August 1, 2024 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Rich Muniz recounts what many others have experienced, and suffer from. He kept his cool and violently saved a life under intense danger - and his life after that day was not the same as before. His message is one of steadfast, workmanlike hope.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next to
a listener's story out of Colorado, where we're heard on
the Great station six point thirty KOW in Denver. We've
heard from Richard Munez before. He's a former cop, soldier
and lover of American history. Today he shares with us
the story of a dangerous incident that shaped his career
(00:31):
in law enforcement, one he still grapples with today. Take
it away, rich.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I was a civilian police officer long before I ever
went into the military, So when I was assigned to
the Asboch military community, it was a little bit of
a letdown. It's very quiet place to work. Now. I've
worked for Riley, Kansas, which could rock and roll. I
definitely worked the civilian streets of Antnio, Colorado and almost
of Colorado, which could definitely rock and roll. But Osbock
was pretty quiet until that one night today message came
(00:58):
across the radio saying, we have a soldier with the
knife at the Shifting Concern. This is where they housed
the air defense companies, the guys that you did, the
patriots and the Vulcans and stuff like that. So we
went out there bus first went to roll up to
the gate, and the gate guard was should we say
he was out there? He was scared, and he's gesturing
(01:20):
with his finger pointing away, and he says, he's over there.
He's over there. He's over there in that parking lot
over there. So I waved, went through. I saw something
I'd never expected to see. Here's a soldier. He stripped
to the waist. He's got a knife in one hand,
his arms are bloody, and he is just them always
to Ford F one fifty pickup with his bare hands
in that knife. The tires are flat, the windows have
(01:42):
broke out, and the thing looks like it's gone through
a major hell storm. Well, I stepped out, had my
hand on the butt of my gun. I said, hey, look,
you know, put the knife down and just make nice.
And he told me go ahead and shoot him. And
my first instinct was, Okay, that's not going to work.
So I automatically removed my hand from my gun, not
that it had done me much good. In first time
(02:03):
a division, we were not allowed to carry a magazine
in our weapon, much less have a bullet in it.
And anyone who knows anything about the cold nineteen eleven
knows that it takes a little while to load. One
of these guys. Get the magazine out, got to put
it in. You gotta pull back on the slide. Then
you read a rock and roll. We're talking anywhere from
three to five seconds. You can be very dead by
(02:24):
that time. So I'm trying to talk him down. Now
this is getting some attention. Everybody's coming out of the barracks,
you know, to see what's going on. They're yelling at
him and stuff like that. And be honest with you,
someone were egging him on. I'm trying to talk this
guy down and none of us working. I asked him
what had happened, and he said he gave me this
(02:45):
story about how his wife had left him and that
she'd taken the kids and said that he was never
going to see her or them again. Later on I
found out this was probably the tip of the iceberg.
What had happened was this soldier had got what we
call a bad eer evaluation report. And this is something
that's given to noncommission officers, you know, sergeant and better.
(03:05):
What this does. It says, basically, in a nutshell, if
you're worth keeping around well, rather than go through channels,
trying to repeal the ceer. What he had done was
he'd gone after the East seven, who had given it
to him. Well, the E seven ran for his room,
locked the door behind him since there was a metal
door and he couldn't knock it down. He went out
and took it on the guy's pickup. And that's where
we came into the story. So I'm still trying to
(03:26):
talk him down, and I'm slowly trying to inch my
way towards him a little bit. And I don't know
how long we did to stand off happened, I mean
it was It felt like it was hours. There's probably
just about maybe four or five minutes. But all this
time he's yelling at us and saying, you know, just
shoot me. You know, I'm living in hell here, you know,
just shoot me, let me, let me die. I had
(03:48):
no intentions of killing this man, absolutely none. And I'm
racing through my brain trying to figure out a way
I can find it to diffuse the situation. I mean,
there had to be away, and I'm not finding it.
