plaid shirt was now completely soaked in the back, and his blood was soaking into the sandy soil of the embankment. I pressed harder on the wound but it didn't seem to stop the flow of blood. (Later the police said his wound was from a 38-cal. Pistol at close range)

By this time several other motorists had stopped. I'm sitting on the ground holding the young victim in my arms talking to him and trying to apply pressure to his bleeding wound. He stopped talking, and looked up at me and said "am I going to die?" I hesitated for a moment. and then said, "no you are not going to die." The young man looked into my face and said, "I don't want to die." I said again, "you are not going to die." However, at that moment I knew I was not telling him the truth. He closed his eyes and his head dropped back. I said "hold on, the ambulance will be here any minute.

He was gone. I let him lay back on the ground, which was now totally soaked with his blood. He had bled to death on the side of the freeway ramp, I had not been able to help him, and I lied to him when I told him he would not die. He wanted to live so much, and I could only listen and talk to him until he bled to death.

I was now standing looking down on him when I heard a scream come from behind me a little way up the freeway ramp. A woman came running up yelling, "what has happened to Don, have they killed him?" I assumed she was his new wife, but that was a bad assumption for a journalist. She said she was his girl friend and fiance. By this time the cops had arrived. And they began talking to her about who the dead man was, and why he was here, etc. Within two minutes two other women came running up from a pickup truck. The younger woman was screaming where is my husband, what has happened to my husband. Now we had two young women who were claiming they were the special woman in the life of the dead motorist. The two women began to argue and had to be quieted by the police. All this time my photographer was getting great film.

The older woman who was the mother of the young woman who said she was his wife, told me and police that her daughter had just recently married and the other young woman was someone her son-in-law had dated before he married her daughter.

My photographer and I left the scene to go back to the station to edit our story for the Six O'clock News on KHOU TV. In my story I left out the part of the two women both claiming relationship to the dead man. (It just didn't seem to matter in a story of a young man being shot to death for no reason, and trying so hard to continue to live.)

Post Script: Police never found the three young men who committed the crime and killed Don. But there is a man out there who is now 40 some years old and he knows he killed this young motorist for no reason. (As my Mom always said, "God Will Get You.")