272: Point Blank #4: What if you made yourself a target?
57:11 Share

Today's episode is brought to you by Audible. Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, or expert advice, you can be inspired to new ways of thinking. And there's more to imagine when you listen. As an Audible member, you can choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. Currently, I'm listening to Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, a wonderful audio title that challenges us to imagine a new way to lead

love, work, parent, and educate through the power of vulnerability. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash happening or text happening to 500-500. That's audible.com slash happening or text happening to 500-500.

This Is Actually Happening is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. What if comparing car insurance rates was as easy as putting on your favorite podcast? With Progressive, it is. Just visit the Progressive website to quote with all the coverages you want. You'll see Progressive's direct rate. Then their tool will provide options from other companies so you can compare. All you need to do is choose the rate and coverage you like.

Quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.

Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Comparison rates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. Hello, Prime members. Have you heard you can listen to your favorite podcasts like this is actually happening ad-free? It's good news. With Amazon Music, you have access to the largest catalog of ad-free top podcasts included with your Prime membership.

To start listening, download the Amazon Music app for free or go to amazon.com slash ad-free podcasts. That's amazon.com slash ad-free podcasts to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads. Check out our recently completed six-part series, The 82% Modern Stories of Love and Family, ad-free with your Prime membership.

This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services.

Today's episode is part four of our limited series, Point Blank, featuring five stories of people impacted by the spree killing of Rancho Tama, California in 2017. There, a lone gunman killed his wife, then his neighbors, and then began a shooting spree, attacking eight different locations in the span of only 25 minutes, ending at an elementary school and leaving six people dead and 18 wounded.

In our last episode, we heard from Ken Yurs, a teacher who bravely shielded his young students from the gunman, Kevin Jansen Neal. Today's storyteller is Jesse Sanders. When his sister reported hearing the gunshots at Rancho Tehama Elementary that day, Jesse leapt into action. And while others were fleeing the scene, he knew exactly what he needed to do, confronting the horror, heroism, and traumatic aftermath. In today's episode, what if you made yourself a target?

He smiled at me like that evil, just kind of gives you the chills, smile, you know, and he had these solid black eyes with no white in there. He started shooting at me and I could feel rounds going like by my ears. I felt my hair brush. Just so many bullets were coming at me. I thought better me than them. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening with our special limited series, Point Blank.

Episode 272 Point Blank Part 4 What if you made yourself a target?

This Is Actually Happening is sponsored by ADT. ADT knows a lot can happen in a second. One second, you're happily single. And the next second, you catch a glimpse of someone and you don't want to be. Maybe one second, you have a business idea that seems like a pipe dream. And the next, you have an LLC and a dream come true. And when it comes to your home, one second, you feel safe,

And the next, something goes wrong. But with ADT's 24-7 professional monitoring, you still feel safe. Because when every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today.

This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites, like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies, like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow.

I had awesome parents, really. It was that perfect picture family, you know, like white picket fence and a little dog. We had the white picket fence and the little dog.

My dad was very strict, but firm. You know, it was always fair. But he'd whoop your ass if you did something wrong. If it was too morally incorrect, he would correct you real quick. But there was times when he would tell me, just run to your room crying like I spanked you. Better make it believable because if grandma finds out I didn't spank you, you know. You knew he loved you and he hated disciplining you. But if you were getting disciplined, it's because you'd done something you weren't supposed to do and you knew better.

My dad was a smokejumper for 20 years. He fought fires, which is all I ever wanted to do was fight fires my whole life. My mom was just, she was mom, you know, always at home. We had dinner on the table every night at five. Don't be late. You know, you can be out all day, do whatever you want to do, but don't be late for dinner because there ain't going to be a plate for you.

When it came to clothes, it was hands-me-downs, and I was the oldest, so coming across new clothes was not an easy chore. You know, we didn't have a lot of money. Religion for my family was you were ready to go every Sunday morning. Mandatory. Wednesdays, you could opt out if you had something more important to do, like homework. And my dad was a biker. Long hair, all the way hippie style, you know, wore tie-dye t-shirts. But when my grandparents or my...

His parents would come around. It was a collared shirt, tie, boots, nice, polished. I always tell my dad, why you got to put on a show for grandma? He said, it's not my grandma, that's my mom. But my grandpa was pretty strict, very smart, intelligent man. But he doesn't understand addiction. And my parents were recovering from addiction, which is what led us to branch name. And my grandma said, well, I'll send you out there. There'll be no drugs out there.

When I moved out to Rancho de Lima, I was five. There was dirt roads to get all the way out there. And there wasn't a house, but every couple of miles, I remember thinking, where the heck are you taking me? You know, because we lived in the city and I remember people break dancing on the streets and I can remember all that.

And then I was too young to realize what was going on. But I think what happened was my parents got back into drugs or maybe got into drugs because our lives went from my dad being a firefighter and my mom being a good mom to, you know, our whole world changed. I grew up in Rancho Amo, which is we all lived like eight miles away from each other. So when it comes time to hanging out or visiting, it was like a chore. They gave us a bus, a little yellow bus, you know, one that special ed kids ride on.

So when we'd get to town, that was an issue. Instantly, we were riding the special bus, so we must be special kids, you know. All your fellow students treating you different. I remember raising my hand in class so I could try to learn something, and they would never, ever ask me what my question was. And that was because I was from Rancho de Jema. I was very outgoing. Was always the first one to jump off the cliff to land in the water, you know. Didn't have no qualms with what was going to happen on the bottom. Just wanted to fight fires my whole life. I came into my teenage years young.

