Parenting Through Tragedy: A 12-Year-Old's Final Act and Its Lingering Impact

A call no officer ever wants to receive, especially when it involves the tragic suicide of a 12-year-old girl during the COVID-19 pandemic. As I recount the most heart-wrenching moment of my 21-year career, you'll gain insight into the procedural steps and emotional struggles that accompany such distressing situations. This episode offers a raw and honest look at how these experiences shape us, not just as law enforcement officers, but as parents and spouses dealing with the aftermath.

How does witnessing such trauma impact one's ability to parent? The second chapter delves into the long-lasting emotional toll that traumatic experiences can have on first responders. I share my personal struggles with anger, discipline, and the strain on my marriage due to differing parenting styles triggered by PTSD. This candid discussion highlights the urgent need for better mental health support and understanding for those on the front lines.

Healing is possible, and the journey through EMDR therapy provides a beacon of hope. In the final chapter, we explore how EMDR therapy helps reprocess trauma by revisiting detailed memories and using bilateral stimulation techniques. Through my personal narrative, we uncover how deeply held guilt and a sense of responsibility can be transformed, alleviating emotional burdens and fostering a healthier relationship with past events. As we wrap up, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to our listeners and share a teaser for the next exciting episode. Stay engaged by liking, subscribing, and sharing to support our journey together.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

Welcome everybody to the Murders to Music podcast. So thank you guys so much for tuning in for one more episode in another week. I tell you you guys are amazing. Thank you so much for coming back over and over again. If you guys haven't done so, please like subscribe. Share this with your friends. If you're getting something out of this, great. If you just like hearing the stories, that's great too.

Speaker 1: 0:47

But I think, with the idea of educating, entertaining and providing value, I try to explain things or talk about things that everybody, no matter what your walk of life is, can get something out of it. Let's get started. So tonight I'm going to talk about the worst call that I went on in my 21 years of law enforcement. Being a homicide and child abuse detective, you get exposed to a lot of things that you wish you never saw, you wish you never experienced, and that the rest of the world should never have to experience experience. Tonight I'm going to tell you about one of those situations, but before you hang up and stop the podcast, I am not going to get into the intimate details. I am not going to share things that are going to get your imagination running or things that are going to shock your conscience. I'm going to tell you circumstances. I'm going to tell you circumstances and I'm going to tell you enough of the circumstances to paint the picture, to explain how it affected me in the short term, how it affected me in the long term, the recovery process, the way that it affected how I parent, the way that it affected how I'm a husband and a father All of those things, I think, will come together and, as we experience things in our life good, bad or indifferent they really affect the way that we go about life. From that point forward, if we were to go backwards and dissect who we are as a human being, I think we would all find and I find that the makeup of me today is only due to the circumstances that I went through throughout my life and the experiences and exposures that I had. So, without any further ado, let's jump right in.

Speaker 1: 2:42

So this call started back in 2020-ish, about 2020,. Let me paint the picture for you. We had been in the COVID moment. We had been working from home. The world was shut down. I think we all remember that Stress was high. This was before I believe this was before the Black Lives Matter and Defund, the Police movement that we got to experience and this call came in.

Speaker 1: 3:19

I was off duty and it came in about 10 o'clock at night. Came in about 10 o'clock at night. The call that I got was to respond to. The call that I got was to respond to a suicide that had occurred in my city. That's all I knew at the time that I left. I remember getting in the car and I remember driving over towards the city and getting some phone calls and making phone calls along the way to find out what the parameters were. It was highly unusual for me to get called out to something that is a known suicide. So I knew that there had to be something more to this situation or this event that would need my expertise or my input. As I was driving to the call, I learned that this was a 12-year-old little girl that had hung herself, or that is what the scene showed.

