This chapter includes graphic depictions of gun violence and traumatic loss. If this type of content is triggering or painful for you, consider whether you wish to continue at this time.
May 16, 2006
I woke up around 6:30 a.m., groggy but ready for the day. The house was quiet except for the soft tick of the hallway clock and the distant patter of rain on the metal roof. I went downstairs to make breakfast—eggs, bacon, the usual—and soon the house filled with the warm smell of coffee drifting through the rooms. It felt like an ordinary morning. A normal day. Nothing heavy in the air, nothing off. Just the simple rhythm of a routine I’d lived a thousand times.
After I ate, I went back upstairs to wash up, heading straight for the master bathroom, like I always did. My dad groaned the moment I flicked on the light. His eyes stayed closed as he muttered, “Why don’t you use your bathroom instead of coming in here and waking us up?”
“I like your bathroom,” I said. “Besides, it has a working sink.”
Still half-asleep, he rolled over and dragged the covers over his head. “Fix your sink,” he mumbled.
I smiled. “Love you guys. I’m heading to the gym.”
They both grunted—half acknowledgment, half annoyance. But it was the kind of annoyance that meant everything was normal.
Outside, the rain was light but steady enough to blur the windshield and pool on the gravel road. The tires slid a little on the wet stones, so I drove slowly, watching the mist settle in the hollows. I had my rock mix playing—Evanescence, Nine Inch Nails, The Killers, Disturbed, Thirty Seconds to Mars, The All-American Rejects—the soundtrack of the mid-two-thousands pulsing through the speakers.
I worked out at Extreme Fitness in Bridgeport and felt good afterward, energized, ready to get things done. After showering in the locker room, I headed to the South Ridge Church offices to meet with Pastor Seth about the video I’d made for Sunday. He liked it, suggested a few small edits, nothing major. We wrapped up, and drove back home.
By then the rain had stopped, though the world was still gray, clouded over like the day couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. I drove up the right-of-way toward the farm and saw a white Dominion Hope van coming down the road. I moved over so we could pass each other and continued up toward the house.
As soon as I stepped out of the vehicle, I asked my parents what Dominion was doing up on the property. They were excited—truly excited. In January we’d gotten an outrageous bill claiming we owed $2,000 for gas usage. We’d contested it ever since, and finally someone had come out. Turned out the meter reading was wrong. Completely wrong. We owed nothing. It felt like a weight off their shoulders, and for a moment everything in the world felt bright again.
We went inside and chatted about plans for the day. They were going to run information over to John and Barb about the alpacas, then stop at the grocery store to pick up ingredients for dinner. I told them I was going upstairs to finish my video edits.
I was deep into the work when my mom called up the stairs. When I came down, she asked if I could keep Charlie with me while they were out. He had separation anxiety and howled if left alone in the Explorer.
“Sure,” I said.
We hugged—everyday, casual, routine. “I love you,” she said.
“I love you too.” I said these words to my mom and dad not knowing how profound this moment would have for the rest of my life.
They left through the porch door. I heard the faint sound of them loading into the Explorer. They didn’t pull out right away. When they did leave I heard the gravel crunch under the tires, the sound fading as they moved down the road.
I went back to editing.
Then, two distant bangs echo through the hills.
Everything inside me goes still.
I stand up from my chair. The air feels thick, wrong. I walk into the spare bedroom and look out the window facing the property line.
The Explorer is flying backwards down the right-of-way.
Fast. Out of control.
It swerves and slams into the ditch on the east side of the driveway.
I don’t think. I move. I’m already running down the stairs, through the back porch, out into the air that smells like wet stone and rain.
My body feels hot. My heart is pounding so hard it feels like the ground is shaking with each beat. I haven’t run this fast since high school track. Every step down the hill is a sprint toward something my mind isn’t ready to understand.
But then I see it.
My mom is lying on her side in the gravel about 20 feet down the right-of-way. Perfectly still. Not moving.
Time fractures.
It slows to something unreal—weightless, suspended. I feel like I’m outside my body, calm in a way that doesn’t make sense, a calm born from shock, not strength.
I look left.
My dad is slumped over the steering wheel inside the Explorer. Blood running down the passenger side door.
“Dad! Dad! Dad!” I yell as I run parallel to the vehicle.
He lifts his head with agonizing effort. His face is twisted with pain, drained of color. He looks at me but barely sees me.