When I was 11 years old, I hooked onto my sister and went to a party with her because she needed me for an excuse. Because, you know, she wouldn't be doing anything bad if I was with her. At that party, I conversated with a couple of my friends that happened to be there. And over a $5 bet, they said I couldn't get this girl. She probably was the hottest girl in the room, in my opinion. I was like, just like, damn. Which was also the first day I realized I liked girls. Because up until then, it was girls were gross. Get them away from me. An hour into that night, I got the girl.

And not 30 days later, she told me she was pregnant. I told her how old I was. She kind of smacked me and told me how dare I, because she felt like she was a child molester. She was 18. Yeah, she was 18. And I looked more closer to 18 at 11. She disappeared. And then nine months later, she showed up with a baby and said she had nowhere to go.

My child's grandma told me that, what could I do for her? How could I provide for that child? At 11 years old, 12 years old, how can I be a parent? And I said, I don't know, but I'd love her. It's the best I can offer. I dropped out of school, got a job with my dad's friend so I could get an apartment. That's what my dad said. He says, well, you got to get a job. Ain't nobody going to pay for it for you. So whatever my dad said went. He was the head of the household and

I always felt like I disappointed him. He did his best to not blow up, per se, but it was the way he said, you've ruined your life. Your life's over now. It's done. You're not a kid anymore because now you got to raise one. I went from the kid that would sit there and play Nintendo games all night long and eat popcorn and watch the movies to all about business, about work. But I did it, though. I got us an apartment in my dad's name, and I learned a trait. I can build a house from the ground up because of him.

And I did everything I thought I should do. About four months into that, I woke up with a note in my pillow saying she didn't want to ruin my life and she just couldn't do it and she left. I realized I ruined that woman's life by getting her pregnant because I lied about my age. That lie devastated her and I even felt worse when she took off with the baby. I felt like I couldn't hold my family. I wasn't man enough to be the man of the house because I couldn't keep her.

I recently found out that she wound up getting hooked on heroin right after that. And yeah, I do know that my daughter has three grandchildren that she might be willing to let me meet, but she's not sure that she wants to meet me, which I don't blame her. And I told her that I said, I don't, if you just called to tell me that I'm an asshole and fuck off, but I'm okay with that because I deserve nothing less.

I went back to school, moved back in with my parents. But it changed me. I wasn't the kid that would sit there and listen to rock and roll music all night long and bug my parents. I would read my books. I spent a lot of time reading. All my friends' parents were always like, why can't you be more like Jesse? I said, they don't want to be more like me. Because what I had to do to get to be me hurt. I was a perfect kid until I was 16. Then I had my little, I'm tired of being the good kid. And between 11 and 16, something broke inside my mind.

I was holding the door open for an older gentleman and just the comment that he made, I can't remember exactly what he said to me, but it was something towards me being a dumb redneck or ignorant. I looked right at him and I said, fuck you. And I was shocked that I said that because my dad would have knocked me in the back of my head for talking to an elder that way, but he was a disrespectful piece of crap.

I just snapped. I remember thinking, I'm not holding the door open for fucking cocksuckers no more. Excuse my language. I'm not holding the door open for no rich, snobby, freaking holier-than-thou. Can't do it. I can't do it. There's so many people that are just so full of greed, and I don't have that button. If I had two pairs of pants and I got a buddy who needed a pair of pants, I'd give him a pair of pants. And knowing that I didn't have a pair of pants to change into, I wouldn't care. Now we both have a pair of pants. And that would mean nothing to me other than I'm just glad I could help you.

It was the realization of the world, that the world's full of shitty people. There's good people in it, but if you keep catering to the shitty people, how's it going to get any better? I've never been one to bow down to nobody. When my dad used to get drunk and he'd ride around on his motorcycle, instead of taking him to jail and ruining his life, the cops would follow him home, make sure he got home safe, and those were good cops. When I was 18, a cop showed up at the door, which happened to be a cop that we were kind of familiar with.

As soon as I opened the door, he's got one tear running down his face and I just kind of knew. I said, no way, man. He said, I'm sorry. I said, don't fucking tell me you're sorry. Fuck you. And I went to swing at him and he wrapped me up and just hugged me. I had just been told my dad committed suicide and didn't know how to take that really.

They said he committed suicide because he had slits on his wrists. But he had carpal tunnel surgery two weeks prior to the accident, you know? So what I think happened was he had a heart attack. And when he hit the wall, because he ran into one of them cement pillars, then his scars split open in the ME at the time. It was three in the morning. Probably didn't give a shit, didn't care. Just saw the cuts and was like, oh, he killed himself. That day turned me away from the church so far that I didn't know if I was ever going to make it back.

I kind of went to a different world. I turned down drugs most of my life because my dad always told me that you don't want to pick up a habit that you can't afford. And you don't know if you have a habit or if you have an addiction. And you don't have to know if you don't try. So every time somebody offered me for peer pressure-wise or whatever, I was like, no, I'm cool. I was that kid. Didn't need to get high. But after my dad died, somebody offered me a glass of whiskey and it just tasted good.

My brain should have said, that's your dad telling you. You've got an addiction. Don't touch it. Because it tasted that good. Then I stayed drunk for about five or six years to where I couldn't get out of bed unless I had a fifth of whiskey in me. I hated the world. I was mean to everybody. Pushed all my family away because I didn't want to care about somebody as much as I cared about my dad and have him die on me. Maybe a month or two after my dad died, I was coming home from a school dance. And a cop pulled up and tried to say that we were shinging the vending machine outside the store.

Well, we weren't chinging anything. We were literally just sitting on the bench waiting for my mom. And because that cop decided to come up and say that that was why he was harassing us, well, of course, me, I can't keep my mouth shut. I said, we weren't chinging or whatever the hell chinging is, and you can kiss our asses. My mom will be here any time to pick us up. We just got out of the school dance and leave us alone. Well, he took that as a threat or as a reason to detain me. And when he detained me, he found a pocket knife in my pocket.

