[Travis McGee]

Well, as luck would have it, the first AD was into an already dead suspect. (yeah, right!)

The BATF, on a "compliance visit" to a gunshop after hours in Sacramento (or Fresno, I can't recall exactly) shot the gun store owner about 5 times with their 9mms, and he was dead.

But get this (TRUE STORY! I SWEAR!!!!) their story which was backed up by their friendly coroner was that:

/1/ The crazed owner was going for a .45. (Not one he ever used or carried. A "shop gun".)

/2/ The BATF agents, fearing for their lives, drew their weapons.

/3/ The gun store owner put the gun to his temple and shot himself with his right hand, (even though he was left handed.)

/4/ The BATF agents, in full draw and unable to stop, shot him also, 4 or 5 times.

/5/ But since the gun store owner was "already dead" at the second their bullets struck him (!!!!????) there was no killing by the BATF. They were just "shooting a corpse", who just happened to pick up a counter gun and kill himself with his "off hand" much to their surprise. And since the coroner agreed with that scenario, there was not even a grand jury, nothing.

And who cares? He was only a scum of the earth gun seller, a "merchant of death", so good riddance, right?

All the above is the truth. It really happened in real life, not in a novel.

(But I think those two BATF agents are pretty good STU material, don't you agree?)

[Joe Brower]

Based solely on the BATF's behaviors over the last two decades, it is apparent that their behaviors, in comparison with the STUs in your novel, are much more like than unlike. Not that they alone in their Gestapo tactics. The FBIs HRT comes to mind...

[Dukie]

Too many cases swept under the carpet cover of suicide. ( Maybe that explains the rug fibers found all over Vince Foster ). Is it possible to establish some record indicative of sound mind as a sort of insurance against such travesties of justice ?

[sneakypete]

I remember that happening. The sad thing is that if you tell this to the average "'murikan" they won't believe you.

[Jeff Head]

It happened in Taft, CA in October of 1998, near Bakersfield. The gun dealer's name was Darryl Howell.

Taft Gundelaer Dead in BATF Raid

From that article on my web site:

Disbelief permeated the tight-knit communities of Taft and Ford City Thursday as residents and friends of Darryl Howell questioned law enforcement's account of his death in his gun shop.

The Kern County Sheriff Department's version of the events — that the gun shop owner grabbed a loaded .45-caliber handgun Wednesday, struggled with officers and then placed the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger —just didn't fit with what they knew of the father of two.

Sheriff's officials said a Taft police officer, not knowing where the expended round went, immediately fired three rounds that struck Howell, 45, on the right side of his body. He died at the scene.

"Everyone in Taft knows this is stupid," said Shannon Ong, 34, Howell's niece. "They think the police officers are trying to make it seem like he was a criminal."

Ong believes there could be nothing further from the truth — that the man who grew up in Taft and graduated from Taft Union High School where yearbooks say he played football and was in the band was a wonderful man who ran an upstanding business ...