A Murder in Dallas

What were those last minutes like for the man locked in the trunk of his car? Was he awake, aware, terrified? Did he open his eyes, blind in the cramped space, and grope for a lever, a tool, anything that might release the lid to his escape? Or had the savage blows to his head hurtled him into unconsciousness? 

As the stolen BMW turned right onto Inwood Road and crossed over the Hampton Road Bridge spanning Dallas’s Trinity River, did he recognize that he was crossing a boundary, from affluence to poverty, from safety to peril? As the car carried him into West Dallas—a poor neighborhood reeling from the relentless violence unleashed by crack cocaine— did he know that his brain was swelling and slowly shutting down, his fragile life caught in a riptide inexorably sucking him down and out to sea? Maybe he was tempted to surrender—maybe, that is, until he imagined his wife, whom he had loved since high school; his daughter, only eight years old; his middle child, a ten-year-old son; his oldest, a boisterous, twelve-year-old boy. 

Whatever he was thinking, the man managed to find the lever that opened the trunk and, in a burst of strength, hoisted himself out, falling headfirst onto the unforgiving pavement of Puget Street. There he lay, in this neighborhood riven by gangs, where a young man risked his life by walking down the wrong street. A small crowd gathered around the man, who was wheezing and struggling to sit up. In that moment, Puget Street became a demilitarized zone, any urge toward violence stilled by the sight of a man whose life was ebbing away. 

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Copyright Barbara Bradley Hagerty 2024