“Dad, what’s going on?” I ask.
He closes his eyes. “Call… 911.” His voice is strained, a whisper pulled through pain. “CALL 911!”
I run. Back to the house. Up the stairs. Grab the phone and call 911.
As the dispatch operator answers, two more bangs echo across the farm, louder, closer.
“Dale Eagle shot my parents,” I tell her.
It doesn’t feel real until I hear myself say the words.
When I came back home I didn’t know what was happening at the bottom of the road—that Dale had stopped the Dominion van after I drove up, demanding to know when they’d fence off the right-of-way. He got the same answer that he always got. They won’t do anything until the right of way issue was resolved. Unhappy with that answer, he’d gone back inside, put on camouflage hunting gear, grabbed his .30-06 and pistol, and set out toward our property.
I didn’t know he had been waiting on an elevated clearing beside the right-of-way. That when my parents saw him standing there with his rifle, my mom panicked, tried to get out of the Explorer, and my dad reached for her.
I only learn later that the first shot shattered through the windshield and into my mom—splintered shotgun fragments tearing through her left shoulder, arm, and chest. That she fell out of the vehicle, her lungs filling with blood as she suffocated there in the road.
The second shot ripped through my dad’s right bicep, obliterating it, while shards of glass cut into his chest. Somehow he still found the strength to throw the Explorer into reverse. He didn’t know my mom was partly under the vehicle. He drove over her ankles trying to get to safety.
When he got the Explorer onto the property, that’s when I reached him.
While I’m on the phone with dispatch, Dale reloads.
My dad gets out of the Explorer, trying to make his way toward the house. Dale fires again. One shot misses and hits the alpaca trailer. The next hits my dad in the lower back. The shell fragments inside him, puncturing nearly every vital organ, killing him instantly.
My dad falls face down in the grass near the barn, a hole the size of a softball in his chest. Dale walks the distance—250 to 300 yards—to where my father lays. He rolls him over and kicks him in the head.
I hang up with dispatch and run back to the porch, desperate to help him, desperate for any sign he’s alive.
I look out and see his body, still, facing upward in the wet grass.
I clenched my fists and closed my eyes, “No, no, no, no, no…”
When I open my eyes again, I see him.
I see Dale.
He is walking toward the house with no expression. Calm. His eyes are dark—soulless, empty. He surveys the property like he’s inspecting a piece of land he just acquired.
I duck inside. I try to lock the patio doors, but the latch never worked right. You had to lift it just so—today, it refuses. My hands aren’t trembling. I’m not panicked. I’m moving with pure focus, pure instinct. If Dale sees me, he’ll shoot immediately. Running isn’t an option.
He walks past the porch windows and around the house.
I remember the guns in the house. The .22 by the patio door. The 9mm on Dad’s dresser. The .30-06 upstairs. But I don’t know where he kept the ammunition. Safety precaution. I never asked.
I grab the nearest thing I can—a kitchen knife—and head upstairs to find somewhere to hide.
My first instinct is to hide in the master bedroom closet. In the closet, the baby ducks chirp and wiggle toward me, starving, happy to see me. It’s absurd and tender all at once. I stand there for a moment, thinking, I’m probably going to die and the last thing I’ll ever see are cute baby ducks.
Then the moment breaks.
I come up with a plan. I’ll move my empty bookshelves into the hallway. If I knock them down, Dale will have to step over them. When he does, I’ll jump him.
It’s not a good plan. But it’s a plan.
I steady my breath and step out of the bedroom.
Dale is at the other end of the hallway at the foot of the stairs.
We lock eyes.
There is nothing on his face. No rage. No excitement. Just blank purpose and those dead eyes.
Like a scene out of a Western, he draws the pistol faster than I can react.
The first shot hits me before I even register the movement. A blast of hot pressure slams into the left side of my chest. I fall backward into the bedroom.
He fires again. Misses.
I look down and see dozens of small holes in my shirt—scattershot. My chest burns.
I try to crawl toward the master bathroom, but another wave of hot pressure crashes into the right side of my back. I drop to the floor, dazed, breath crushed out of me.
I look up. I see Dale’s boots. Slowly lifting my eyes, I see the pistol pointed at my head.
I turn my gaze to the floor, and in that split second before he pulls the trigger, everything goes quiet. Time freezes. An overwhelming peace fills me—soft, still, impossible to explain. If this is the end, I think, I’m ready.
