Seconds to react, hours to wait

By Ron Burtz 

 

Custer County Sheriff Marty Mechaley had only seconds in which to decide how to end a brief police chase through Custer on Tuesday, Feb. 11. But then, when the suspect vehicle had been spun around and stalled in the middle of Mt. Rushmore Road, a standoff would begin that involved more than a dozen law enforcement officers from multiple agencies and ended tragically over three hours later with the suspect taking his own life. 

The suspect, who had allegedly stolen prescription drugs from Boyd’s Drug Mart at 909 E. St. Patrick Street in Rapid City at gunpoint at about 3 o’clock that afternoon, has been identified as 60-year-old Christopher White of rural Custer County. 

Driving a dark blue GMC pickup belonging to his longtime companion Becki Geyer, White is believed to have been trying to make it home to his residence on 20 Mile Road southwest of Pringle as he passed through Custer at about 4 p.m. Tuesday.

Rapid City Police officers investigating the drug store robbery had obtained from witnesses a description of the suspect vehicle including a license plate number. Mechaley said the call came in to Custer County Dispatch at 3:18 p.m., so he sent deputy Derrick Reifenrath to sit at the intersection of Hwys. 16/385 and 244 in Pennington County in case the vehicle came that way. 

Minutes later Reifenrath spotted the vehicle and followed it, but did not attempt to make a traffic stop as he waited for other officers to catch up. As the vehicles traveled down the hill toward Custer, deputies Carl Maude and Matt Warren pulled in behind Reifenrath. 

“I turned my lights on at 16 and Muehl Trail, which is just north of town,” said Reifenrath. “He looked like he was gonna pull over right by the cemetery, but then he just continued driving.”  

Hoping to keep the situation outside city limits, Mechaley set out road spikes near Bavarian Inn to stop the fleeing pickup. However, after passing U.S. Forest Service headquarters,  White turned onto 3rd Street and proceeded down the hill into Custer. 

In an effort to head him off, Mechaley threw the spikes back in his SUV and headed back down 385, hoping to intersect the vehicle at the corner of 3rd and Harney. Beating the procession to that intersection, Mechaley again put out the spikes, but White turned left, jumped the curb and missed the spikes again. 

With the three patrol vehicles still in pursuit, White proceeded east on Harney Street to 5th where he waited for traffic to pass before turning right and going one block south to Crook Street where he turned and went west. 

Rolling through the stop sign at the corner of 4th and Crook, White again went south, turning right one block later onto Mt. Rushmore Road.

By this time, Mechaley had picked up his spikes once again and headed south on 3rd, where he intercepted White’s vehicle as he headed west on Mt. Rushmore Road. 

Reifenrath noted that throughout the entire chase, which lasted just seven minutes from beginning to end, White never broke the speed limit and the only traffic laws he broke were rolling through the one stop sign and, of course, not stopping for the pursuing deputies. 

After pulling in behind White’s vehicle on Mt. Rushmore Road, Mechaley said he had only seconds in which to decide his next course of action. Having seen school children walking along 3rd Street on their way home from school and knowing that busses would be letting children off in the area, Mechaley said he decided drastic measures were needed to end the chase then and there. 

“I knew we had to disable his car,” said Mechaley. “I had like a split second and there was no doubt, this has to stop right here.” 

Speeding up as he passed Rocket Motel, Mechaley executed a pit maneuver, bumping the driver side back quarter panel of White’s pickup with the grill guard on the right front of his SUV. 

The maneuver “worked perfectly,” in the words of Mechaley. As the two vehicles made contact, the pickup spun around until it stalled in the eastbound lanes of the road facing east at the intersection of 2nd and Mt. Rushmore Road.  

The time was now 4:01 p.m.

“I think the most stressful part was, after I did the pit maneuver, I was a hood-length away from him,” said Mechaley. “He was grabbing his gun and I was grabbing my gun. I was in a really bad place to be at that time. I didn’t have any real good cover. You have no idea what’s going through their mind. You have no idea what they’re going to do and you’re five feet away and you’re both grabbing a gun.” 

Jumping from his vehicle, Mechaley aimed his weapon at White and shouted for him to put his hands up. As he did so, Mechaley moved to the back of his patrol vehicle where he had better cover. From the moment the two vehicles made contact until the sheriff shouted for White to surrender, only six seconds elapsed. 

After those first few intense moments, the situation settled into a more restrained, but still tense, situation which went on for the next nearly three and a half hours. 

“I’ll talk to you, sir, but you’ve gotta listen to me first. OK?” said Mechaley after a few seconds in a calmer voice. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“If anybody’s gonna be hurt, it’s gonna be me,” replied White. 

“I’m Marty. What’s your name?” asked the sheriff. “Chris? I want to work with you here, Chris. I don’t want anything bad to happen to anybody.” 

It went on like that until well after dark with Reifenrath and deputy Ross Norton taking their turns at talking to White, giving Mechaley, who had jumped out of the car without coat, hat or gloves, a chance to warm up from time to time. 

“He told me, ‘Go ahead and shoot me,’” said Mechaley, to which the sheriff replied, “That’s not what we’re here for. We don’t want that. I don’t want anybody getting hurt.”

Mechaley said White told him he didn’t want to go to prison, believing he would die there. 