Finally I got my chance. Apparently he decided he wasn't
gonna get out of this. He put the knife to
his chest, looked up the sky and said forgive me
(04:09):
Jesus and started to drop on him. I sacked him
like I was the football player snacking a quarterback. I
hit him as hard as I could well. I knocked
the knife out of his hands. Later found out I
broke his hand doing it. But now I'm trying to
keep this guy from continue to hurt him. I got
him under control, but he's trying to pound his head
into the concrete. I mean, he completely out of control.
(04:29):
So I'm trying a couple of diferent things. I'm trying
to keep him from hurting himself. I put my hand
under his head so when he tried to pound, he'd
be hit in my hand. Give him some cushioning. But
also I'm trying to keep him from doing that. And finally,
after another eternity is sitting on this guy and he's
just screaming for us to kill him and stuff like that,
the empt showed up. Okay, we got the guy under
(04:49):
control of them in custody. I go to the PMO
to try to write the report on this. I was
so shook I did not know what to do. I
pulled out the forms. I said, down at the desk,
I got my pen and I couldn't even write my
name on it. I after about two or three tries
of this, I went in and I went in and
talked to the poet's laison officer. Well, I knew she smoked.
(05:13):
I was an on smoker, and I bumped two smokes
from her, and I went upstairs and went to bed.
Only I couldn't go to sleep, so I got up
and I read a little bit. It didn't work. Finally,
somewhere around ten o'clock in the morning, and I figured
if I was going to the gym and I woke
off some of its nervous energy, maybe I could go
to sleep. Still couldn't sleep, and so I got up,
(05:36):
got dressed, grabbed my camera, and I went downtown to
take pictures of Onsbach and eventually I wind up at
Main Post. That's where the Post Marshal's office was, and
I talked for the gate guards a little bit, and
I went on in and I was walking around taking
pictures when out of the Post Marshal's office comes to
Colonel and Sogert, first class Carter, and she informs me
(05:57):
that they were putting me pattent and dec in from
metals the way we handle this thing, and I thought
that was pretty cool, and I went I had a
hamburger and when I couldn't eat it, and I felt
like I knew I had to sleep, but I just
couldn't do it. I mean, it was, it was gone,
(06:17):
and I think it was sure exhaustion. It finally caused
me to collapse and I managed to go to sleep,
and I dreamt about it all night long, and I
got the next morning, and I kept thinking about it,
and I dreamed about it more, and then finally one
day I started having little flashbacks on the incident. By
this time, I gotten out of the military and I
(06:39):
was just Aian police officer once again, and we had
an incident and all of a sudden, right smack in
the middle of it, I had this and I realized
at that point I needed a lot of help. But
the problem was I didn't know what to do about it.
And here's the funny part about too, I found I
was beginning to block people out of my life. I
was going with this beautiful woman by name of Julie
who eventually became my now Juel. She's a counselor. She
(07:04):
works with abused children, and abused wives, and she can
pretty much look at somebody and read their mail for you.
And she knew something was going on with me that
I wasn't talking about, and I had to talk about it,
but I wasn't doing it. I pushed everybody away. That's
a big symptom of what we call post traumatic stress disorder.
I refused to acknowledge I had it. So one day
(07:25):
I was at her house and she lived in a
home built in eighteen seventy seven and used a wood
stove to heat the house during the wintertime. Somehowtside chopping
wood for her. When she came out and we said
do we talked, and she says, something's going on with you.
You need to talk to somebody about this. And I said, well,
aren't you a counselor. She said yes, I am. Well
(07:48):
can't I talk to you about it? She says, no,
you can't, Well why not? I'm in a relationship with you.
And that meant I had to go someplace else and
I went to get help. I had a full blown
crisis going on that way. I mean I couldn't concentrate,
I couldn't do anything. And it was the grace of
God that I managed to pull my life back together
and start doing this and involved a lot of work.
(08:10):
I talked to a counselor at Sandluis Value Mental Help.
I name it Joseph. I thank God in Heaven for Joseph.