The shot hits with such force I nearly black out. Heat spreads across my scalp.
I know instantly what’s happened: I’ve been shot in the head.
I let my body go limp. I stay still. Dead-still. If I move, he shoots again.
He kicks me in the ribs. “You want to make fun of me now?” he says. “Let’s see you laugh now.”
His footsteps fade. The house settles into silence.
The phone starts ringing. The answering machine picks up. I hear the dispatcher’s voice: “He’s not answering…”
I don’t move for what feels like forever. Finally, I push myself up. In the dresser mirror I see my face—hundreds of tiny bleeding holes across my head, face, chest. Blood running down in thin red lines.
I need something to stop the bleeding. I open the cabinet. All I can think is, “Don’t use Mom’s good towels.” I grab one of the ugly pink ones none of us liked and press it to my head.
I look outside and see my dad’s body lying in the grass.
The world has gone silent. No ducks. No dogs. No wind. Just the weight of realization settling into my bones.
My parents are dead.
I have never felt so alone in my life.
My breathing grows shallow. I feel lightheaded. The room tilts. I slide down the wall next to their bed. Maybe if I close my eyes, I’ll see them again when I open them.
I let my eyes drift shut.
Then something breaks through the fog.
“CHRIS!”
My brother.
He doesn’t know. I can’t leave him alone in this world.
I force myself to stand, find the phone on the bed, and dial his number. It goes straight to voicemail.
I leave him the worst message a brother can leave.
“Hey Chris. This is your brother. I don’t know how else to say this but… Dale shot Mom and Dad. They’re gone. I’ve been hit and I’m not feeling too well. Mom and Dad loved you so much. I love you so much. If I don’t make it, you’ll be alright. Okay. Bye.”
Later, hearing that message in court would hollow me out. But in that moment, it was all I had.
I called dispatch back and asked her to stay on the line with me. I paced the hallway, forcing myself to keep moving so I wouldn’t slip into unconsciousness. It felt like an eternity before I finally heard voices outside, but it was less than twenty minutes. The delay wasn’t from the drive—they had reached the end of the road quickly. They just had to secure Dale first.
When he got home after shooting us, he told his wife, “I did a bad thing.” She called their lawyer. The lawyer called the police. When officers arrived at the house, Dale was still inside. His wife told them he was unarmed, even though there were weapons in the house. At one point, Dale tried to escape through the back porch, but when he saw police already positioned there, he retreated back inside. Eventually, he came out through the front door. That’s when they placed him under arrest.
Once Dale was finally in custody, they came up to the farm. I saw the flashing lights through the window. I hung up with the dispatcher and stepped outside, the pink towel still tied around my head like rabbit ears.
I walk toward my dad. A paramedic stops me before I reach him. I already know the truth, but I ask anyway:
“Is my dad going to be alright?”
The paramedic’s voice is gentle. “I’m sorry. He didn’t make it.”
They take the towel from me and begin treating my wounds. They roll me down the right-of-way on a gurney because the ambulance can’t come up the drive—my mom is still lying in the road.
They lift me over her body on the way to the ambulance
Inside, the lights flash silently. I don’t remember hearing a siren. I remember warmth, restraints holding my arms, and the pounding in my skull growing worse as we drove to Ruby Memorial. My head throbs more with every passing minute—dull at first, then sharp, then nearly unbearable by the time we reach the hospital.
When we reached Ruby Memorial, the ambulance doors swung open and cold air rushed in. They pulled me out and rolled me into the hospital, the stretcher rattling under me as we moved. It felt like one of those scenes from a medical drama—bright lights overhead, quick footsteps, overlapping voices calling out orders—but none of it felt scripted or glamorous. Everything was too bright, too loud, too cold. The steel table they transferred me onto sent a chill straight through my back the moment I touched it.
The overhead lights stung my eyes. Every time I tried to squint, pain shot through my forehead and across the right side of my face. Somewhere behind me a machine beeped steadily; nurses’ shoes squeaked on the polished floor; someone was shouting vitals I didn’t understand. It was a flurry of sound and motion, and I was the still point in the center of it, hurting everywhere.
As they rolled me through the hallway, a nurse asked my name. Instinct took over.
“I’m Bob Slatt,” I said. “I’ll be our head trauma patient this evening.”