“A couple of times I thought he was going to come out and surrender to me,” said Mechaley, but as time went, White’s condition began to deteriorate. 

As the hours wore on, the officers observed White taking what they believed to be prescription drugs. Mechaley hoped that at some point the pills would kick in and White would pass out, allowing authorities to safely take him into custody. 

Instead, Mechaley said White’s interactions with officers became less and less lucid and his threats to commit suicide became more frequent. 

Over those hours, White spoke to Geyer on a cell phone several times and smoked cigarette after cigarette until he eventually ran out. Reifenrath left the scene, which was now guarded by more than a dozen officers, to buy White another pack of smokes. After he returned with them, Norton got one to White by flipping it through the driver’s window of the pickup. 

White was armed with what is believed to have been a .22 caliber rifle with the stock sawed off to make a pistol grip. (The weapon was taken into evidence by Rapid City police detectives and Mechaley had only  brief view of it.) White held the weapon on himself throughout the standoff and, at one point later in the ordeal, apparently attempted to shoot himself in the chest, but failed because the safety was on. Minutes later, however, at 7:24 p.m. he succeeded in pulling the trigger.

Anticipating this action, the sheriff’s office had both Custer Ambulance and Black Hills Life Flight on standby, so when the fatal shot was fired, authorities were at the pickup within seconds, pulling White from the vehicle and beginning treatment to try to save his life. 

White was transported to Monument Health Custer Hospital where he was pronounced dead. 

Minutes after the ordeal ended, Mechaley was visibly shaken by the experience and the next afternoon as he sat in his office at the courthouse, he admitted he had hardly slept the night before as he replayed the scenario over and over in his mind. 

“You think about it,” said Mechaley. “That guy spent the last three hours of his life talking to you.” In turn, Mechaley said he spent the last three hours of White’s life trying to talk him out of what he eventually did.   

During those tense hours, Mechaley said White was polite and even complimentary toward the officers. 

“He told us we do a good job,” said Mechaley, “and we caught him and he just doesn’t want to go to prison. He’ll end it. I felt bad for him. He was probably battling an addiction.”

Besides the stress and anxiety of the situation itself, Mechaley said one of the worst parts of the ordeal for himself and his fellow negotiators was the lack of warm clothing as temperatures dropped into the teens and brisk winds drove the windchill into the single digits. 

“We were out there in just our long-sleeved shirts,” said Mechaley. “I was so cold that I quit shivering.” 

Mechaley said it eventually got so cold the batteries in the officers’ body cams began to die. 

Asked what was going through his mind during the standoff, Mechaley said, “I was worried that we were gonna be put in a really bad situation. I was worried that the deputies or myself could get hurt. I was worried that innocent people could get hurt. It was a very scary situation.” 

In an effort to secure the safety of innocent bystanders, Mechaley sent Warren down the street to one of the school busses that had stopped about a block away to make sure they were safe and get them out of the area. 

“There’s a lot of stress involved with that,” said Mechaley. “While you’re trying to de-escalate with him, you’re still ensuring safety for everyone else. There’s a lot of stress involved.”

For the first hour or so of the standoff, Family Dollar Store, which is only a few feet away from the scene, remained open and customers were coming and going and clerks and customers were watching the event unfold out the store’s front windows. At about 5:15 p.m., a deputy started to clear people from the area, moving the back at least a block away. Later authorities would call for the store to be closed and evacuated. 

Mechaley credits Lt. Steve McMillin for taking charge of the wider scene as he was focused on dealing with White. 

“Big Foot could have been a block away from me and I wouldn’t have noticed,” said the sheriff. 

Mechaley complimented “the professionalism and extreme restraint exhibited by the officers,” adding that he is grateful for the team effort put forth by all of his officers and for the cooperation of other agencies which included Custer County Dispatch, S.D. Highway Patrol, Rapid City Police Department, Pennington County Sheriff, Black Hills Life Flight, Game, Fish & Parks, Wind Cave National Park and Custer Ambulance. 

“I think everybody works well here as a team,” said Mechaley. “We all rely on each other. We respect each other. When I was standing there, I knew those guys were right there and they had my back, so that made my life a lot easier.”

The worst part for him, he said, is that news travels fast. “So my wife finds out and my kids know what’s going on and I know they’re nervous, worried,” he said

Mechaley said he had been listening to music on his smartphone which was sitting on the dash of his vehicle when the chase began. When he bumped White’s vehicle, the phone got thrown to the floor where it lay for the next several hours. During that time, his 15-year-old son was trying to call him, but he couldn’t get to the phone. 

“Families share in the stress because they don’t know what’s going on,” said Reifenrath, adding that such situations are also stressful for dispatchers. 

“They hear what’s going on, but can’t see it,” said Reifenrath. “There are a lot of downtime pauses where they’re not getting any feedback.”

Mechaley said he was grateful for the cooperation and support of the community during and after the standoff. Sitting on his desk on Monday afternoon was a bouquet of fresh flowers and a note of support sent from a local realtor’s office.  

“There’s been a lot of community support,” said Mechaley. 

Noting that police officers often deal with post-traumatic stress from incidents such as this, Mechaley said, “We see a lot of death ... a lot ... and it’s never easy. I’ve never been more fearful for law enforcement and my deputies than I am right now. One second can change everything.”