Speaker 1: 4:27

So as I'm responding to any call, you go through a process in your mind where you start to try to understand the call. You understand the bits and pieces of information that you're getting Sometimes they're accurate, sometimes they're inaccurate that you're getting sometimes they're accurate, sometimes they're inaccurate. You're trying to figure out what pieces of this response do I need to put in place? What services do I need? Do I need crime scene? Do I need the traffic unit? Do I need air support? What do we need in order to make this investigation successful? Those are all parts of a normal response cycle in my world, no different than when you are responding to something in your world. You forethink it, or at least you should be Thinking ahead. What do I need when I get there? What planning parts and pieces do I need to put into place? I go camping. You got to make sure you have your tent. Those are the same types of things that I'm thinking, but I'm applying that to my law enforcement world.

Speaker 1: 5:30

So, with that being said, I'm responding to the call. I know that it's at a residence, I know a 12-year-old girl has apparently hung herself and that police are on scene, so I responded to the call. The call was in a cul-de-sac, at the back of a cul-de-sac. When I got there, I remember seeing police cars. And I say I remember because that's going to come up here in a second, but I remember seeing police cars and I remember the anticipation and the anxiety was rising because, while I have been to this type of call before. Something was hitting me different about this one and I didn't know what it was. So as I get to the call, I have that anxiety. I have those high nerves, thinking about what I need to do and what I'm going to do. When I get there I can see that there's quite a crowd drawing outside the house. I assumed it was family members.

Speaker 1: 6:30

I got out of my car and when I got out of my car I remember shutting my door to the car and distinctly I can remember that sound. When I was in my car I had a sick to my stomach feeling. It was the anxiety and the nerves anticipating what I'm about to walk into. I'm about to walk into a scene where people are upset, they're crying, they've lost a loved one, they've lost a child. I don't know if it's suicide, I don't know if it's foul play, I don't know if it's murder, I don't know what the circumstances are, but my world is evolving very, very quickly. When I got out of my car and I heard that distinct I can hear it even now as I'm talking to you. When I hear that car door slam and I start walking up to the scene, all of a sudden I went numb again, because this is the feeling I get when I'm on these calls I go numb and I just don't feel. Now it's not that I don't care, it's that I have a job to get done and if I allow too much emotion in, it affects my ability to do my job effectively. So I remember going numb and cold and I remember walking in the stairs.

Speaker 1: 7:46

It's a split level house, probably built in the 70s or 80s. Walk in the front door. There's a staircase up and a living area to the left Staircase down that intersects with a short hallway. Go down the stairs. To the left is a den area, a living space. To the right is a couple of bedrooms and a couple of bathrooms. I remember seeing the congregation of people around the front I'm sorry, the first door on the right, on that lower hallway, when, as I approached the door, in my mind I see, uh, a little girl hanging from it. What I see is a little girl hanging from a set of bunk beds. The everybody's talking to me. I see her there. Uh, I helped remove her, bring her down to the floor. She was obviously deceased. I remember talking to the people in the room and getting a general idea as to what occurred and we went ahead and processed that scene and at the end of the day it was a suicide. I'm done with the room and the description From there.

Speaker 1: 9:10

I remember talking to the family, learning about the events that occurred that evening. And the events that occurred that evening are this the family was together earlier in the evening. They ate dinner together and this little girl would not eat her vegetables. So, as a result and punishment, the family took away the little girl's phone, her cell phone. As a result of that, the little girl went to her room and a babysitter was called over because the parents were going to go out and do something. So the babysitter came to watch the little girl. The babysitter believed the little girl was in her room all night and when the babysitter, when the parents got home, they realized that the windows outside the house had been barricaded and blocked. The parents tried to get into the room. The room was, the door was barricaded. They forced the door and found the little girl. They called the police. The police and ambulances responded and that's where I showed up. This occurred because the juvenile mind was overloaded with emotion, because the cell phone was taken away and as a result, not a result of the cell phone being taken away, but as a result of these little girls' decisions she died.

