fancycwabs

Some of you may have heard this story before, but I figured I'd post it here for posterity.

On April 29, 2003, I'd gone to visit a friend in the hospital who'd broken his foot pretty badly falling through a ceiling while trying to run computer cable. He'd done a good enough job of the break that he required screws, pins, erector sets, and so on--he was in the hospital for a good week, and at home in a wheelchair for a month after that, before they moved him to various casts.

We chatted for a bit, and it got time to leave, so I made my way out of his room, past the nurses station, and along the row of rooms adjacent to his. About five doors down from me, a black man in a suit with a straw hat emerged and walked along beside me for several paces. I wasn't really paying much attention to him, when I heard someone shouting from the room this man was previously occupying. I thought the patient in that room was having some problems with physical therapy or might have just been mentally unstable, but the man walking next to me quickened his pace. The screaming from the room yelled something fairly distinct, then: "Someone shot something in my arm! HELP!" and the man next to me bolted down the hall.

Hero that I am, I shouted "STOP!" and the man disappeared into a stairwell. Later, I head over the security radios that the man had been apprehended, and I gave a statement to the police, terrified that I'd been an inadvertent witness to a mob hit or something. For weeks afterward, until I found out what happened, every time a stranger spoke to me I got worried that something terrible was gonna happen.

As it ended up, I was a witness to a hit, but it was by an estranged spouse. The man in the straw hat's name was Robert Hunter; he was the principal at Jonestown Elementary School, and he'd been hired by the patient's wife (Abbigail Morton) to inject 80cc's of insulin into the patient's IV tube. This was after the patient (Richard Morton) had survived a being shot outside his Clarksdale home, which was the reason he'd been in the hospital in the first place.

If you've enjoyed this part of the story, and would like to read further, perhaps you'd also enjoy reading the verdict on Mrs. Morton's appeal, which documents all the intrigue involved (Ooh--they were lovers! This becomes more noir as I discover things!). If you're curious, I'm referenced as "a hospital visitor" on page 2.