No one laughed. No one reacted at all. My humor had nowhere to land. The room was too full of urgency for anyone to hear it.
They brought me into what looked like an operating room. No beds—just the cold metal table they lifted me onto. I felt exposed under the lights, like every part of me was laid bare and none of it could be put back together again. Doctors and nurses talked over one another as they checked vitals, asked about my pain, pressed on areas that made my body flinch involuntarily. I answered what I could. My head hurt too much to think beyond the next question.
Then Prosecutor Wilson walked in with a police officer. Seeing him was like seeing a familiar landmark after wandering in a storm. He carried himself with a calm seriousness that made me feel, for the first time since the shooting, like I wasn’t completely alone. He told me they had Dale in custody and asked how I was doing. His voice had weight to it—not heavy, but steady. He knew what we’d been dealing with. He knew my parents. He was a connection to the world I’d lost just hours earlier, and I clung to that without saying a word.
The officer asked if I could tell him what happened. He would write it down, and I could sign it when we were done. I told him everything I could remember. My emotions didn’t rise or fall; they stayed flat, leveled by exhaustion and pain. I spoke clearly enough, though I was thirsty and my throat felt dry. When he finished writing, I signed my name at the bottom. It felt surreal to sign a statement about my parents’ murder while lying on a steel table with blood drying on my face.
A specialist came in next with a sonogram machine. Because my body was full of scattershot—hundreds of tiny pieces of metal—they couldn’t risk putting me in an MRI. The specialist moved the wand slowly across my chest and stomach, watching the blurry screen. Every few moments he would make a sharp or exasperated sound, followed by, “Nearly hit your heart. You’re lucky to be alive.”
Lucky.
The word didn’t mean anything to me anymore.
I tried to watch the screen, but without my glasses the entire display was just a wash of light and shadow. Shapes without meaning. Kind of how I felt in that moment. Dale hadn’t been trying to wound me. He knew where he wanted to shoot. The specialist’s words confirmed what my body already knew: he meant to finish the job.
The media had already learned where I was. Twice, nurses had to stop people from talking their way in, pretending they knew me. For my safety, the hospital admitted me under an assumed name. I didn’t care. My parents were gone. My life had cracked open. What name they used for me didn’t matter anymore.
After they changed my clothes and cleared me medically, they moved me to a private room. By then they had me on morphine. My face throbbed with a deep ache, and the right side felt swollen and heavy. Losing my glasses during the shooting meant everything was a blur—the world felt distant and unreal. A doctor told me the scattershot had punctured my right eye and embedded in my forehead, causing significant damage. I would most likely never see out of that eye again.
I was devastated. As if the day hadn’t taken enough, now it was taking my vision too.
The room grew quiet once the medical rush ended. Nurses came and went, but the chaos had faded, replaced by a stillness that made my thoughts louder. My head hurt sharply, and beneath the pain my mind began replaying everything—running out to the Explorer, seeing my mom on the ground, my dad saying, “Call 911!” It looped over and over, each memory slicing deeper.
Emotionally, I felt nothing but numbness. The shock had settled into something heavy and hollow. I lay there in that cold hospital room, blinds half-drawn, machines humming softly, and for the first time since the shooting, there was nothing distracting me from the truth.
A nurse entered and asked if I knew someone named Mike.
“Cousin Mike?” I said.
She nodded. I told her yes, let him in.
Mike stepped into the room exactly as he always was—solid, grounded, the kind of man whose presence carried weight. A man’s man. He didn’t waver or soften; he didn’t fall apart. He brought a quiet strength that steadied everything around him. In that moment I felt like a wounded warrior being met by another who’d walked through his own battles. He sat on the left side of my bed and stayed there the entire night, sleeping in the chair, keeping watch.
It was after midnight by the time the day—this horrible, life-shattering day—finally ended. But the quiet didn’t bring rest. I lay awake in the dim hospital room, drifting in and out of my own broken thoughts. The pain in my head pulsed with every heartbeat. My face felt swollen and heavy. I closed my eyes, hoping sleep would come, but instead I felt the weight of something deeper pressing in on me.
For the first time, truly the first time, I felt abandoned. Not by people. By God.
And in that stillness, in that cold hospital room with my life forever changed, I knew what was coming.
Just like Jacob, I was going to wrestle.
God and I had unfinished business.
End of Part Four