Speaker 1: 10:48

I remember processing that scene being done and moving on and I remember at the time I did think about my little girl. I had a 12-year-old little girl at the time. I thought about my little girl and I thought about parenting and stuff and that was a tough scene for me to be at just because of the nature of it and ultimately I did have feelings about it and it just sucks. There's no way to, there's no way to say this doesn't suck. You're hearing the screams, the upset, parents, the nature of the circumstances, your exposure again, uh, you were in a tough time during COVID. It might've been during all of the writing, I can't remember. It was right around that same timeframe and then you have to go home. You go home and it's another case. You close it out, you write your reports, you do your interviews and you send them on their way, but somewhere in the brain all of that information is stored, all that data is stored. So I go home and, as every parent does, we have issues with our little girl and I remember, from that night on, as I was parenting.

Speaker 1: 12:06

I remember distinctly having a hard time correcting my children. I had a hard time talking to my kids in a stern way and it wasn't the first time I've seen a child death or investigated child death investigation, but it was the first time I remember it really affecting me and me being cognizant of. There was something different. There were times where we would correct my daughter and taking the cell phone away was a punishment. While I couldn't go into that, I couldn't take my daughter's cell phone away without seeing and envisioning everything that I saw and envisioned that night because of that trauma that was burned into my brain. Therefore, I couldn't effectively parent.

Speaker 1: 12:59

I worried when my kids argued. I worried that you guys aren't guaranteed tomorrow. There is no guarantee, boys, that you guys are going to get another day. So stop arguing about the small stuff in life. That really doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. Yet kids are going to be kids and they're going to fight over stupid stuff. But the whole time it would affect me and sometimes I would get angry. I hear my kids arguing and, without knowing why, I would go in and absolutely lose my mind Without having a cognitive thought of this is is PTSD and this is a reaction from what you've experienced. I would go in and lose my mind and yell and scream and tell them to knock it off. Knock your shit off, stop arguing. You're not guaranteed tomorrow. Love each other. And it's because of all the death that I had seen. I know that now. I didn't know that then.

Speaker 1: 13:54

So it affected the way that I parented. It affected the way that I interacted with my family. It affected the way that I interacted with my wife Because, as you could imagine, when one parent wants to correct and discipline a child in one way and the other parent, without understanding why or being able to articulate or explain, but has a strong opinion on the other side of the fence about taking the cell phone away, then that causes problems. So now my wife and I are in a riff with each other because of the way that she wants to parent versus the way that I want to parent. Yet I can't explain why I'm having these issues. I don't fully understand and I can't explain to my wife about what I saw at the scene, because she doesn't need to be exposed to that. With her, I feel safe.

Speaker 1: 14:44

If I were to explain what I saw, it would be too much detail. I didn't have somebody to vent to or to talk to and at that time I really wasn't into talking about my feelings. I was in to wiping it off and moving on Because, remember, at this point I thought PTSD was a cop-out and a joke. I thought therapy was for quitters, so I pushed it down and I moved on. That caused an issue and a riff between me and my daughter. That pushed me and my daughter away, because, not because of the cell phone incident, but just because of the way that I was ended up treating my kids and I can't blame this one case or this one call for the way that I treated my kids, but between getting buried in work, not having time for the family, seeing what I saw having conflict in discipline styles with my wife, all of this stuff caused and drove a wedge between me and my daughter specifically, as well as my other kids.

Speaker 1: 16:02

Another thing that it did is I saw my daughter reacting to the way that I was treating her. I saw my daughter reacting and I saw my daughter starting to seek attention from boys other boys, and it didn't matter which boy and it was phone calls or flirty behavior or whatever it might be and while she was doing that, I saw her distancing herself from me. So the male role model that I was once in her life, the strong figure in her life, she was trying to find that somewhere else and I knew it. I could see that, but I wasn't willing to quit. I wasn't willing to stop doing what I was doing for the police department to protect my daughter or my family.

Speaker 1: 16:52

This call haunted me forever. The feelings, the emotions, the gut-wrenching screams. It haunted me. I can only talk about it now without breaking down into tears, through therapy, through EMDR, through counseling and the love of my family and lots of prayers. This affected me severely up until about a year ago, nine months ago, and it affected me to the point where I couldn't think about it. I couldn't talk about it or I would just break down. Part of that was the call and part of that was knowing how much damage I had done to my daughter and our relationship. The nice thing is my relationship with my daughter is resilient and it comes back.

