Source: Houston Press
Contact:  http://www.houstonpress.com
Author: Randall Patterson
Pubdate: July 9-16, 1998

TWO BULLETS IN THE BACK

The fear began. At 1:35 a.m., Carolyn Deal was wakened by the sound of
shattering glass. She roused her 62-year-old husband, Jack, who told her to
get dressed, lock the bedroom door. She heard coughing just outside as she
turned the lock. Jack, fighting the haze of sleep, put the telephone to his
ear. "Uh," he said, "there's someone in our house."

Over the Bellaire police frequency, the dispatcher sent the call for a
burglary in progress. The alarm was screaming when Bellaire police officer
Dan Shelor arrived at 1:36. Officers Michael Leal and Carle Upshaw were
close behind.  The Deals by then had retreated through a bedroom door to
their roof. Crouching in the bushes, the police could see that most of the
windows around the front door had been smashed. Leal and Shelor took
positions in the front of the house, and Upshaw headed for the rear.

Then through a front window, a bicycle came crashing out. For an instant, a
white male stood in the window frame. The officers shouted, "Get the fuck
out of there!" And the man stared at them and disappeared inside. Through
another window, Upshaw saw him coming fast toward the rear. Upshaw, too,
shouted for the man to come out, and this time, the man turned to the glass
door and collided into it. The glass held, but his arms were already
covered with blood. Staring at Upshaw, he tried to unlock the door. He
couldn't. He walked away, leaving the glass smeared with blood.

Leal came back to help. Together, he and Upshaw yelled into the house for
the intruder to lie down. The man emerged from the shadows then and began
complying. The officers kicked more glass out of the window, and charged in
after him.

They found him between the long white couch and an antique table. Down the
barrel of a gun, Leal discerned that the intruder was only a teenager.
Upshaw saw that the boy was not very big.  Holstering his pistol, Upshaw
began putting handcuffs on the boy.

Five, maybe ten minutes later, Skip and Becky Allen were wakened by the
ringing telephone. It was a friend of their son's. "Uh, Mr. Allen?" said
Mike Morgan. "I think Travis is in trouble with the police."

It was quickly decided Mrs. Allen would stay home with Gracie, their
two-year-old. Mr. Allen snatched on his clothes and jumped in his truck. He
found Mike at Trevor Ayer's house, and they sped through Bellaire. When
Mike told him to turn onto Acacia Street, most of the Bellaire Police
Department was already there, and a large clapboard house had been cordoned
off with yellow police tape.

Mr. Allen pulled over and said he'd heard his son was in trouble here. When
the officer asked how he knew this, Mr. Allen pointed at Mike, and Mike was
taken away. The officer told Mr. Allen to wait. He stood by his truck and
waited.

It began to rain. Mr. Allen stood in the rain, asking the passing policemen
what was going on. At last, one of them answered: There was a deceased
person inside.

Mr. Allen said his son was supposed to be inside, and couldn't he go in
there? The officer asked him if he needed a priest or something. Mr. Allen
said no, and he was told to wait.

The hearse came. A bag was carried away. Still, Mr. Allen gazed at the
house and the landscaped lawn. He kept thinking his son would come running
out, saying, "Daddy! I'm okay. I was in trouble, but I'm okay."

Instead, after three hours, a Bellaire policeman cameout. He said there had
been a struggle, and an officer's weapon had discharged. It had discharged
into a person, and that person's name, according to the driver's license,
was Travis Allen. He had then died.  Mr. Allen could go now. "We don't need
you anymore," the officer said.

The Deals went to a neighbor's house. Mr. Allen drove home alone. And
Bellaire police detectives stayed up all night July 15, 1995, trying to
explain how a 128-pound, unarmed boy on LSD had been shot twice in the back
by a police officer as the boy lay on the floor beneath another officer's
boot.

In the days and weeks that followed, the local crime-solving community bent
to the task. The medical examiner examined; Bellaire investigators
investigated.

A grand jury heard the evidence and deliberated.

The result was no indictment.