And he said, oh, we got a Dirk and Dagger, which I still to this day don't really understand Dirk and Dagger, but a felony for having a concealed weapon. A knife that was an eighth of an inch longer than the palm of my hand. So you can't have a pocket knife in your pocket if the blade pokes past from base to base with your hand. I was a kid that grew up in Rancho de Jema. Out there, if you're out in the dark, you're going to get ate by a dog or a pig or a goddamn mountain lion because I've seen them.

I've actually had a friend get mauled and chewed up by six dogs. So I always had a pocket knife because I figured if a dog's going to try to get me, I'm going to get him back. But the judge didn't want to hear none of that. He said he was going to make an example out of me so that other teenagers didn't think that they could carry a concealed weapon in their pocket, which I tried telling him I didn't even know was a law. Well, the judge said, no, I'm giving one year flat.

I did my year and got out and found out that because I did that year, I no longer could be a firefighter and just shattered the only little hints of being a part of society I could have left. You can't fight fires for people, which is just all about helping people. You can't do that because they've dubbed you not worthy. What are you other than not worthy? And in that aspect, turned me further away from God. Literally, like every chance I got, I would tell him how much I hated him.

anybody around me that they even brought up God, it was, they were my target for my violence because I was like constantly feeling like I was wrongly prosecuted or judged by people that I felt had no right to be judging me in the first place, which made my family look at me like I was the bad seed. They still lived in the world of cops are good. They say you're bad. You must be bad. I was 21 and, uh, had been running with bikers for a while, fixing their bikes and

living all the perks of the guy that fixes the Tarlys. Never actually joined a gang or anything, but I did enjoy their company.

But yeah, at 21, I had made the cops so mad at me that I would pull up next to him, flip him off, and roast him. You know, good luck catching me, fuckers. And I made a cop mad enough to set me up. He fucking literally pulled me over, threw a bag of dope in my seat. And when I told him that wasn't mine and he needed a fingerprint, he said, I don't got a fingerprint, you're a felon. And I thought, whatever. Take me to jail then, you know. Well, he took me to jail. Then I wound up in an actual prison, you know, for four years.

Right before they sent me to prison, after I already got sentenced, that cop came to my cell, apologized to me, and made sure that my brothers and sisters and my mom had food every month because I was the one that took care of all that. Because my mom went from being a house mom for 20-something years to, you're screwed because you commit suicide, you don't get no pension, you basically get told you're not worth it. So she had five kids, no job, hadn't worked in 22 years, and lived in Rancho de Amo with no car. I took it pretty personally. My parents

Love for the government turned twice as sour. Today's episode is brought to you by Quince. It's been a busy season of events and travel, and my wardrobe has taken a beating. A total overhaul isn't in my budget, but I'm replacing some of those worn-out pieces with affordable, high-quality essentials from Quince. By partnering with Top Factories, Quince cuts out the cost to the middleman and passes the savings on to us.

I love the Italian board shorts. They're made from quick-drying material and offer UPF 50 protection for all-day wear, so I can go from hiking to lounging on the beach without a wardrobe change. And compared to other luxury brands, the prices are well within my reach. Upgrade your wardrobe with pieces made to last with Quince.

Go to quince.com slash happening for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash happening to get free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash happening. You can host the best backyard barbecue when you find a professional on Angie to make your backyard the best around.

Connect with skilled professionals to get all your home projects done well. Inside to outside. Repairs to renovations. Get started on the Angie app or visit Angie.com today. You can do this when you Angie that. My first day in prison, there was a riot kicked off for something I had nothing to do with and never been a racist person, but I'm supposed to hate a man because of the color of his skin. Because you say so. Boy, I had issues with that.

Somebody comes up and tells you, you can't sit with the blacks, you can't eat with the blacks. I said, why? He's probably a better man than you are. And then that Aryan Brotherhood guy looked at me all cross, and I was like, what, you didn't like that I said that? Which I found out is not exactly the right way to go in prison. Because you have to click with some groups. Well, if you automatically go in there saying that you were willing to sit with the blacks, you just told all the whites that their way of living is wrong. I got my ass kicked pretty good right off the bat.

But I stayed on that yard and in that cell. I said, I can still care about black people. I just can't advertise it in prison. I was breaking a rule that was way older than me. And it sucks. And there's no way to change it. After I got through that whole learning my place in prison, somebody got stabbed on the yard. Being the smart ass person I am, I told the cops, I said, oh, I'll tell you who did it.

Got the cops all up in their office, in their rooms, and they're all fucking... I had every white man in that yard thinking I was going to rat. And when they got me up to the little office, I said, it was Elvis. My grandma told me it was Elvis that stabbed that man in the yard. So they stuck me in a cage upside down after kicking my ass. And they left me in that cage so long that I had to piss all over myself. After they got me out of the cage because the whites threatened to kick off a riot, they stuck me in the hole.

It was moist, mold growing on the walls, no light, solid metal door with a little slot that they shoved your tray through. And if you didn't catch your tray, it hit the floor. Most days I had to eat my food off the floor. After a couple weeks, you start talking to yourself. And then after a couple more weeks go by, you start trying to get the guards to talk to you, but they don't even say hi or nothing. They just open the door, throw your tray in. It's supposed to be once a day for an hour, but I would say that maybe once a week, if not two weeks, I would get out for a shower.

I had nothing to do with push-ups. And I focused my push-ups on every positive thought I could think of. And then that wouldn't work. So then I went to every negative thought. When you're in the dark and you got nobody to talk to you, the devil talks to you. He gets inside your head. Because the more you focus on negative, the stronger I would get, the bigger I would get, the more power I feel I had. I lost touch with myself by far.