Speaker 1: 17:53

When God took me out of law enforcement, it opened up an opportunity for me to be present in the moment with my family. It opened up a chance for me to meet my family again and become the husband, the father, the dad, the confidant that I hadn't been for years, and this certain situation really, at the end of the day, helped me relate to my daughter in a way that I would have missed had I not been taken out of law enforcement. And I say that without going into too much details. I think my kids, maybe your kids, have also suffered from depression or circumstances that are maybe too big for them, too big for their tiny little brains and, just like this 12 year old little girl, I think many of our kids have thought about suicide. I have thought about suicide and I think probably a lot of you listening have at some point in your life. Well, my family's not exempt to that.

Speaker 1: 19:08

But the fact that I was able to be present for my daughter and you'll hear about this on another episode when I bring her on and we talk about the details, because I think it's easy and it's going to be good to learn from but the fact that I had this experience in this case I was pulled out of law enforcement. I sought therapy for it, we dissected this issue. When it was my time to deal with something similar within my own four walls. I was able to recognize it and deal with it and provide the help that my daughter needed. So let's talk about the therapy and getting over this. The therapy and getting over this. It's super important to find a good therapist Now. My circumstances affected the way that I lived my life. That is one of many over the 21-year career.

Speaker 1: 20:06

But you can't hit everything with one blanket therapy session. You have to break them down. There's a therapy modality called EMDR. I'm not a therapist. This is not an EMDR session, but let me tell you how it works.

Speaker 1: 20:22

Emdr identifies through the therapy session, the talk therapy session portion. It identifies the feelings you had in that moment. You see, every trauma is a trauma because of the relationship that you have with what you've seen or experienced and the way that it affects your brain. It's a relationship and you see and experience that. You see and experience it negatively or whatever your emotions are, and then you leave. A normal person can talk about that, can talk about it with others, has other outlets In my world. I couldn't talk about that because one, it wasn't in my nature, but two of the circumstances, so I put it away.

Speaker 1: 21:11

But the relationship that I had with that call was I could have done more and I know that doesn't make sense, but I could have done more to save her. I could have got there quicker, I could have done something to better the outcome of that circumstances and it probably doesn't make sense because I had nothing to do with it and I wasn't there, but that's how I felt. I felt like I could have done more. I should have done more. I felt like I could have done more. I should have done more. I was taking it personal and I also had the guilt of the way that I allowed it to affect my family. So I should have done more and been more for my family warning signs and backed out and not continue down that path of law enforcement and helped save my own life prior to getting pulled out by God. I had a lot of guilt wrapped around it.

Speaker 1: 22:12

The way that EMDR works is imagine that the tip of each finger on your hand is a separate trauma. One happens when you're five, one happens when you're 10, one happens when you're 12, one happens when you're 17, one happens when you're 33. All of those traumas are separate, but they all make you feel the same way. In my case, the feeling is I should have done more. I could have done more. I should have protected my family from me. I should have been there to protect that little girl. Those are the feelings, whether it's the trauma at five or the trauma at 33. That is the feeling that you have inside. That's the common denominator. Now, what's happening at 33 likely has nothing to do with what happened when you were five years old happened when you were five years old. So how do we deal with that?

Speaker 1: 23:09

In the EMDR session? You have to go back and try to remember the circumstances surrounding that first time that you felt that way. And once you figure out that first time, you talk about it in detail. You talk about the circumstances at five years old or seven years old, whenever the first time was that you felt that way, and you digest it and dissect it and get to the root as to what you were feeling. Once you've identified that, then you can either watch a bouncing light left to right or you can hold vibrating pucks in each hand and they alternate left to right. As they alternate, that's activating the left and the right side of your brain. You close your eyes and you go back to that moment in time when you were five or eight years old the first time you felt that way. We're not even going to talk about the circumstances surrounding the most recent trauma. Let's go all the way back.