The entire criminal investigation was wrapped up within two months; the
officer who pulled the trigger was required to take only two days off work.
He was absolved so quickly that Skip and Becky Allen were left breathless.
They knew their son had deserved a great punishment; they couldn't accept
the necessity of death. They lost 60 pounds between them. They went to
church, joined grief-recovery groups. Determined to wring justice from the
justice system, they finally found themselves in the office of a lawyer.

In December 1995, they filed a $25 million lawsuit against the Bellaire
Police Department and officers Michael Leal and Carle Upshaw, alleging
excessive use of force. The lawsuit has forced the Allens to relive their
son's death, but has also uncovered many new details about it. Efforts to
dismiss the case have been themselves dismissed. Last week, U.S. District
Judge David Hittner scheduled the case for trial on August 17.

Travis grew up near the Heights, in an old neighborhood called Magnolia
Grove. Skip became a safety director over construction at a Baytown
refinery, Becky a therapist for disabled children in the school system.
They lived together in a Victorian home with latticework trim and a yard
just big enough for lush tomato vines.

He was five foot nine and growing. Travis was the one who unloaded the
dishwasher, vacuumed the house, mowed the yard, raced motocross with his
father, picked up his mother when he hugged her. And laughed. Puberty hit
him like a hurricane, but after tenth grade, his clothes and hair had begun
to settle down, and instead of skipping classes, he enrolled in summer
school to get ahead.

He came home that Friday in July at about 2 o'clock and began playing with
his sister Gracie. They rolled around in the grass, and two hours must have
passed before Travis finally got the lawn mower out. He had mowed only a
small section when rain began to fall, at which point he gave up on the
grass and put Gracie in a laundry basket. From the porch down the walkway
and back, he ran in and out of the rain. Skip remembers that you could hear
the laughter all over the block.

Then Becky came home, and she wrapped Gracie in a towel and began making
dinner. Travis went up to his room. He called his friend Trevor, who said
Tony Patt had just called: A neighbor of a friend of Tony's was throwing a
party in Bellaire.

At dinner, Travis announced that he would be sleeping at Trevor's this
evening. "No!" said Skip, because the yard was not mowed, and they were
going to get up early the next  morning to ride dirt bikes.

So Travis finished his dinner and went back to his room. Becky told Skip
that Travis hadn't been out all week. Why not let him go? She went upstairs
to tell him the news. When she saw his face, she knew he wouldn't mind
staying home. But she let him go anyway, "and that's the saddest thing,"
she says.

The city of Bellaire is an enclave town, entirely surrounded by Houston.
Most law violations are committed by intruders, and most of these intruders
are simply speeding motorists. But every now and then, said Chief Randall
Mack, someone comes into Bellaire to rob a bank or something, and "you've
got to be ready to do it all."

One officer who can always be counted on to go "above and beyond the call,"
according to Mack, is Michael Leal (pronounced lay-al). Legal concerns
prevent Leal from talking  to reporters (and Mack, too, wouldn't discuss
the case), but Leal is said to be 33 years old now, a resident of Katy and
the father of two young daughters and a son. Ten years ago, he joined the
department, and in 1991, he was named Bellaire Police Officer of the Year.
He long ago became a department instructor in both firearm use and
defensive tactics, and also is a founding member of Bellaire's volunteer
SWAT team equivalent, whose drills consist of wearing camouflage and
shooting one's fellow officers with paint-ball guns.

The state requires peace officers to take 40 hours of continuing training
every two years, but Leal usually takes triple that in a year. In the
summer of 1995, some of his recent courses were "ASP Baton Refresher,"
"Officer Involved shooting Investigation" and "Mental Preparation for Armed
Confrontation," which consisted of video footage of officers getting
killed.

By July 15 of that year, there had not been a police shooting in Bellaire
in 20 years, and there had never been a fatal one. But the record shows,
before his shift, Leal took the precaution of checking out two shotguns.

When Travis got to Trevor's, James Burns was there, and one of them
produced the acid. Weed and ecstasy were the usual choices; acid, said
Trevor, was kind of a special occasion.