I mean, I had three flies in my cell that I named George, Ralph, and Alfred. We would conversate most of the days. Because 24 hours in the hole, when you're in the dark and you can't really see, a month felt like years. Every time I tried to ask the guard what time it was, no, they never would speak to me. No answers. I no longer had the concept of time whatsoever. There was no sun up, sun down. Even when you fall asleep, it's so dark in there, you don't know if you're awake. Sleep is all the same. Nothing's different. Like...

Maybe I died and didn't realize I died. After a few months of that, you start, you're just in hell. I was in hell. They kept me in there for about six months. When I got out of the hole, I couldn't see. I was pale white. A man by the name of Mark that's never going to see his light of day, he's doing life for murdering his wife's lover and his wife. He cracked me right in my jaw. And I went, mother, he's all your screws right yet? I said, what the fuck is wrong with you? And he hit me again.

And he said, are your screws right yet? It took me a couple seconds, but I smiled and said, yeah, I guess they are now. Because instantly, the second time he said it, I was like, oh, you've been in the hole before too. So you already knew I was coming out fucked up in the head and already knew I was going to do something dumb and feel like I needed to go back to the hole because I can't, you know, be part of prison, you know. Time got to be pretty easy after that. I stopped giving the cops hard time.

The day I got out of prison, I had found out that my wife had moved to Florida and remarried. I went to a rehab in Reading. At the time period, I had given up on emotions. Emotions were weak and they were not needed. Because in prison, you don't... emotions can get you in a wreck. So going through that 30 days of rehab, I was able to get in touch with some of the stuff that I had bottled up from my dad dying. So when I got home from that, I was actually more...

Able to express myself in a way that I was okay with. Because they didn't force it out of me or they didn't try to tell me how to think or how to feel. They just waited for my answer. Which showed me how to have emotions because in my family it was, don't be weak, boy. If your leg ain't cut off and you ain't got to go to the hospital, get up. Fix it. I learned a lot in rehab. I got out of rehab and I found the NABD on a purely accident.

And this blonde lady woman was sitting across and her daughter comes running up to me and she goes, daddy, daddy. And I said, oh, no, no. Her mom came walking up saying, sorry. She said, you just look a lot like her dad. And she hasn't seen him in a while because he's in prison. The mom had asked me if I wanted to come over for a home cooked meal. So I did. And then six months later, we got married. We were 10 years in before he got out of prison. And my son with her was 10. She was so torn between the two of us that it almost destroyed her.

Until I said, look, I know you love him. We just need to go back to being friends. And then we divorced and all that devastating crap. By this time, it's about 15 years in past me getting out of prison. I had no jail time in between, no cop encounters whatsoever. I was actually a functioning member of society. Moved to Hanford, started managing my own grocery store, Grocery Outlet. Every day was perfect, you know, in my mind. It was just me and my three boys.

One day, it's Friday night, lasagna night. I couldn't eat. I had already worked 16 hours. I should have been starving. And I looked at the lasagna and I was like, not hungry. Like, never felt that way in my entire life. But I just go to put a bite by my mouth. I'm like, oh, my stomach's telling me no. So I went to the doctors. I get to his office and he says, sit down. I said, no, I take my bad news standing up. He says, well, sit down.

And I sat down and he's all, well, judging by my charts here, you got about four months to live. And I don't think you'll make it four months by what I'm looking at. He's calling cancer stage four. What the fuck do I do now? I got three kids at home and their moms are deadbeats. And what the fuck do I do now? And he left it at that.

Went to hug my mom. Before I gave her a hug, I said, I got cancer and they gave me less than four months to live off. Real fast. She pauses, squeezes me. She says, we'll figure it out. I'm about three months into the four months that they gave me. And my weight went from like 210 to 102. It's basically I gave up. My grandma shows up. She says, I can tell you've given up. But if you ever cared about me, you take these pills. Just give them a shot for me.

I said, alright, take one. About four hours later, I threw up this vial. I started feeling a little better. Like, I felt hungry. A pill called beta-gluten. I can't explain how it works. I only know that I don't take the pill anymore. My cancer's gone. In the time period of me thinking I only had weeks to live, I still was hating God.

And my boy says, he says, I pray every day, Dad. And I said, what do you mean you pray? Because I didn't have God in my house. He says, I told God if he didn't fix you, that I wouldn't ever talk to him. I looked at him and said, boy, if I don't make it, don't blame God. He didn't give me cancer, you know, my lifestyle did or whatever. But that's the day I got back into God. So I asked God to help me get better.

Right about the time that I started getting better, Danny offered me a place to stay. I would drive by and he'd be broke down in his truck. He'd be push starting it all by himself, you know, in his big heavy Ford F-150 just loaded down with iron.

I had a brand new battery in my RV. When I bought my RV, I just parked it. I wasn't planning on ever driving it again. So I thought to myself, man, I see that guy broke down everywhere I go. Always pop starting, always pop starting. He's got to be his battery, you know? So I took my brand new battery out and I drove it down there and I said, you need a battery? And he's all, yeah, but it's going to be a couple weeks before I have enough to get one. I said, I got a brand new one sitting right here in the seat, man.

