Inside SEAL Team Six(88)
Christian’s father, Ray, took out a second mortgage on his house to raise the bail money to get Christian out of jail.
When Christian returned home, I sat him down and said, “Christian, now you’ve got a big strike against you. Your life is going to be a lot harder. I know. I’ve been there. I know the excitement, the adrenaline rush you get from the outlaw lifestyle, but you’ve got to stop. You can turn your life around. Look at me. I turned my life around and managed to change, and you can do the same.”
A couple of months later, Christian was arrested again for possession of marijuana.
Now, for the first time, Christian seemed concerned. When I spoke to him after his second arrest, I felt like he was hearing what I said.
“Christian, now you’re really in trouble. I know that I’ve been saying this for a long time. But now you have no options. Turn in the names of the drug punks you’re hanging out with. In order to save yourself, you’ve got to turn them in. You’ve got no other choice. They’re not your friends, and they don’t deserve to live in our society.”
He did. Christian went to the police and gave them the names of a couple of the big drug dealers he was working for, including a thug called Marc. Christian also stopped dressing like a gangbanger and got a good job working at a hotel.
Marc and another drug dealer were arrested; they posted bond and were released within a week.
That weekend, Dawn and I were in Kentucky staging a five-day adventure race we had organized, the Beast of the East, when we got a call from Christian’s girlfriend.
She asked, “Has Dylan called you yet?” Dylan was Christian’s fifteen-year-old brother.
She sounded upset.
“Where are you calling from?” I asked.
“I just want to know if Dylan has told you anything yet about Christian?”
“What happened to Christian?” I asked, fearing the worst.
She said, “You’d better call the hospital right away!”
Oh God…I didn’t want Dawn to know. I snuck off to a quiet room and telephoned the hospital.
The doctor attending to Christian told me, “Sir, you’d better get here quickly. Your son is very, very ill. He’s got a head injury.”
“What kind of head injury? What happened?”
“He was shot in the head.”
I was the director of the race, and Dawn was running operations and handling all the staff and logistics. Luckily, we had an incredible staff who were able to take over.
Dawn and I got in our truck and I drove ten hours at a hundred miles an hour, stopping only for coffee and gas. During the trip, Dawn was on the cell phone with Ray, who was sitting with Christian in the hospital.
He said, “Get here quick. He’s on a respirator and they want to take him off. His body’s ballooning up.”
Dawn said to him, “Put the phone up to Christian’s ear.”
She spoke in a voice full of love and emotion. “Christian, I love you. Don’t try to hang on if you don’t want to. Just let go.”
It broke my heart to hear a mother say that to her son.
We drove directly to the hospital in Norfolk, arriving at sunrise, and ran up to his room. We had to push by a nurse, who actually said, “Would you people hurry up? We’ve got to get that boy out of there and clean up his room.” It took all I had not to smack her across the face.
Ray stood in the room with Dylan, who was having a hard time looking at his brother lying there unconscious and breathing through tubes.
While Dawn held Christian, we all said a prayer for him. With tears in our eyes we walked out together. Minutes later Christian was taken off the respirator and died.
We found out later from his girlfriend that she and Christian had been sitting at home watching TV when he got a call from a girl who said she was interested in buying his car. We didn’t know this, but apparently he’d decided to sell it and had placed an ad in the newspaper.
The girl wanted to see the car immediately. Christian told her that he was taking his girlfriend out and could not show it that night but could at another time.
But she insisted, and Christian relented, driving directly to the address she gave him in Norfolk. Two young guys walked out of the building and said that they wanted to test the car.
Christian, even though he had been working with drug dealers, wasn’t street-smart at all.
He sat in the backseat and let the two guys sit up front. They drove to an intersection, stopped the car, and pulled Christian out. According to witnesses, this took place at around four forty in the afternoon.
The driver pulled out a revolver and shot at Christian six times. One bullet tore into his elbow, another ripped into his abdomen.
Christian lay on the ground screaming, “I’ve been shot! I’ve been shot!”