This acid was called Blue Shield, and the dealer had said the paper was
dipped three times, instead of once. James and Trevor each took one hit,
and Travis, who was a little bigger, took two. When Meaghan Welzbacher came
over to pick them up, Travis showed her what was on his tongue. "You be
careful now," she said, and Travis smiled.

None of them knew the host of the party or cared that she was only 12 years
old. Tony said the magic words were "parents not home." The house was small
by Bellaire standards, and the party left it much reduced. Punk rock
blasted through the air. In the garage, by the keg, someone smashed a
mirror. Before long, the guests were running through the house punching the
walls. One climbed the roof and hurled a gallon of paint onto the walkway.

The whole evening became a blur to James. Trevor saw a lot of flashing
lights and moving people. And Travis, who was usually "a grinning fool"
when he was tripping, grew terribly frightened.

He was seen at the start of the evening in a chair in the back yard with a
beer, "just chilling." Later, Jessica McCracken saw him standing very stiff
and asked him what was wrong. "Bugs," said Travis. She offered him bug
repellent, but it didn't seem to help. With his hands jammed in his
pockets, Travis soon began shaking. Someone told him that there were bears
in the backyard. He seemed to believe it. He became afraid of the people
around him. Most of them were strangers, and he got the notion they were
going to jump him for the $20 in his pocket. His friend Mike Morgan finally
decided to get him away from the party. They would take a short walk to the
end of the street and come back.

Along the way, Mike asked what Travis was seeing. "Colors," said Travis.
Then he quit responding. They hadn't gone far when Tony Patt and Ben
Steinberg pulled up behind them. Travis saw the headlights, and his friends
believe he thought these were the people who had come to rob him. Travis
flung his money on the ground, and he fled as fast as he could -- over the
soft grass and under the trees and into the side of the house that was Jack
and Carolyn Deal's. At his feet, there was a 50-pound paving stone; he
heaved it through a full-length window and heaved himself after it.

Mike, who had chased until this point, heard the burglar alarm and ran the
other way. Travis was alone then, and like something wild that has flown
inside and can't get out, he knocked over plants and banged against windows
until his arms were wet with blood, and he heard voices telling him to lie
down.

Officer Upshaw put his gun away and was handcuffing Travis when he realized
that maybe he should be using gloves. He sent Shelor to get them from the
car. Then, unable to think of anything else to do, Upshaw placed his
cleated boot in the square of Travis's back and proceeded to wait.

The gloves were not in the first car; Shelor searched the second. Inside,
Leal kept his gun trained on the suspect. They had sent Shelor away without
searching the suspect or the house, or even turning on the lights. The
suspect, meanwhile, had begun to resist again. Beneath the boot, he would
not lie still. Travis flailed his arms and pushed against the boot, and the
more weight Upshaw pressed into him, the more Travis writhed and pushed
against it. All the while, he was making an awful grunting sound, which to
the neighbors next door, behind closed windows, sounded like roaring, and
which Leal described later as "this noise you make when you're exhausted."

Leal and Upshaw never reached for the batons that hung at their waists.
Leal recalled glancing again and again over his shoulder, shouting to
Travis, "Let us see your hands!" And then Upshaw, trying to help, stepped
on Travis with both boots and all of his 190 pounds. Again, Travis put his
hands beneath him, and the officers swear he pushed himself off the ground
with Upshaw on his back. Upshaw reverted then to the one-foot hold, but
Leal found himself shouting, "You're going to get shot! You're going to get
shot!" It is for moments like this that police officers drill and drill
again, so that instinct overrides emotion. Leal's first shot missed
Upshaw's foot by less than an inch, but after the recoil, Leal had the
presence of mind to aim before shooting again.

Under the vaulted ceiling, Travis lay still at last, hemorrhaging onto the
Oriental rug.

Then the house filled with new horror. Shelor arrived with the gloves. Leal
told him to handcuff the suspect, now lying in an expanding pool

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Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)