He said, oh, I can pay. I said, no, no, you can't pay me nothing. He said, you don't know me. I don't know you. My name's Jesse. Here's a battery. I said, it's not stolen. No strings attached, my friend. The next day, he pulls in my driveway, and he says, I ain't got no money for you, man. But you living in that RV over there? I said, yeah. He says, why don't you come live with me? I talked to my mom already. She said, you can come stay with us. That's how I met Danny and his family. So me and my youngest son moved in with Danny, Diane, and Gage, and

Danny's Gage's dad, Diane's Gage's grandma. She was a very firm, strict woman, but you could always tell she cared. You know, like, she offered me a place to stay with her and Danny, even though she didn't even know me. At that time period in my life, I was kind of feeling lost. It was like they were angels. Picked me up out of Gates of Fire and put me over on the ice, you know, cooled me off. I lived with them for about a year and a half, during which time

The altercation with Kevin had taken place. One day, I was walking back from the store with my son, and that Kevin guy was out in his front yard beating his wife up. And he wasn't just beating her up, he was, like, hurting her. The anger that was coming out of him when he was hitting her was at a max level. Like, you know how when you're fighting with somebody and there's a defense fighting and then there's your anger fighting? When you're anger fighting, you're hitting with everything you've got and you can hurt somebody.

It was that kind of passion. It was, I hate you. Now, mind you, me being who I am, my boy knowing who I am, he looks right at me. He says, you're not going to let that man do that to that woman, dad, are you? I said, no, you're going to keep on walking home. And I got this, you know, just go home. Well, I got that guy to stop hitting his wife by saying, hey, why don't you take a walk, man? Whatever she did couldn't be that bad. You know, she's already leaking. In my opinion, she might need hospital. She says, I need to mind my business.

And I instantly went, oh, I knew I shouldn't have gotten involved. And I said, you want me to mind my business and don't be out here getting your ass kicked in front of my son? Mind you, this time this guy's getting puffed up and irritated. Like I said, what? I'm not a woman, so you ain't got to swing on me. Trying to keep him from being mad at her, even though she was not wanting my help. And then I said, you know what? I'm just going to take my kid. I'm going to go home. Which, mind you, were two houses down from his house.

To get out of the cul-de-sac that we lived in, we had to go by that guy's house. To get into the cul-de-sac that we lived in, we had to go by that guy's house. Every day from that day on, he made sure to make it hell. I guess he felt maybe I belittled him or embarrassed him in front of his woman, but he just wouldn't let it go. Every day was a place we knew we were going to get harassed trying to leave. That dude would videotape us. He'd call the cops, say that we were making meth. Had the fire department come out and search the property for meth lab.

And he would shoot rounds off all night long. Thousands of rounds. Every night, all night long. He would scream things out sometimes like, you fucking tweaker! Now mind you, this went on for months. Months. And Danny kept telling me, I don't know why that guy snapped or why he's doing this to us. All the time, Danny would tell me. One day I told Danny, I said, it's my fault, man. He was beating on his wife. I fucking tried to step in. I set this whole thing in motion and I didn't mean to. Danny's all, well, that's just being you.

And then he laughed. Diane called the cops on that guy every day for almost a year. The cops would come out, and still nothing happened to this guy. Finally, they came out and told Diane, if you call the cops again, we're going to take your son and Jesse to jail and say that you're harassing that man by calling him and complaining about him all the time. And the cop looked over at me, and he says, why haven't you fucking handled this anyways, Jesse? And I said, because I'm tired of going to jail. I'm just trying to fucking, I'm just trying to live right. I'm not trying to butt into nobody's business no more.

One day, I get a phone call saying that Danny's fiancée, Haley, had been stabbed and his mom's nose had been broke by Kevin. It was really hard to calm Danny down, and especially me being me, trying to talk somebody out of doing what I feel is justified. Because Diane kept saying, let the law handle it. And I kept telling her, I said, the law's not handling it. Why can't you just release the chains and let me go?

Let me handle this so that it's not a problem anymore. She just stuck firm to it. She said, Jesse, you gave me your word. So I just kept biting my tongue, kept biting my tongue, kept biting my tongue. At this time, I already kind of considered her my grandma or respected her opinion of me. I learned a lot from Danny's mom about myself, about how to be patient. I'm a Gemini. My mom always said that I was cursed with twins with horns because I either love you with everything I got or I'd hate you with everything I got. I never had no gray area.

In early November, I was driving home from picking my son up from school, and I hear this ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. Pulled up to Danny's driveway, got out, and I realized that there was bullet holes all the way down my truck. And the cops came out, took my truck for evidence, and it disappeared. They gave me a no-bail warrant for weed scrapings. I mean, the leaves and stems that you can't use for nothing. But cops still weren't doing anything about it. They told them, don't have guns. Nothing. Nothing.

On November 12th, Diane kicked me out. She said, I know that guy's going to do something and I don't want you and your boy getting hurt. I went back to my mom's to lick my wounds basically because my heart hurt because I was like, I never loved them and I felt like I was leaving them to fight a battle that I started. My truck had got shot up and my wife came out and took my son from me because I put him in harm's way.

Because the dude's court date was coming up where he was going to get sentenced for the stabbing and the nose breaking. And I'm pretty sure he knew he was going to lose that case because there was, how could he win it? So everybody seemed to have the same aura. Like everybody knew this dude was going to snap. November 13th is the day that I was loading my car with guns to go solve our problem. I planned on hurting that man so that he couldn't hurt my family or my friends because I knew he was going to.

Danny had pulled in right as I was getting ready to leave and said, "You gave my mom your word that you wouldn't deal with this. You'd let the law handle it." And I was like, "Fuck you, Danny. How dare you pull in and tell me that when I'm going to help you?" He said, "You've never not kept your word. I can't have you breaking it now. You gave my mom your word that you would not step in and meddle where you told me you shouldn't meddle in the first place." When he pointed that out to me, my brain went, "Oh, okay. It's all my fault anyways."

I never connected with people the way I connected with Danny. He's more than my friend. He was... Fuck, we couldn't separate us.

Most Americans think they spend about $62 per month on subscriptions. But get this, the real number is closer to $300. That is literally thousands of dollars a year, half of which you've probably forgotten about. Thankfully, Rocket Money can find a bunch of subscriptions you've forgotten all about and then help you cancel the ones you don't want anymore. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions,

monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so that you can grow your savings. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's features.

Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash wondery. That's rocketmoney.com slash wondery. rocketmoney.com slash wondery. Getting the smile and confidence you've been dreaming about all from the comfort of your home isn't a total mystery with Bite Clear Aligners. Just don't be surprised if all your friends start asking, what's your secret?

Begin by ordering your at-home impression kit today for only $14.95. BiteClear aligners are doctor-directed and delivered to your door. Treatment costs thousands less than braces, plus they offer flexible financing, accept eligible insurance, and you can pay with your HSA FSA. Get 80% off your impression kit when you use code WONDERY at Bite.com. That's B-Y-T-E dot com. Start your confidence journey today with Bite.

My car was sitting at the store by the gas pump. I left my keys in it because I wasn't worried about it. By the time I came out of the store, the car was gone. I called my boss, told him I was going to be able to come in, and he said, well, just don't bother coming in at all. Lost my job. I actually went on foot trying to see if I can find anybody that might have seen it or any kind of info on it because I don't call cops and they don't trust them to help me, so I was trying to use my own sources. In the process, I met Jennifer.

And it was just nice talking with somebody that was willing to listen and wasn't from around that didn't have an opinion already. November 14th, I woke up at Jennifer's and she was asleep. Rather than wake her up and tell her goodbye or whatever, I just thought I'd leave her sleeping. I walked to my mom's. Got to my mom's house and I'm there for maybe 25, 30 minutes. And my sister pulls in, says, I just dropped the boys off at school and I hear gunshots.

And she's got that look on her face like, did I just drop my kids off to get killed or somebody's trying to hurt? I just said, calm down. Just take me to the school. Halfway there, I look over at my sister and I see my dad yelling at me. What are you doing taking your sister into a gunfight? And I said, Tina. I said, let me out of the car. Before she could even stop the car, I'm out the door and my feet are hitting the ground. As I'm shutting the door, I'm telling her, go home. And then there's all these parents running out of the school.

And they're all screaming that I'm going the wrong way. As I was coming up around the fence, I had seen where he crashed through it. The truck didn't look damaged, you know. The door was open. It wasn't until I come all the way around the building where I seen his face. And when I seen his face, I swear to God, my heart stopped. Like, Kevin, how is he not still in jail? How is he free and holding guns at a school? Two fully automatic rifles that he had strapped to his chest. Man, I was so...

Just what the fuck? He had just broken out the window of this classroom until he saw my face. Then it was like, oh, there he is. All bells and whistles went off and he completely stopped focusing on the classroom and focused only on me. He went to the school to shoot my son and Danny's son, Gage. But as he sees me, he stops because when he saw me, I think I might have already been on his list. And he smiled at me.

Like, that evil, just, ugh, kind of gives you the chills, smile, you know, and you had these solid black eyes with no white in there. I started cursing at him and telling him, why don't you come out here? Because I already knew we had beef, and that smile told me everything I needed to know, like, okay, you're done, change your course. Completely forgot about the classroom entirely, which is what my brain said I needed to be doing.

He started shooting at me and I could feel rounds going like by my ears. I felt my hair brush. Just so many bullets were coming at me. I thought better me than them. What is my life to 30 possible presidents or they could change the world, cure cancer. Who am I? But somebody who's already screwed up. Who am I to that? Nothing. I didn't zigzag. I just ran at him and I would say my pace slowed, but I didn't stop moving towards him.

I had a bunch of flashes going through my head every time I'd hear a bullet, which is pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. I would picture some part of my life or something that was bothering me that I hadn't done yet. The last picture that I got was Jennifer. I didn't tell her goodbye before I left. I didn't tell her I cared before I left. You know, we hooked up and then I split. Something I'd never done to a woman before and it bothered me enough to where...

After the flashes of my kids popped in my head, it burned in my brain. Like, Jennifer, I didn't say goodbye. When his gun stopped firing and he started shooting with the other one, in the process of shooting with the other one, he's slamming that gun on his chest. And I didn't know what he was doing, but he's reloading. I've never seen nothing like it. It was so Rambo. It was like, pop, pop, pop, pop, reload, pop, pop, pop. You know, like you see in the movies, like that fast. Boom. And then she's shooting at me again.

One of the guns jammed, and he started screaming, like, top of his lungs, like, just so mad because no bullets had hit me. And I swear to you, I did a little jig, like, ha-ha, you missed, motherfucker! You know, as I'm still trying to get closer to him, figuring somehow I'm going to get him once I realize I wasn't shot. And then one more round came out of the other gun that didn't jam, and that one shot hit my arm. It didn't hurt like I would have thought it would have hurt, but it burned. Like if you took a hot iron and went...

I didn't acknowledge that it hit me because I've already lived through what I consider to be catastrophic pain levels. So he still thought that he missed me altogether. And then as he's screaming at the top of his lungs, he jumps in his truck, backs it up, and he's gunning for me. And as I was still going towards him, I hear a speeding vehicle. And it swerved right in between me and him and pops off rounds at him. You hear a pop.

and drove off. I didn't know if Kevin had been hit by him or not, but I know that Kevin's focus on me had been altered because he just stopped trying to run me over and drove off. I left the school after the teacher told me that all the kids were safe. I went, okay, thank God. Went back towards my mom's, which is across the airship. I heard shots at the store about 30 seconds later.

I'm running across the airstrip. As I get to the middle of the airstrip on the strip, I see a car, which is not a truck. Basically, Sam on his brakes right about the time that I believe he saw me in the middle of the airstrip. I have no hurry to die. Afraid of death? No, I'm not. I'm not afraid of dying. Not even for one second. But I think, oh no, I'm going to die. Dying and I was sure of it. Then all of a sudden you see cop cars coming over the hills and just unloading that guy's direction.