Joseph from I understand I had been a saltee medic.
He may not walked exactly a mile in my boots.
By God, he knew what color they were, and he
knew how a soldier and since the police officer thinks,
(08:32):
and he helped guide me through it and showed that
I did the very best I could do with it.
I didn't have things like mace. I didn't have tasers.
The only weapons I had was a gun with no
bullets in it and a night stick, which I did
not intend to use because I wanted to de escalate
the situations to make it worse. And slowly, with his help,
I got past it. And if you're suffering from me
(08:54):
kind of post trauma E stress disorder, my advice to
you is get help the way you reckon nice post
from ex disorder. Look at my situation. Constantly thinking about
the event, dreaming about it is a good one. Having
problems sleeping because of it, loss of appetite, loss of
abilities to function. I mean, I've gone from a hard
(09:14):
charging soldier to someone who is actually afraid of their
own shadow at times. I mean to go on duty
caused me some really severe stress. This is the kind
of stuff you need to look at. And the thing is,
it's not only soldiers or police officers or first responders
that get this. It's anybody. It could be a housewife
an abusive situation. It could be a child in an
abusive situation. You could be in an accident, say a
(09:36):
car accident, or a train accident, or an aircraft accident.
If you find yourself doing this, get some help by
all means. Contact your local mental health, contact your minister.
Get some help on this. Now. A lot of people
won't do this for one simple reason. There is a
stigma associated with mental health issues. When I said there
(10:00):
and said I'm going to go into council, and they said,
and I said, don't you dare do it, because you will
never get a decent job again. They will label you
as crazy and that will be the end of it.
And I tell myself, I got news for you. I'm
already there. Get it behind you, deal with it. It'll
never ever really go away, but you will learn to
live with it, and with God's help and the help
(10:21):
of those around you, you'll become a fully functional human
being again.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
And a terrific job. And the production and editing by
Iron Monte Montgomery and the special thanks to Richard Munez.
We love our listeners' stories. Richard Munez sharing the story
of a dangerous incident that shaped his career in law
enforcement and the aftermath. Here on our American Stories
And we returned to our American stories. Up next to
a listener's story out of Colorado, where we're heard on
the Great station six point thirty KOW in Denver. We've
heard from Richard Munez before. He's a former cop, soldier
and lover of American history. Today he shares with us
the story of a dangerous incident that shaped his career
(00:31):
in law enforcement, one he still grapples with today. Take
it away, rich.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I was a civilian police officer long before I ever
went into the military, So when I was assigned to
the Asboch military community, it was a little bit of
a letdown. It's very quiet place to work. Now. I've
worked for Riley, Kansas, which could rock and roll. I
definitely worked the civilian streets of Antnio, Colorado and almost
of Colorado, which could definitely rock and roll. But Osbock
was pretty quiet until that one night today message came
(00:58):
across the radio saying, we have a soldier with the
knife at the Shifting Concern. This is where they housed
the air defense companies, the guys that you did, the
patriots and the Vulcans and stuff like that. So we
went out there bus first went to roll up to
the gate, and the gate guard was should we say
he was out there? He was scared, and he's gesturing
(01:20):
with his finger pointing away, and he says, he's over there.
He's over there. He's over there in that parking lot
over there. So I waved, went through. I saw something
I'd never expected to see. Here's a soldier. He stripped
to the waist. He's got a knife in one hand,
his arms are bloody, and he is just them always
to Ford F one fifty pickup with his bare hands
in that knife. The tires are flat, the windows have
(01:42):
broke out, and the thing looks like it's gone through
a major hell storm. Well, I stepped out, had my
hand on the butt of my gun. I said, hey, look,
you know, put the knife down and just make nice.
And he told me go ahead and shoot him. And
my first instinct was, Okay, that's not going to work.
So I automatically removed my hand from my gun, not
that it had done me much good. In first time
(02:03):
a division, we were not allowed to carry a magazine
in our weapon, much less have a bullet in it.
