A few of you that know me, understand how protective I am of my family and those close to heart, so please understand as I tell you about a horrid event that struck very close to home yesterday and my difficulty in coming to terms with it. My son Zack and his Fiancée just purchased a home and moved into it this past weekend. As usual, Zack left for work at the Lockheed Skunkworks Plant about 5:00am yesterday morning. My wife and I hadn't left yet to go back up to our house in Mammoth so he called me at about 11:00am and asked that I drive over to check on Samantha because he couldn't reach her and she didn’t show up for work. I got there about 20 minutes later and found her car in the driveway, which raised some real concerns. With weapon in hand, I checked the outside of the house first then went inside and went upstairs where I found her lying on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood. Her mother, who is a RN at St. Marys, showed up about 5 minutes after me and the Paramedics within a few minutes after that. To make a long story short, some piece of crap thing broke into the house and struck her twice in the head with a ball peen hammer and after all of this, all he took was her cell phone. She was flown to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center Trauma unit and after a CT Scan was rushed into surgery. She has a right side skull fracture where bone fragments entered her brain and a fracture in her forehead that penetrated the sinus cavity. All bone was so badly shattered that it had to be replaced with titanium plates. She is currently in a drug induced coma and on a ventilator. The assessment will begin today as they hope to be able to wean her off the medications and let her wake up slowly and breathe on her own, but that is just one small beginning step in her recovery. We all hope that brain swelling doesn’t become an issue and will know more about this within the next day or two. One positive thing I can say is that as she was being loaded into the Helicopter, I held her hand and talked to her and she responded to my voice by gripping one of my fingers. I hope this is a positive sign that things will turn out ok, but I can only hope for that right now. She is beautiful 23 year old lady and we are all at a loss for why this happened and what the motive could have been. There have been Detectives crawling all over the house since about noon and they were still there at 9:00pm. At that time, my son wasn’t allowed into the house to retrieve some fresh clothes nor was he allowed to take his truck. I take this as a sign that they are doing a very thorough job as I would expect from them.
Those who know my retired past, should be able to understand that I still need to deal with this in a professional manner. I have seen many horrific drug related crime scenes but it's totally different when an unprovoked assault such as this, happens so close to the heart. I am fighting back my my desire to react to this in a unprofessional manner but I am hoping they find the scum that did this. If the wheels of justice don’t work well enough for me, I fear that I will find a time, a method or what ever it takes to exact revenge on this guy without concern for my future. There is no suspect yet, I just hope I can resist those urges. Thanks for letting me vent this.