As I seen that guy hold the steering wheel with one hand and then you can see the butt of the gun on his chin. And I watched the top of his head hit the top of the car. Then they shredded that car with bullets. Like I never seen nothing like it. It was literally Swiss cheese. There was two other people that I know from the ranch that had come running out to find out what all the shooting was about.

And one of them was all, hey, you know you're fucking bleeding? Because apparently my whole side of my body was just blood from my arm. And I said, oh yeah, I forgot. That guy got me with one. And I ran to my mom's house and then remember tripping over the steps trying to get to the dorm. And when Tina opened it, I said, that dude shot up the school, but the boys are fine. Everybody at school's fine, so don't worry. That dude's done. Give me the phone. I need to call Danny. Tell him that that guy shot himself in the face.

As they bring me the phone, it rings. I answer it. And it's another friend of mine. And he says, you sitting down? And I said, fuck, you was sitting down, dude. Why does everybody want me to sit down? Just tell me. You know, just feel it. And he said Danny was the first one he killed. And his mom. And I remember dropping the phone and sliding down the wall. And it kind of went blank in my mind for a while. He completed me in a way that I never bonded with anybody like that before.

I would have took a bullet for him because I didn't question it. I walked from my house to my friend Daniel because his wife's a nurse and she's a good friend of mine and I trust her. She grabs my arm, flips it over and starts pouring peroxide on it. While she was cleaning my wound, phone rings. It's the cops. Mind you, I don't even know how come the cops know where I'm at. And I said, tell them I'm not here. They already know you're here. They want you at the fire station right now. They need to talk to you, clear some things up.

So I thought, okay, well, I guess they wouldn't need to know my part in what happened. And I get to the fire station. I crossed the threshold of the picket fence they built. And he said, whoa, whoa, what are you doing, son? I said, I'm Jesse Sanders. You just called my friend's house and told me I need to come down here and talk to you. And next thing you know, I got eight cops tackling me. It didn't matter. They stuck me in the back of the cop car, drove me up to the front of the ranch, and then left me there for like eight hours.

And then they let me out of the cop car after a fed yells at one deputy and says, you know that man saved the kids? You hear him talking. The door pops open. The fed takes the cuffs off me, apologizes, and then tells me to have a good day, just like that. And I walk from the post office to my mom's barefoot because they took my shoes. And I didn't stop to ask them if I could have them back. When I got home, my mom was like, oh my God, where you been? I've been worried about you. She didn't know nothing about me being in the cop car or none of that.

The phone rings and there's a vet at the fire station that wants to give me back my shoes. And I thought, they're setting me up somehow or, you know, they're going to. And I get there and he hands me my shoes and he sticks his hand out. And I said, don't take this the wrong way, but you're a cop. I ain't got no time to shake your hand. Just like that. And I went to turn away and he said, I just wanted to shake the hand of somebody I thought was braver than my partner. His partner was standing next to him and got a little irritated about what he said.

He shook my hand and he says, "Thank you for helping the kids." I didn't find out about his wife being shot until after I found out Danny and his mom had died. It was on the news. He had killed his wife the night before and proceeded to kill the neighbors by a sunup. I was told later on that he had called her work Pizza Hut and told them that she needed to come home now or nobody in that place was going to survive.

And they called the cops about this. Told the police that that man had called threatened their lives if she didn't come home. They replied to the person was, oh yeah, we deal with that all the time. When I saw the press conference that they held about it, I almost threw up. Everything I heard come out of their mouths was lies. They said there was no phone calls, but two phone calls made. Diane called the cops once or twice a day.

Somebody knows something and somebody's got records somewhere, but they're never going to quiet me down because I'm the only one left that knows. I was there for every freaking phone call. The cops didn't care. I don't want to be a part of society that can just cover stuff up and lie like that. You already know you did wrong. Fix it. Don't do it again or apologize or... People died. People died. Not just people, my people died.

You see people hold the Bible and lie. It's like, maybe nobody knows you're lying, dude, but you and God does. Sometimes I feel worse, like it's my fault. Like I got the devil telling me, oh, it's all your fault. It's all your fault. Because I didn't even know that that was the guy shooting at the school when I went there. When I saw who it was, I was just like, my gut went, oh, this is your fault. And then my other half of my gut went, fix it. Because it really does bother me that me sticking my nose in that situation with him beating on his wife. It was like the domino. Shoot.

I lost my best friend and his mom. Didn't just lose them, they got annihilated. And I allowed her to kick me out, knowing that my gut was telling me something was going to go down. And knowing that I left because she said she was trying to keep me and my son safe. I feel like if I don't do something good with my life past that point, or past this point, Danny died for nothing. And his mom died for nothing. And that fucks me up. Maybe about a year ago, my mom said...

You might need to talk to somebody, Jesse. And I was like, what are you talking about, Mom? I talk to you every day. She says, I'm not a therapist, and I can't fix what you got going on in your head. And I said, what are you talking about? She says, well, don't you see what you're doing? How quick you snap on the kids, or how quick you snap on your nieces and nephews. And I started thinking about it. I was like, well, maybe it did change me more than I would like to admit. How do you let something like that change you to a screwing up my life? But it really is screwing up my life. I can't hold down a job. I can't. Somebody drops something or bangs something, my brain goes...

Somebody walks in with a baggy shirt, something I can't see what they're wearing. My brain goes fucking tackle them. Don't let them pull a gun out. Don't be that motherfucker that waited too long. A car backfires and I'm freaking trying to cover everybody up. And I just, I don't know how to fix that. Or if that can be fixed or if it can ever be fixed. But my mom says I need help. Therefore, I must need help. It does help talking about it. Because I spend so much time walking away from anybody that brings it up.