And anyone who knows anything about the cold nineteen eleven
knows that it takes a little while to load. One
of these guys. Get the magazine out, got to put
it in. You gotta pull back on the slide. Then
you read a rock and roll. We're talking anywhere from
three to five seconds. You can be very dead by
(02:24):
that time. So I'm trying to talk him down. Now
this is getting some attention. Everybody's coming out of the barracks,
you know, to see what's going on. They're yelling at
him and stuff like that. And be honest with you,
someone were egging him on. I'm trying to talk this
guy down and none of us working. I asked him
what had happened, and he said he gave me this
(02:45):
story about how his wife had left him and that
she'd taken the kids and said that he was never
going to see her or them again. Later on I
found out this was probably the tip of the iceberg.
What had happened was this soldier had got what we
call a bad eer evaluation report. And this is something
that's given to noncommission officers, you know, sergeant and better.
(03:05):
What this does. It says, basically, in a nutshell, if
you're worth keeping around well, rather than go through channels,
trying to repeal the ceer. What he had done was
he'd gone after the East seven, who had given it
to him. Well, the E seven ran for his room,
locked the door behind him since there was a metal
door and he couldn't knock it down. He went out
and took it on the guy's pickup. And that's where
we came into the story. So I'm still trying to
(03:26):
talk him down, and I'm slowly trying to inch my
way towards him a little bit. And I don't know
how long we did to stand off happened, I mean
it was It felt like it was hours. There's probably
just about maybe four or five minutes. But all this
time he's yelling at us and saying, you know, just
shoot me. You know, I'm living in hell here, you know,
just shoot me, let me, let me die. I had
(03:48):
no intentions of killing this man, absolutely none. And I'm
racing through my brain trying to figure out a way
I can find it to diffuse the situation. I mean,
there had to be away, and I'm not finding it.
Finally I got my chance. Apparently he decided he wasn't
gonna get out of this. He put the knife to
his chest, looked up the sky and said forgive me
(04:09):
Jesus and started to drop on him. I sacked him
like I was the football player snacking a quarterback. I
hit him as hard as I could well. I knocked
the knife out of his hands. Later found out I
broke his hand doing it. But now I'm trying to
keep this guy from continue to hurt him. I got
him under control, but he's trying to pound his head
into the concrete. I mean, he completely out of control.
(04:29):
So I'm trying a couple of diferent things. I'm trying
to keep him from hurting himself. I put my hand
under his head so when he tried to pound, he'd
be hit in my hand. Give him some cushioning. But
also I'm trying to keep him from doing that. And finally,
after another eternity is sitting on this guy and he's
just screaming for us to kill him and stuff like that,
the empt showed up. Okay, we got the guy under
(04:49):
control of them in custody. I go to the PMO
to try to write the report on this. I was
so shook I did not know what to do. I
pulled out the forms. I said, down at the desk,
I got my pen and I couldn't even write my
name on it. I after about two or three tries
of this, I went in and I went in and
talked to the poet's laison officer. Well, I knew she smoked.
(05:13):
I was an on smoker, and I bumped two smokes
from her, and I went upstairs and went to bed.
Only I couldn't go to sleep, so I got up
and I read a little bit. It didn't work. Finally,
somewhere around ten o'clock in the morning, and I figured
if I was going to the gym and I woke
off some of its nervous energy, maybe I could go
to sleep. Still couldn't sleep, and so I got up,
(05:36):
got dressed, grabbed my camera, and I went downtown to
take pictures of Onsbach and eventually I wind up at
Main Post. That's where the Post Marshal's office was, and
I talked for the gate guards a little bit, and
I went on in and I was walking around taking
pictures when out of the Post Marshal's office comes to
Colonel and Sogert, first class Carter, and she informs me
(05:57):
that they were putting me pattent and dec in from
metals the way we handle this thing, and I thought
that was pretty cool, and I went I had a
hamburger and when I couldn't eat it, and I felt
like I knew I had to sleep, but I just
couldn't do it. I mean, it was, it was gone,
(06:17):
and I think it was sure exhaustion. It finally caused
me to collapse and I managed to go to sleep,
and I dreamt about it all night long, and I
got the next morning, and I kept thinking about it,
and I dreamed about it more, and then finally one
day I started having little flashbacks on the incident. By
this time, I gotten out of the military and I
(06:39):
was just Aian police officer once again, and we had
an incident and all of a sudden, right smack in
the middle of it, I had this and I realized
at that point I needed a lot of help. But
the problem was I didn't know what to do about it.
