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TwitThisToo Burned Out for Tears
At around 2 a.m., McAninch gathered flattened cardboard boxes and put them on the floor. Then he found some Bigfoot employee uniform shirts in the back room and laid them on the cardboard to make a bed. As he stretched out, blocking the front doorway, gun in hand, he asked Tammi, "You want to do something?""What!" Tammi said, surprised and angry. McAninch lay there looking at her as the minutes ticked by, then said, "OK, I'm not even going to go there."
Tammi watched as he closed his eyes. All right, she thought. What if he goes to sleep? Should I run for it? In the end she decided not to. The doors were locked, and he still held the gun. And as far as she could tell, he never did drift off to sleep.
The negotiator called again, offering a cell phone to McAninch because the land line had become staticky. Send Tammi out for it; they'd leave it outside.
"I'm not sending her out there till you guys back off," McAninch said.
Taking a chance, Tammi walked to the front door, took the handle and pulled. "The door's locked," she yelled to the police.
"Get back here," McAninch ordered.
"Let me go get that phone. I'll come back," she pleaded.
After more negotiation with her and the police, McAninch finally agreed. But he wanted to make sure his "protection" would come back.
He began rummaging around in the store, searching. Suddenly he picked up a vacuum cleaner, grabbed a screwdriver and took it apart. He ripped the electrical cord free, and came for Tammi. He tied the cord around her waist. Holding her on a tether, he let Tammi out the front door. In the interim, working in the shadows, the police had unlocked it. Tammi moved forward, looked, but couldn't find the phone. Enraged, McAninch yanked her in.
Back on the static-filled land line, the police explained that a new cell phone had been attached to a pole just outside the door. But McAninch was in no mood to listen.
As dawn broke, police demolition experts rigged the heavy back door with explosive charges. A SWAT team was ready to blow it open and rush the store.
At the same time, around 6:30 a.m., McAninch changed his mind and decided to send Tammi out once more to get the phone. He played her out on the cord. She opened the door, stepped forward, saw the phone on the ground and reached for it.
Policemen hidden in the shadows grabbed her by the arm and tried to pull her free. For a moment Tammi was trapped in a tug of war. But McAninch reeled her back in.
"Get back!" he yelled at the police. "Get back!" He fired a shot.
Police returned fire. One SWAT unit blew open the back door. Another unit rushed the front.
"Stop shooting! Stop shooting!" Tammi yelled. "I'm right here! I'm right here!" She fell to the floor and grabbed a plastic soda tray to shield her head.
Suddenly it was silent. The shooting stopped. She looked at McAninch, who was lying motionless across her leg -- bullet wounds in his arm, leg and chest.
Tammi didn't scream or cry. She didn't know whether to run or not. She thought McAninch might still be able to shoot her. But he was dying. His mouth was open and there was a gaping hole under his chin pulsing out blood. He'd shot himself -- he would never go back to prison.
The police moved to scoop her up, but she was still tethered to the bloody body. An officer cut the cord, and finally she was free.
Outside it was raining. Her shoe had come off. Held between two policemen, Tammi hopped on one foot across the wet parking lot. They took her to the command trailer to recover and talk with negotiators. Amazingly, her only injury was to her morning manicure -- a broken nail.
Her husband, Shawn, ran to the trailer to meet her. They hugged, unable to speak, and Shawn began to cry. But Tammi was too burned out for tears. She didn't cry that day or night or the next day. It wasn't until around midnight of the second day that she began to weep uncontrollably.
From the time she was a child, Tammi Smith had nightmares that someone was lurking in the dark waiting to kill her with a knife or a gun. After Bigfoot, she doesn't have that dream anymore.
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