Chief David Dorn's Life Mattered. The Bloody Cross: Tribute to Chief Dorn.
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By: Kirk Lawless
On 23 June 2019 I watched the live-streamed death of Police Officer Michael Langsdorf, murdered in the line of duty because he was a cop doing his job. It broke my heart as I watched his blood pool beneath him and saw him take his last breath on the floor of a convenience store in North Saint Louis County. I prayed I would never see such a thing again.
Exactly 345 days later, on June 2, 2020 at 2:30 a.m., I saw the exact same thing again, this time played out on the hard concrete of a Saint Louis City sidewalk, when retired St. Louis Metropolitan Police Captain and former Moline Acres Police Chief David Dorn was murdered while checking a friend’s pawnshop, as he often did when the burglar alarm went off.
Someone started recording right after Dave got shot. A friend texted and the text read, “They just shot Dave!” I have many police friends and several are named Dave, so I made a phone call and learned that it was Dave Dorn, and there was a video of either the actual shooting or the aftermath of it.
I found it. I shouldn’t have watched it, but the “once a cop, always a cop” in me made me hit the play arrow and it started. I did not expect the video to start with a brother cop’s face, a man I knew and considered a friend, as the first thing I saw. I stopped it and took a deep breath and started it again.
My heart has been broken on the job many times, and here it was about to be broken again. Oh yeah, there was audio as well. Dave was lying on his back. His eyes wide open, arms out at his sides, like Jesus on the cross. His cellphone was in his left hand, the screen still lit. Clutched in his right hand, in the shadows, up against the pawnshop building was his pistol. My blood was boiling and I found myself once again, in a dark, dark place (where I spend quality time) and I was awash in rage. Dave was not dead yet, although he was obviously dying. Like Michael Langsdorf’s death scene, I could see Dave’s blood pooling beneath him. He was fighting to stay alive and I could see him trying to catch his breath, the only movement was the short rising and falling of his chest, and the shifting of his eyes. I wept. I knew that by the time I was watching the video, our Heavenly father had already taken Dave home. I was reminded of that because of one simple thing that stood out when I first hit play, his blood.
The scene was chaotic and still in motion, there was broken glass everywhere, on the street, on the sidewalk, on the stoop of the pawnshop, but there was the blood. There was plenty of blood. This may sound odd, but hear me out. Even though I saw Dave’s blood flowing from beneath his body, I felt an immediate sense of calm and comfort that I have never felt before when I saw blood. I’ve seen buckets of the stuff during a long career, blood of victims, blood of enemies, blood of friends, blood of other cops, some I knew, some I didn’t know, and I’ve even seen my own blood. This time it was different. Dave’s blood, as it flowed from an unseen wound, began to fill the expansion joints in the sidewalk and as it crept further into the cracks and into the first “T’ and continued on its journey, it formed a cross.
That bloody cross soothed my mind for a minute and reminded me of why I became a cop. It was probably why Dave became a cop and probably why most of us became cops. We become cops because we are helpers and we were brought up to do the right thing and “being the cops” is a calling.
I was still pissed off that Dave had been murdered and that he had been murdered over televisions and whatever ill-gotten gains could be pilfered from a closed pawnshop! I though black lives mattered? Dave happened to be black, so explain that to me?
There were thieves coming in and out of the pawnshop, crunching across the shattered glass that was everywhere, the bandits screaming and yelling at each other. It was a like a Mad Hatter’s tea party, except with guns, looting and murder!
The person filming the death scene, whether he intended to do it or not, provided those with trained eyes plenty of intelligence that was ultimately seen by the homicide detectives of the SLMPD tasked with solving Dave’s murder.
I watched and re-watched the video, probably 50 times. I listened to the commentary. Whether it was real or bullshit, prayers, “Hang in there, OG!”
“Did somebody call an ambulance?”
“Hang in there, OG. Help is on the way,” the faceless voice said to Dave, as he was still taking his last breaths. A little later he said,
“He gone. Rest in peace OG.”
The person filming scanned the crowd and started yelling, “Don’t go back in that store, cuz. Y’all (expletive deleted) killed some old man over some TVs? You just killed somebody’s granddaddy!”
He told some other folks who were with him, “Don’t let nobody back in that store”
I saw the faces in the crowd. I haven’t heard the official word on who the suspected shooter was in relation to the faces I saw as the camera panned the crowd, but I’m pretty sure I picked the right guy. He got a little aggressive with the cameraman. I couldn’t hear what he said but the cameraman’s response was, “What, you gonna pop me too, Cuz?” The dreadlock wearing young man was wearing a black T-shirt with a Jamaican style and color graphic on the front. He had a bandage on his left hand and I’d bet he had a handgun in his waistband beneath that shirt, as he was protective of it and it appeared to have some heft to it, given the position of his clothing. He was passively aggressive, but he looked as though he really wanted to get into that pawnshop, but was unsure if he should try, given the warning given to him by the cameraman and his friends. My money is on him being the murderer.
Later in the video, someone placed a blue blanket over Dave, covering his face. Appropriate that it was blue, but had it been placed there out of respect while the camera was not pointed in that direction, or was there another reason? Thinking my mind might have been playing tricks on me, I watched the video again and again. My mind wasn’t playing tricks on me. One minute Dave had his “Thumper” in his right hand, and the next as if by feat of prestidigitation, “Poof!” Dave’s pistol was gone! So, not only did someone murder the man in cold blood, they stole his gun from him while he lay dying, or after he had died. It takes a special kind of criminal to steal something from a dead or dying man’s hand.
So was the blanket just part of an act? What else did they steal from him, his watch, jewelry, badge and wallet? There were way too many folks milling around gawking at Dave and the pawnshop and the entire scene, but there was plenty of video evidence. We’ll hear the rest of the story further on down the road. But, still I can’t stop seeing the cross of blood. That’s OK. It serves as a reminder for all of us who are cops. We are always cops and we are everywhere! On June 7th the SLMPD arrested Dave’s killer and several men captured on surveillance video from inside the pawnshop.
I noticed that Dave was wearing a police T-shirt while lay dying, emblazoned with the silhouette of blue policemen and the words, “Whose streets? Our streets!”
No doubt these were your streets, Captain Dave Dorn! You died protecting them. “That’s a good man, right there! Rest easy, brother.”