Speaker 1: 24:09

And as you go back remember I've said it before your brain stores every sight, sound, memory, feeling, touch, everything into that compartmentalized box and shoves it down inside your head. And what you're doing is you're unpacking that box and I know, I know what you're saying. It sounds scary and it is, but you go back and you relive that moment and it takes you back to that moment and you're all of a sudden, with your eyes closed and the vibrating pucks in your hands and the conversation. You start to feel the same feelings you had at eight years old. You start to imagine and see the things and you can smell the smells and you can even feel the touch on your hand and it's super creepy because there's nobody touching you. But you actually feel and relive those moments. Now, a minute ago I said the trauma is a trauma because of the relationship that it has with you and the way you processed that set of events.

Speaker 1: 25:13

So, through EMDR, you go back to that first one and you reprocess the circumstances. What, at the time left you feeling scorned or you should have been enough or you should have protected. Whatever the feelings are, you go back and dissect it and when you get there, if you really think about it, let's use my current circumstances. I had nothing to do with that little girl. The way that I was feeling is because I felt like I should have been able to protect her and I should have been able to do more. But in reality that has nothing to do with the circumstances at hand. I was not involved. I wasn't there. I don't know when she did that to herself.

Speaker 1: 26:01

Go back to eight years old. It wasn't. You couldn't have done anything to protect your mom from whatever it was. You were eight years old. You didn't have the power, the strength, ability or knowledge to protect it, but it didn't stop you from feeling that way. So, through the reprocessing, you go back and you talk about it. You reprocess it and through the counseling, they discuss it with you. How old were you at the time? I was eight. Could have you done anything to change the outcome? No, how come? Because I was eight and I didn't know really what the circumstances were. I wasn't there when X, y or Z occurred. You know, I was a child, I was in school, whatever the case may be and you reprocess it. You find a new relationship to make with that trauma. All of a sudden it has taken all the burden off your shoulders and it's shed a light of reality to the circumstances. Then you come out of that EMDR state and you go to a happy place. Mine is on a motorcycle ride north of Spokane Huckleberry Flats. So you go to that happy place and now you start to feel the wind in your hair and smell the huckleberries and you feel yourself riding on that motorcycle and you're going through the twisties and then, once you're good to go, you take your time and you come back. You open your eyes and you're right back.

Speaker 1: 27:36

You've effectively went back and reprocessed that trauma from when you were young, the first time you felt that way. Well, remember, a second ago I said you had one of those traumas on the tip of each finger. Essentially, what you've just done is you have severed the root of all of those traumas. You have the traumas on the tip of each finger and the root is right at your wrist, on the tip of each finger and the root is right at your wrist. That is the one original feeling you had that ties all those traumas together. So you go to that. You attack that one, you sever it, you completely reprocess, reanalyze and reassess your feelings and as a result of doing that, you find that those other four that are left remaining on your hand they all solve themselves Because you've severed the root, you've severed the feelings and the initial thoughts that you had surrounding your original event, your original trauma or your original feelings.

Speaker 1: 28:40

So in my situation, when I went back and I severed the roots of the traumas that were on the tip of each one of my fingers that 12-year-old was one of those traumas and all of a sudden everything made sense. All of a sudden I didn't have the same relationship with my circumstances or the feelings of guilt with my daughter or my family, because I understood I had those feelings because of the way that I live my life, because of my law enforcement background, my feeling to protect that I had to lose my life because of my law enforcement background, my feeling to protect, my need to protect, the feelings that I would put my life on the line for anybody else, and just that Superman syndrome. I guess that's the reason I was feeling that way I felt like I should have done more, could have done more, and just like I was willing to risk my own life, I was willing to risk my relationship with my family. But now I knew that and I understood it. So now I don't have the wedge between my daughter and I and we can start healing. When she's having some issues that she needs help with, I'm there, can catch it and be present and potentially save my own daughter's life.