And here's the funny part about too, I found I
was beginning to block people out of my life. I
was going with this beautiful woman by name of Julie
who eventually became my now Juel. She's a counselor. She
(07:04):
works with abused children, and abused wives, and she can
pretty much look at somebody and read their mail for you.
And she knew something was going on with me that
I wasn't talking about, and I had to talk about it,
but I wasn't doing it. I pushed everybody away. That's
a big symptom of what we call post traumatic stress disorder.
I refused to acknowledge I had it. So one day
(07:25):
I was at her house and she lived in a
home built in eighteen seventy seven and used a wood
stove to heat the house during the wintertime. Somehowtside chopping
wood for her. When she came out and we said
do we talked, and she says, something's going on with you.
You need to talk to somebody about this. And I said, well,
aren't you a counselor. She said yes, I am. Well
(07:48):
can't I talk to you about it? She says, no,
you can't, Well why not? I'm in a relationship with you.
And that meant I had to go someplace else and
I went to get help. I had a full blown
crisis going on that way. I mean I couldn't concentrate,
I couldn't do anything. And it was the grace of
God that I managed to pull my life back together
and start doing this and involved a lot of work.
(08:10):
I talked to a counselor at Sandluis Value Mental Help.
I name it Joseph. I thank God in Heaven for Joseph.
Joseph from I understand I had been a saltee medic.
He may not walked exactly a mile in my boots.
By God, he knew what color they were, and he
knew how a soldier and since the police officer thinks,
(08:32):
and he helped guide me through it and showed that
I did the very best I could do with it.
I didn't have things like mace. I didn't have tasers.
The only weapons I had was a gun with no
bullets in it and a night stick, which I did
not intend to use because I wanted to de escalate
the situations to make it worse. And slowly, with his help,
I got past it. And if you're suffering from me
(08:54):
kind of post trauma E stress disorder, my advice to
you is get help the way you reckon nice post
from ex disorder. Look at my situation. Constantly thinking about
the event, dreaming about it is a good one. Having
problems sleeping because of it, loss of appetite, loss of
abilities to function. I mean, I've gone from a hard
(09:14):
charging soldier to someone who is actually afraid of their
own shadow at times. I mean to go on duty
caused me some really severe stress. This is the kind
of stuff you need to look at. And the thing is,
it's not only soldiers or police officers or first responders
that get this. It's anybody. It could be a housewife
an abusive situation. It could be a child in an
abusive situation. You could be in an accident, say a
(09:36):
car accident, or a train accident, or an aircraft accident.
If you find yourself doing this, get some help by
all means. Contact your local mental health, contact your minister.
Get some help on this. Now. A lot of people
won't do this for one simple reason. There is a
stigma associated with mental health issues. When I said there
(10:00):
and said I'm going to go into council, and they said,
and I said, don't you dare do it, because you will
never get a decent job again. They will label you
as crazy and that will be the end of it.
And I tell myself, I got news for you. I'm
already there. Get it behind you, deal with it. It'll
never ever really go away, but you will learn to
live with it, and with God's help and the help
(10:21):
of those around you, you'll become a fully functional human
being again.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
And a terrific job. And the production and editing by
Iron Monte Montgomery and the special thanks to Richard Munez.
We love our listeners' stories. Richard Munez sharing the story
of a dangerous incident that shaped his career in law
enforcement and the aftermath. Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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