In true Reddit fashion, I'm a medic, not a cop, but there were cops with us that night.
Cops got called out before us to a domestic because neighbors in this shithole government-subsidized housing complex in the ghetto reported screaming and banging. Now, this place is notorious for being in one of the worst neighborhoods the city has to offer, and is riddled with drug dealers and guns and prostitution and human trafficking, so for somebody to actually report a domestic, it has to be a BAD ONE. Cops get there first, make scene, nope right the fuck back out of the apartment, and call EMS for a "psych patient". My partner and I don't get told any of this background information, just get sent for a psych call and told PD is already on scene. We drive up, park the ambulance, unload the stretcher and jump bags, and double-check that all doors and compartments are locked because we know from experience there's about a 1-in-5 chance that someone will try to bust in and steal drugs while we're upstairs.
We walk into the stairwell and there's 4 cops waiting for us. These are all cops we work with regularly and drink with on our off time, and are all experienced officers with years of dealing with the ugliest things this shitty neighborhood can produce. And they are literally, physically, shaking. I ask them what's going on and one of them, chalk white, says "there's a possessed guy upstairs." I realize the officer next to him is clutching a rosary.
So I'm pretty agnostic at this point in my life, and my partner, though Baptist, really just goes to church a couple of times a month because his wife thinks it's important for their children to be brought up in the church. Neither of us are die-hard Irish Catholics like you see commonly throughout police and fire departments even here in the South. So we laugh it off. The officer gets angry with us and says that this guy upstairs has been acting oddly for weeks, according to his family (Mexican immigrants, no idea if they were legal or not), and about 30 minutes ago he started screaming at them that he was going to eat them, that he was being dragged back to Hell because he had broken the agreement, and then started begging Maria Immaculata (the Virgin Mary) to save him. They tried to restrain them but he was too strong. Then he started foaming at the mouth and putting his hands into the holy candles they have on their shrine to the Virgin, and started screaming in a language none of them recognized, at which point their neighbors called.
I rolled my eyes at all of this, because this is not the first psychotic break call I have worked, and because all of these symptoms are completely typical of that. I was not surprised the man would claim to be possessed, as Catholic mysticism has an extremely strong influence on the immigrant Hispanic community in our city. I have often picked up dead SIDS babies that the family has draped in medals and rosaries, or old men with obvious marks of self-flagellation. It's just part of working in the barrio and it stopped freaking me out years ago.
I say something to that effect to the cop, and he looks at me like he wants to throttle me. He says, "I fucking know, don't you think I've seen that, too! I'm telling you, this guy locked himself into the bedroom, and we could hear MULTIPLE VOICES IN THERE WITH HIM. We broke down the door and he was ON THE FUCKING CEILING."
My partner and I both blink at that, but honestly, it was late, I was tired, he was quitting smoking so he was bitchy as fuck-all, and so we asked the cop if there were weapons involved, he said no, we said fine, we're going in.
We walk up the stairs and into the apartment with the cops trailing very, very far behind us. The kitchen is full of wailing older women clutching various photos of Mary and candles to their chests, and terrified children huddled in a corner. My partner, whose Spanish is better than mine, asks a few questions about medical history and drug allergies, then tells one of the relatives that this man is very sick but we will take good care of him. She tries to tell him he's not sick, but my partner reassures her that everything is ok and we are here to help. The whole time this conversation is happening the guy in the bedroom is screaming gibberish so loudly the walls are literally shaking. Someone is burning incense in another corner of the kitchen and my eyes are watering from it. The cops are in a little knot in the doorway, shoulder to shoulder. I start to walk towards the bedroom and one of the officers says "wait", walks over, and drapes his rosary and St. Michael's medal over my head. I'm a tiny woman, so it's huge and hangs almost to my belly button. It chimes off of my badge every time I move my head.
My partner and I stand by the bedroom door and have a very quick discussion of the plan: go in, verify safety of the scene, make a brief attempt to verbally calm the man down, then if that is not successful, tackle him to the ground, have the police help us restrain him, and sedate him if we feel it is necessary. We have both done this dozens of times, sometimes just the two of us without police back-up, so we are honestly not that worried.
We open the door and walk into the bedroom quickly but calmly, hands visible, and my partner politely addresses the man by his name and asks how he is feeling today. The bedroom is lit by a single small desk lamp. The man is crouched in the far corner, head down, and when my partner says his name his picks his head up. The way he did it was disturbing, completely lacking in self-consciousness, the way a dog will when you call it. He moved just his head and neck; his shoulders stayed hunched. Again, severely mentally ill people sometimes move this way, so I was not surprised.
My partner asks again how the man is feeling and if he would talk with us for a minute. The man smiles and says something harshly in Spanish I don't catch, so I ask my partner what he said. My partner says, "God himself will not recognize you when I am done with you."
Ok so that was slightly more articulate than the usual threat, but again, I've been working in the ghetto for 6 years at that time and have been threatened far more explicitly than that so not really rattled. I do say "I think we should just take him into custody," and my partner nods in agreement.
The man stands up at that, and I see he has been clawing at his face. There is blood and foam running down his chin and bare chest. (When I tell this story people often say, "Oh, he had rabies", but very angry people often hypersalivate and foam.) He smiled at us again, and looked at me and said, in English, "that trinket won't help you" and gestured to my chest, I assume to the rosary. When I glanced down at it, he rushed us.
My partner and I took him to the ground, and he fought with the crazed strength you only see in the mentally ill and people high on PCP. We shouted for the cops and they rushed in and dog-piled him. My partner wiggled out of the mess and drew up the medications. He then walks around the pile looking for a good injection site, walks by the guy's head , and says "Jesus Christ" and drops what he's holding. The guy abruptly stops struggling, gives this horrible deep belly laugh, and says "look closely so you don't forget."
I ask my partner if he's ok. He doesn't answer, but he does pick up the medication and sedate the guy. We get him on the backboard, web him in, carry him down the stairs to the stretcher, and get him on oxygen. He is quiet now, and not really struggling, but still murmurs to himself from time to time. On our way down and out, the whole group of wailing women follows us. My partner is white as a sheet and isn't talking to me at all.
We load the guy into the ambulance, get a round of vital signs, and one of the cops explains to the women that we will be going to the hospital and they can have an officer take them there. Another officer jumps in back with us in case we need any help restraining. I turn to ask my partner if he wants to ride it in, and he just shakes his head and goes to the driver's seat.
The guy is quiet the whole ride to the hospital. Normally I would chat with the officer, but he didn't want to talk. He kept his eyes glued to the guy and a hand n his holster. We got to the hospital, dropped him off with the ER nurse, and my partner excused himself and said he was going to the chapel. I almost went after him but decided to leave well enough alone. I wasn't really shaken up, honestly, but I was worried about my partner, because he doesn't spook easily. I went and cleaned the ambulance myself, got us both a cup of coffee, then went to find him.
He was kneeling in the chapel and praying. I waited until he was done, handed him a cup of coffee, walked him back to the ambulance and, when we were safe in that warm brightly-lit little space we always debrief in after calls, I asked him what was wrong. He looked at me and said "his eyes were wrong. They weren't human."
I waited a moment, but he didn't say anything else. I said, as nicely as I could, "dude, I think you just got rattled by everything. I know it was freaky, but it was just a bad psych call. You know how those are." He shuddered, looked at me, and said, "I know what I saw. They were wrong. I've never seen a psych patient or a dead person or anything else with eyes like that."
And then he told me never to speak of it again.
It is terrifying. Probably embellished to high hell, but at least it's done well.
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Topic: Things that made you absolutely terrified today (Read 2007894 times)