Speaker 1: 30:01

I thank my therapist, I thank God and I thank this whole EMDR thing. If you guys have never done it and you're holding onto that trauma that you feel could not go away, can't go away, can never separate yourself from it it's just the way life is. That is total crap. That is total crap. You can have freedom. That's the worst call that I ever went on. It was the worst call not because of what I saw, but because of the trauma that I felt. Now, earlier I said that I remember seeing the police cars there.

Speaker 1: 30:43

As I'm going through therapy and I come out, I meet with a friend of mine who's also a police officer in my same department and he and I are talking and I'm talking about my therapy experience and how good it is, and I don't tell him about the circumstances of my calls or my sessions, but he's like man. He said I'm really holding on to the worst call I've ever been on. And he starts crying and he said, uh, I I don't know if I never get past it. And I's like it's this 12 year old little girl that hung herself. And he says I went and I was the first one to arrive and I brought her down. And he says you know, you were there that night and it was my call. And I said you know, dude, you weren't there. He's like I was, I was there, I brought her down. I'm like no, she was still hanging when I got there. He's like no, she wasn't, she was on the floor. She'd been on the floor for a long time. During trauma, your brain does really, really weird things. And he was absolutely right. By the time I got there, she wasn't hanging. I was there after the fact, um, but I saw, felt and the brain had put the pieces of the puzzle together that were not accurate, um, and it's just what happens under those stressful circumstances. It turns out his worst call and my worst call were the same calls and I didn't even know he was on it.

Speaker 1: 32:38

Thank you guys for listening. You know, somebody asked me the other day who my audience was on this and what my demographics were, and I, you know, I really don't know. Um, it started out to be something to do with my business. However, now somebody out there has got to hear something in this message. There is hope, there is hope. There is hope. There is hope. Somebody out there has got to hear something in this message that will help them get over the next hurdle, and I don't know what it is. You know, they asked me and my demographics and I said you know, again, I don't think pain isn't without purpose, and if somebody can hear what I'm saying and realize that they're not alone, that they're not the only ones ever felt this way, that maybe they work too much and they need to pull themselves out before it's too late. I don't know what it is, I don't know who my demographics are, but if you guys are like what you're hearing, please keep following. Let me see those numbers climb on the downloads. Subscribe Please, please, please. Share this with a friend.

Speaker 1: 33:49

It's not always going to be dark. I'm going to tell some fun stuff as well. In fact. I'll tell you a quick fun story, but let's end on a little bit lighter note.

Speaker 1: 33:59

So I go to arrest this guy in Alaska. It's a gun call. He's pointed a gun at somebody or something and he's supposed to be a bad guy. He's supposed to be a tough guy. So I find him and he's walking down the middle of the road, right, and he's headed towards me. It's midnight 30. I see my headlights. He's walking. He doesn't have a gun, so I get out of my car. It doesn't stop me from pointing my gun at him, because maybe he's got one somewhere I can't see. So I point my gun at him. He complies, he lays down on the road. We're right in front of a pizza hut. I'm by myself.

Speaker 1: 34:30

My sergeant shows up and I lay this guy down on the ground. He's got his arms out and I go up to handcuff him. Well, as I drop down to handcuff him, my sergeant's like hey, are you pepper spraying him? And I'm like no, I'm not pepper spraying him. And about that time I realized my pepper spray was upside down in his pouch and I was squirting my balls with pepper spray and I was on fire. And the guy I'm like I'm spraying my balls and the guy on the ground starts laughing and we ended up handcuffing him. But if you've never experienced soaking everything you've got in pepper spray, give it a shot, why not? I mean, the cans of pepper spray are cheap and it's an experience we can talk about it later.

Speaker 1: 35:14

Anyway, guys, thank you so much for coming out. Thanks for hanging out and listening. Hopefully you got something out of it. Look forward to the next show. I'm going to do something fun on the next show. I don't know what it's going to be, but it's going to be fun. Anyway, take care of you guys. Like, subscribe, follow, download and let me see those numbers rise. Share with your buddies, take care.