How to Catch a Cop Killer
At around 2:45 p.m. on Sunday, December 21, 1975, Atascosa County Deputy Sheriff Aerl Jernigan received a call regarding two drunks harassing patrons at a convenience store located on State Highway 16 about seven miles north of Poteet, Texas.
The drunks had left before Deputy Jernigan arrived, but they didn’t make it far. Jernigan found them parked on the side of an adjoining road about a quarter of a mile away.
When Jernigan arrived, a witness saw the two drunks get out of their vehicle, a yellow Ford, as Jernigan got out of his patrol car.
Shortly thereafter, the driver pulled a Winchester .30-.30 out of his vehicle and fired a shot, killing Jernigan.
The witness, future Atascosa County Deputy Steve Gonzales, fired a couple of rounds at the assailant with a deer rifle he had in his vehicle, and when the assailant and his accomplice fled, Gonzales ran to Jernigan’s patrol car and radioed for help.
Help came, as it always does for a fallen officer, in a big way. Every officer within earshot of the subsequent radio calls came running.
The drunk assailants had already been identified.
They were brothers from San Antonio; one was 51 years-old and the other 54. Their family owned a ranch not far from where Deputy Jernigan was shot. And though the search for them spread far and wide, they were soon found parked in front of the gate to that ranch, and they just sat there while police cars piled up about 50 yards behind them.
Atascosa County Game Warden Arthur Mc-Call was in one of those cars.
It was deer season, and although McCall doesn’t remember what he was doing when the call went out on the police radio, he dropped whatever it was and responded to the scene. When he got there, the two brothers were still in the yellow Ford.
McCall grabbed the AR15 rifle he kept beside him in the front seat of his patrol car and walked to a fencepost along the side of the road to get a rest and steady his aim. Poteet Police Officer Keith Blair was on the other side of the road, opposite McCall, with a shotgun, and he was shouting out commands to the brothers in the yellow Ford to try to get them to surrender.
Then, the driver/shooter got out with the rifle held, unthreateningly, below his waist and began a drunken dance around the Winchester. McCall had the sights of his rifle squarely on the center of the man’s chest, ready to pull the trigger.
That’s when Officer Blair emphasized a command to surrender with a warning shot from his shotgun.
Arthur followed suit with his rifle, and the drunken coward who had killed Deputy Jernigan threw the .30-.30 to the ground and raised his hands high up in the air.
A herd of peace officers then descended upon the car and arrested the brothers without further incident.
John Wayne once said, “Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.”
All peace officers can relate to that statement. But in McCall’s case, as it has been with many veterans who have returned from war and gone into law enforcement, it’s different.
When asked why he always seemed to be in the thick of things when the $#!+ hit the fan, McCall, a Viet Nam veteran, said, “I got used to being unafraid in a foxhole in Viet Nam.
There’s no time to be afraid, and you get to where a little adrenaline rush doesn’t bother you anymore.”
So, how do you catch a cop killer?
Well, I guess you can ask any of the officers who were parked behind that yellow Ford on December 21, 1975, but it’s never the same.
All you can do is rely on your training, do the best you can with what you have, and hope for the best.
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