It's certainly a title that
probably can be very deceiving to some who may think it has to do with
pornography or something like that. It has absolutely nothing to do with
anything that dirty minds have on their minds, well maybe something, but not
what they would expect. Allow me to explain the moniker to you. Many years
ago, not all that long after I was married (maybe less than a year, pretty
certain it was less than two years) I decided to start getting some exercise
because I was gaining a bit of weight. Good home cooking I suppose! I figured,
what better way to do this than to go for nice, long, good paced, but relaxing
walks. One night I went one way, the next time out I went another, the next
time I turned this way, the next time that way, then I wound up going the wrong
way.
No, I did not do anything wrong, except maybe decide to go
in the direction I headed one cold winter’s night in Queens, NY (one of the
counties in NYC). As I was walking along, minding my own business, a car pulled
up close to the curb in front of me, but not close enough to park. I kept
walking, and as curiosity and training would have me do, I checked out the
occupants. As I approached, from the back of the car on the passenger side, I
noted two guys in the front seat. Both seemed unusually stiff, then I saw the
passenger slowly turning his head, just enough to see me, and as he did so I
could see him trembling.
It did not take a rocket scientist or tactical expert to
realize something was wrong. Maybe many people very well may not have realized
anything was amiss - but I had been trained about things not being quite right
thanks to my LEO training. In another step or two, without realizing I had done
so, I had removed the glove from my right hand and I had placed my hand on the
grip of my 9MM Beretta 92SB pistol that was riding in a thumb-snap holster on
my right hip. I kept walking forward, passed the car, because I did not want to
give them my back, but I also got as much distance between me and the car as I
could on the sidewalk.
As I got even with the passenger door, it opened and a
swarthy young adult male got out of the car. He stood but remained bent over
somewhat, and I saw he was holding a sweater over his hands. He looked up at
me, pulled the sweater back with his left hand with his right hand still
underneath it. It was then I saw what looked like a threaded , white metal, .30
caliber fluted rifle barrel staring at my midsection. At that moment things
kicked into high gear for me, and the world seemed to slow down, just as this guy
was saying "Don't move motherfucker" to me. I did not do what he
said, screw him, I kept moving.
As I moved toward the only cover I could see, a small tree
and a no parking sign pole, I also moved my hands. I drew my pistol, started to
aim, and heard myself vocally yell "Police - Federal Agent, don't
move". I also heard me mentally yelling at myself “don't aim - don't aim -
just point and shoot”. Somewhere in the split second this all took, yes it was
extremely quick but I was aware of an awful lot that happened in that short
actual split second of time, I thought the rifle barrel turned into a plastic
soda bottle (wishful thinking I guess), and I again heard my inner voice
screaming frantically at myself inside my head, this time as loud as an
internal voice can be without fracturing your own skull: "It’s a gun -
shoot him - it’s a gun”.
I shot, from about at the hip, and continued to bring the
pistol up toward my eye level for either a point shooting shot or if need be an
aimed in shot. As I did so I noticed many things. The recoil felt odd, it had
not been normal. I checked the gun visually and started to slam the mag for tap
and rack, but did not get to rack as I realized my glove, the one I had taken
off was between my shooting hand and the pistol grip, that’s why it felt funny.
I also saw that almost instantly, the guy had raised up on his toes, his face
looked shocked, his eyes widened, and two ripples of flesh emanated from both
eyes outward, until meeting and forming a larger ripple inside of which the
skin around his eyes turned from a olive swarthy look to milky white and he
doubled over. I immediately looked to the car, saw the other guy with a
revolver in his hand about to get out. I fired another shot, it hit the
windshield at head level of the driver. Then the guy afoot tried to get back
into the car but two things prevented him, the door closed as he bumped into
it, and the car left. The car sped off backwards, the guy who had been holding
the rifle took off running after the car and me after him. I was commanding him
to stop - silly me. The car stopped, its engine revving, and I realized the
danger of the situation. I ducked behind a parked car lest the driver try to
run me over. The guy who had the rifle hopped into the car, and the car and 2
bad guys sped off.
Neighborhood folks heard me calling out, asking, begging,
for someone to call 911 and give them the location and to tell the 911 operator
10-13 and shots fired. That code, 10-13 is the New York City Police
Department's code for officer needs assistance. I knew, that with 'shots fired'
added, it would get a lightning quick response. It did! The boys in blue
arrived, en ,masse, quicker than I have ever seen them respond.. After some
interviewing of me and of witnesses, a detective walks over to me with a pen in
his hand. On the end of the pen is perched a white metal, fluted pipe, with
about a .30 caliber hole in it. He asked if that was the gun I had seen. I said
"It’s definitely....eh, err, eh - NOT".