Some of my family members will try to hint him around about it. I'm like, nah, just let it go. I always think of what my son tells me, my youngest. He says, you can't change you, Dad. You already told me that. You are who you are. So if you're not going to look in the mirror and smile, then fix it. So I should be able to fix this, but it doesn't change the fact that when somebody drops something, when I hear gunshots, my hair stand up and back my neck, and I want to know where my kids are right now. Like, it's kind of driving me crazy.

Because I'm hard on my kids now when they go outside. I'm not the same parent that I was before. Like my wife, bless her heart, she's adjusted the way she talks to me. She'll try to talk quiet because loud noises will set me off. I'm very antisocial. Rather than people coming over and asking me for help all the time, because they used to, they don't come by so much. And I think I've been pushing them away more.

I can't protect everybody, it's too many people to watch at one time and I can't constantly be worried about everybody's household when I got my own falling apart. I feel ashamed of myself when I can't be functioning in society, but I don't know how to anymore. I've not had a good night's sleep since that day. Sometimes it's because I close my eyes and I see Danny and his mom and they'll be saying something like, "If you'd have just not meddled in the first place, you know." I fell back into drugs because you don't need to sleep with drugs.

They kind of make me feel okay. Like right now, I can honestly tell you I got high before I knew you guys were coming out. I was like, because I wouldn't be able to talk to you if I didn't do something. I know that anytime I feel like I'm going to have to be in an unknown setting, I use the drugs to help me be okay with that setting, to try to cope. I would never change the fact that I stopped that guy from shooting his kids, or I would ever regret it. I mean, I might regret the domino effect that started the whole thing,

But even then, when I think back on it, I would have done the same thing no matter how I replay it. I would not sit there and just let that woman get beat on when she was leaking. I didn't ask to walk into that situation, and somehow God put me in that path, so I gotta leave it at that. I was not the bad guy. Sometimes I feel like people don't realize what happened.

I seen the sheriff and principal of the school basically taking credit for he didn't do nothing. I saw that man not. The janitor, the bus driver, Coy, those people, if we weren't in their places, it would have been bad. If any one of us wasn't in that place, like Coy held the door right at the right time to me showing up and stopping him from going through the window at that moment, you know, it was like...

I should have been at work by all rights. I would have been at work. My car didn't get stole. And the only reason I was home was because I couldn't go to work. I think it's that day when I was able to save those kids. And then I realized that I'm having a hard time saving my own family and trying to keep my family together. That I just had to let some of the world go.

Maybe it knocked me a couple steps backwards in the aspect of loving the world, humanity kind of thing, but a couple steps forward towards God and my family. I don't tell my family to suck it up and get over it anymore, which I was known for. Now I try to pause and listen to what they're saying because I realize that my dad never had time to listen. If it was emotional, uh-uh, nope. A buddy of mine said, felons can be firefighters now.

And I said, fuck you. And he said, I'm serious, man. Boy, that would be so cool. That's all I ever wanted to do my whole life. I'll never forget the day they told me I couldn't be one. I've died. Because I will run into the fire and put it out and get you out. I would not hesitate, nor would I have to think twice about it. I would not be afraid of the fire because I would know that it's what needs to be done. Without first responders, our world falls apart.

We need first responders, people that are willing to go into the fire to get the child or get the person that can't get out. I kind of gave up on my future today. I told them I couldn't be a firefighter. So a week ago hearing that a felon can be a firefighter, I don't know what hope feels like. And now I'm starting to get butterflies in the stomach like, oh, I would like to go back to work and have a steady job and be able to look at my daughter when she needs a new outfit and say, I got you.

Or, you know, where are many days from Christmas? And I tell myself, well, they'll understand. But no, you never forget the Christmas you didn't get nothing. I wouldn't forget it. It's changed me a lot. I don't go away looking for fights no more. And I'll do what I can to talk a situation down from a fight. Trying not to be a violent person. And teach my kids another way other than violence. Because I didn't want to be that dad that only taught their kids a negative way to be. And I was never taught how to deal with loss or pain.

any kind of emotion other than right and wrong well life's been tough but tough creates you you know life's always full of decisions and it's the choices that you make out of those decisions that turn you into who you are and if you can look at yourself in the mirror smile my grandpa says you've had a good day and if you ever look at yourself in that mirror and you can't smile fix it because you made a bad choice somewhere and you and your gut's telling you you've done something wrong

Because your reflection is your truth. Today's episode featured Jesse Sanders. This episode was part four of our limited series, Point Blank, co-produced by me, Witt Misseldein, in collaboration with Connor Sheets, investigative journalist with the Los Angeles Times, with special thanks to Jason Blaylock, Andrew Waits, and Gabby Quintana.

To find out more about the shooting, you can read the original article by Connor that inspired this series, titled, It Was California's Forgotten Mass Shooting, But For Victims, The Hell Never Ends, on latimes.com.

From Wondery, you're listening to This Is Actually Happening. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on the Wondery app to listen ad-free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the episode notes, you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host, Witt Misseldein.

Today's episode was co-produced by me and Jason Blaylock, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westberg. The intro music features the song Illabi by Tipper. You can join the community on the This Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook, or follow us on Instagram at ActuallyHappening.

On the show's website, thisisactuallyhappening.com, you can find out more about the podcast, contact us with any questions, submit your own story, or visit the store, where you can find This Is Actually Happening designs on stickers, t-shirts, wall art, hoodies, and more. That's thisisactuallyhappening.com.

And finally, if you'd like to become an ongoing supporter of what we do, go to patreon.com slash happening. Even $2 to $5 a month goes a long way to support our vision. Thank you for listening.

She struck him with her motor vehicle. She had been under the influence and then she left him there.

In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up. If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion.

And after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision. To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.