This morning I sat at the stone memorial on the corner of Greenbriar and East Anamosa in North Rapid City, remembering the lives lost there 10 years ago today.
I wasn’t alone. A man and his young son stopped by to spend some time. And Lt. Jim Bussell and others in the medical-response team on the Rapid City Fire Department came to remember as well. They were also there to be reminded of what could happen on any seemingly normal call.
And as we stood with heads bowed, two young Native American girls came to place flowers at the base of the memorial to Rapid City Police officers Ryan McCandless and Nick Armstrong. They suffered fatal wounds at the spot of the memorial in a shootout with 22-year-old Daniel Tiger, who pulled a .357 revolver and opened fire during what seemed like a routine stop over an open container and suspicious behavior.
McCandless and Armstrong died from their wounds. So did Tiger. Officer Tim Doyle also was shot by Tiger but survived. He is still on the police force, doing his job. But he’s also carrying vivid memories of the near-miss he survived.
I carry much-less-significant memories, but strong ones nonetheless. It was a day Rapid City can’t forget.
I was working for the Rapid City Journal on that day. I had just arrived for my weekly night reporter’s shift when I heard the crackling police scanner in the newsroom scream something I’d never heard: “Officers down!”
Officers? Officers down?
Yes, officers down. There was a shooting in North Rapid and multiple officers were down.
I grabbed my notebook and hustled back to the Journal photo department, but chief photographer Ryan Soderlin had already rushed out of the room and was heading for the scene.
I followed as fast as I could, pulling out of the Journal parking lot and heading north at illegal-but-safe speeds whenever possible. The sound of many sirens from across the city blended into a screaming chorus as law-enforcement officers rushed to the scene.
I parked about three blocks from the scene and made it to about a block from where the ambulances were when I was stopped by officers at a hastily set up perimeter. Ryan had made it in time to get an amazing picture of wounded Officer Tim Doyle on a cart being taken to the ambulance.
Knocked down by the shot to the face, Doyle was up on his knees by the time fire department medics and other police officers arrived, but waved them away from himself to treat his fellow officers and also to make sure Tiger was no longer a threat.
Ryan’s photo never ran, by the way. Doyle’s family and the police department asked the Journal to hold off publishing it, and Journal management agreed. It was a decision I still wonder about. It was an amazing news photo.
But there were other things to think about then. Because two other officers, Ryan McCandless and Nick Armstrong, suffered fatal wounds from bullets that tragically struck vital areas not covered by their vests. Tiger also suffered fatal wounds when he was hit by return fire from the officers, primarily McCandless, who continued to fire even as he was dying
Officers down. And so was a young Lakota man.
It was a horrible, horrible thing, that shooting, one of the worst news events I've ever covered. And it was hard on a community already split along racial lines.
It was never entirely clear why Tiger pulled his gun and opened fire when he was being checked along with three companions. But he had a long criminal file and had done a couple different prison terms, even at that young age.
A state review, which included interviews with Tiger’s companions, concluded that the officers had been justified in using their firearms — which they pulled only after Tiger opened fire — and professional in the stop. No brutality or abuse. And nothing even discourteous. In fact, the officers had let Tiger’s companions go but kept him for more questioning because some of the things he told them didn’t add up.
Tiger had previously told friends he’d never go to prison again. And, of course, a young Native American man who had grown up in western South Dakota could have plenty of reasons for frustration and anger, many of them tied to racism and inequalities.
He apparently expressed regrets to first responders at the scene over what he had done. And, later in the hospital, Tiger was given last rites by a Catholic priest, the last connection on this earth he would have with the church — St. Isaac Jogues Parish in North Rapid — he had once attended with his grandmother. I saw him there a time or two, sitting with his grandmother.
Apparently, he was a kind, attentive grandson and could be a loving, humor-filled young man. But things went terribly wrong, in part because of drugs and alcohol.
But his death was a tragedy in its own way, both because of the path and the lives it ended but also because of the wasted potential in a young Lakota man struggling to find his place in a world where racism breaks hearts and crushes souls.
That’s not an excuse for Daniel Tiger. What he did that day was horrid. And he made the choice to pull that gun. But how he got to that point late on that terrible summer afternoon is probably complicated, too. More complicated, certainly, than an old white reporter can fully understand. And his family lost a loved one, and also had to carry with grief from that loss the well-publicized complications of his actions.
Rapid City Mayor Steve Allender, then the chief of police, showed understanding and compassion for the family. While it was his job first and foremost to honor the fallen officers, help console their families and provide level-headed leadership for the police force, he reached out to Tiger’s family and made a stop at Tiger’s father’s home. That, too, was important work.
Allender said it struck once while driving across town that he should reach out to the family and tell them he understood that they were hurting over the loss of a loved one, too.
It was also important to remember, I think, that Tiger had many friends who knew him as a much different human being than the one who pulled that gun. And they grieve the loss of that much-different human being.
So I think Allender’s gesture helped settle the tumult of emotions and suspicions between the races at the time, at least a little bit.
Of course, 10 years later we still live with racial division and broad inequities in the community. But there are meaningful efforts, including the Care Campus and the OneHeart campus, to make things better.
There is hope along with the challenges.
But that’s not what I thought about sitting at the memorial this morning. I thought about the lives and the potential lost that day, and the pain that must linger for the loved ones of all those who died.
And I remembered those awful words:
“Officers down.”