As it turned out, that had been “the rifle” that I had
thought the guy was holding. He was found at a hospital some miles away a couple
of days later. He said a crazy white guy walked up to him, while he was with
his cousin and some friends on a street corner in Brooklyn, and suddenly the
white guy just went crazy and started shooting. Strange thing though, how the
cousin and the friends all had a different story that they gave to the police.
They could not get their facts to agree.
Also strange how he refused to allow doctors to remove the bullet;
especially after police told him they could trace it to the gun that had shot
him, and they believed that said gun belonged to a federal agent. Then he did
something I thought even stranger but for which I am forever grateful. He
confessed. Said he and his cousin were out trying to get money to buy crack.
His cousin saw me and told him something like: "Do this guy.” He said,
something like: "I held the bicycle pipe like a gun but I didn't mean to
hurt nobody". He was arrested, so was his cousin; they went to jail for at
least a few years each. The rifle turned out to have been a pipe.
Maybe a day or two after they found this guy in the
hospital, one of the NYPD detectives called me and told me to pick up a copy of
the Ridgewood Times, a small local weekly newspaper. In the paper was this line
(or something extremely close to it), that I foolishly read as I was driving
down the street: "According to police, doctors said the subject was barely
holding his own". I almost crashed my car because I started to convulse
with laughter. I guess you see where this is going, and are beginning to see
how I got my nickname. The detectives told me my first shot had hit the bad guy
in his right thigh - remember I kept moving and had only pointed it at him from
about hip level when I fired the pistol. The bullet traveled from the center
front of the thigh, to the inner front of the thigh. It then exited the thigh
and it entered his scrotum passing into the right testicle. It passed through
his testicle into the other one, and exited the left side of the scrotum. Then
it entered the left thigh on the inner thigh and traveled down toward his knee,
where it came to rest just a micron or so away from his femoral artery. One
bullet, five bullet holes. Some days, or a week or so later, while my
co-workers talked this over in the office, one of them told me I had a new nickname
- Bull's-Eye Bartley. One of the other agents in our group had been diligently
writing a report and seemingly not paying attention. Suddenly, he snapped his
head upright, said something like: "No - no - not Bull's-Eye, it should be
Ballseye"; and a legend was born - even if only in my own mind.
There was a little more to the story, like my identifying
the car once the police found it, it had a bullet hole right in front of where
the driver's head had been. Too bad windshields often deflect the first shot or
two, then again, I do not know how I would have coped had I actually killed
another human even if a dirtbag. Oh well, the other guy was unscathed except
maybe for yellow stains, and skid marks, in his pants. Another note, the mugger
duo had also robbed another guy that same night. Of course, it had been earlier
than their unsuccessful attempt on me but they were successful with the other
robbery. The police received a call, about that mugging, about 30 minutes after
my incident. The guy they robbed was an older guy, who took 45 minutes, or so,
to walk home after being mugged (not a lot of cell phones if any back then).
Then he took a break and then called the police. I was in the stationhouse by
then being interviewed again and again. My story was always the same. As I was
being interrogated, every cop in the precinct house ran out and as one passed
me by he said: “I guess you missed them, they just robbed someone else”. Well,
they interviewed that victim and he said the driver had had a revolver in which
he, the victim, had actually seen the bullets in the cylinder because the
driver held it right up in front of his face. I guess I had been lucky it had
not been him to point at me. Oh well. Then the police realized that this other
mugging actually had happened before the one in which I had been targeted. One
thing led to another and they found the guy in the hospital as I said above.
They never removed the bullet from the bad guy whom I shot.
As far as I know, he still carries my memento today. Me, I still carry
something from that day too, some bad dreams now and again about shooting
wherein my gun fails me. They used to be terrible nightmares, I guess there was
a certain amount of guilt in my having shot someone, even someone as deserving
as was the criminal whom I shot. Thankfully though, I don’t wake up panicking
anymore, now they are just mild dreams and always turn out okay. Of course, I
also brought something else with me, through my life, because of that day. I
wear the title of Ballseye. In fact, I wear it with some small amount of pride
and that is what is in this moniker.
So you see - nothing pornographic at all - but yes
"balls" did refer to that which those of you with dirty minds had
thought, just not the way you thought it did!
All the best,
Glenn B
PS:
Gil P, if you ever
read this, thanks for that title.
