“Come pick me up to go to the annex, Jim.  Mike’s meeting us there.  We gotta get this figured out before tomorrow so that I can tell the Chief what’s goin’ on.”  Elkins told Ehrhart this over the phone.   

What was “goin’ on” was that someone in the interagency drug task force had stolen one of the handguns confiscated in a previous arrest, and Yuma Police Chief William “Robby” Robinson expected his lieutenant, Dan Elkins, son of a former Yuma, Arizona, Chief of Police to have some answers for him by morning.  That’s why Elkins had cut his family’s vacation short and called the evidence custodian, Jim Ehrhart, and one of his task force’s supervisors, Arizona Department of Public Safety Sergeant Michael Crowe, to meet him at the office late the night of July 4, 1995.

When Elkins and Ehrhart entered the gated and locked compound located near the Marine Corps Air Station runway and parked Ehrhart’s car, they were both surprised to see Crowe standing in the open doorway of the building speaking to one of the newer agents, Jack Hudson.  In six months time, the men had seen Hudson change in appearance from the clean-cut retired Marine and Yuma County’s “Rookie of the Year” Deputy Sheriff to a Charles Manson look-a-like.  Hudson had also lost considerable weight and very much now resembled the drug addict he said he was trying to portray in order to infiltrate some local drug-dealing biker gangs.

“What’s going on, Jack?”  Elkins asked after everyone had exchanged greetings.  

“Just finishing some inventory paper work.”  Hudson responded as he headed toward his car parked next to the cars of Ehrhart and Crowe.

As the three men walked inside the building, Crowe whispered to Elkins, “I just saw Jack come out of your office with some bolt cutters.”  They then hurried to Elkins office on the other side of the building down a straight hall way lined with temporary offices called “cubicals” that had free-standing walls about six feet high.  

“Shit!”  Elkins hissed when he flipped on the light of his ransacked office.  

“This is a bad deal,” Crowe answered.  Then he added, “Do either of you have a gun?”

“I don’t,” Ehrhart said.

“Me neither,” added Elkins.  “What about you?”

“Mine’s on the front seat of my car.” Crowe said, sounding nervous now.

“Go get it.” Elkins said.  “We’ll stay inside here.”  

As the three turned away from the doorway of Elkins’ office, they saw Jack Hudson enter from the opposite end of the building with a Tec 11 nine mm submachine pistol with an extended clip in his right hand.

“You don’t need a gun, Jack!”  Crowe exclaimed. “Put it down.”

Instead, Hudson pointed the pistol at Mike Crowe who had already turned to run in the opposite direction as Elkins ducked into a side cubical and Ehrhart froze in place.

Ehrhart next heard the three loud gunshots Hudson fired and saw one round hit Crowe in the upper back of his right shoulder as Crowe ran past him.  The bullet immediately made the front of Crowe’s shirt puff out in front as it passed through Crowe’s chest and then both back and front of Crowe’s white t-shirt turned bright blood red.  Crowe turned down a side hallway after running past, and time slowed for Jim Ehrhart.

Hudson pointed his pistol at Ehrhart’s face as Ehrhart heard himself say, “Jack, what are you doing!”

“You know what I’m doing,” Hudson responded, “Fucking dopers!  Fuckin’ cops!”  Then he pulled the trigger and nothing happened.

Ehrhart watched in amazement as Hudson cursed and pulled the slide back on the machine pistol to clear the jam.  He pointed the gun at Ehrart and pulled the trigger again, again without effect.  Then Hudson dropped the extra long magazine, which Ehrhart saw was almost fully loaded, and slammed it back in before pointing the pistol again at Ehrhart’s face.

“I’m going to die now,” Ehrhart thought.  Asked later why he didn’t try to jump Hudson in the moment that had just passed, all he could respond was, “I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a situation like this, but I just didn’t, that’s all.”

Again, Hudson pulled the trigger, and again the gun did not fire.  He cursed again, turned and hurried back the way he’d come in out into the south parking lot.  Ehrhart could see another pistol tucked into the rear waistband of Hudson’s pants before Hudson turned the corner out the door.   Then he heard the sound of the fully loaded magazine hit the sidewalk outside.

Ehrhart fled out the exit at the north of the building, but he was still trapped inside a locked gated compound with eight foot high chain link fence topped with barbed wire.  He ran to one corner of the parking lot where the large trash dumpsters were located, hoping to either hide or climb on top and somehow get over the fence.  

The sounds of more gunshots a little bit behind made him duck down and peek around the corner of the dumpster from where he saw Hudson now chasing the wounded Mike Crowe in the southwest part of the parking lot near the gate.

“Please don’t shoot me again, Jack, I’m already shot!”  Crowe pleaded before he fell and slumped down in front of his murderer.  Hudson pointed the gun at Crowe’s head and fired another round.   Then he turned to head back to the building where his task force commander was frantically calling the police for help.