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Posted on 08/11/2002 3:45:48 AM PDT by ResistorSister
Friends of Donald W. Matthews, a 61-year-old former Steelworker who quoted the U.S. Constitution like a preacher thumbing a worn Bible, say he was suspicious of government.
But nobody knows why he chose a routine traffic stop Friday night to make his final stand, fatally shooting a Massillon police officer in the back before he was killed himself in return gunfire.
He might have been returning home from a constitutionalist study group in Cleveland when a state trooper pulled him over for speeding.
The trooper stopped him near Edwards Road in the short stretch of state Route 21 that crosses Wayne County. It was near sunset. He asked Matthews -- a big man weighing more than 300 pounds by some estimates -- to give him his driver's license. The Jackson Township resident held it up, but he wouldn't hand it over.
Perhaps he felt such a demand violated his constitutional rights. Or that the trooper was out of his jurisdiction or had not properly sworn his oath of office. Or maybe it was the legitimacy of the seat-belt law.
These were common gripes discussed at the study group Matthews led several times a week.
For whatever the reason, Matthews wouldn't give in and instead led a 25-year-old trooper on a chase toward Massillon that covered 12 miles in 12 minutes.
Matthews stopped twice more, but sped off again each time. On the last stop, the trooper saw Matthews reach for a gun. The trooper ran to his car and four Massillon police cruisers joined the pursuit.
A block away, the showdown began.
Matthews rolled out of his Ford Taurus and started firing a .32-caliber semiautomatic military pistol made in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War.
Witnesses heard the exchange of a few shots, then a barrage erupting in smoke.
In the end, Matthews was shot dead.
Dead, too, was a 31-year-old Massillon patrolman, Eric B. Taylor, a four-year veteran, a husband and the father of two young children.
He was the first officer from that city killed in the line of duty since 1946.
Taylor's chief choked on his words Saturday morning, saying he never regretted hiring Taylor until Friday night when a police chaplain had to comfort Taylor's family and answer the impossible question -- why?
Matthews had a valid driver's license and no criminal history, not even for traffic violations. He had no outstanding warrants and no apparent mental illness or addiction. His friends and a former employer said he didn't espouse violence.
``His reason to run we don't know and may never know,'' said State Highway Patrol spokesman Lt. Gary Lewis.
In recent years, Matthews had devoted himself to a political cause that consumed all his days.
He was president of a local study group called the National Constitutional Academy. He memorized the Constitution and its relationship with God's law. He led discussions in area restaurants. He frequently called late night AM radio talk shows, agreeing with the conservative ones and jousting with the liberal ones.
He quit his last known job, selling hunting equipment at a sporting goods store, to devote himself exclusively to the cause.
He studied the excesses of government power and never allowed anyone to take his picture.
Frustrated and angry
The chronicle of his last decade, which he spent frustrated with the courts, the police, the media, all the institutions that dismissed him, may begin to explain, if not answer, why that frustration turned fatal.
Matthews was raised in Pittsburgh, where he spent the early years of his working life, said his brother-in-law, Robert Perkins, who lives in East Liverpool.
``He knew all of Pittsburgh,'' Perkins said. ``He worked in the steel mill up there. He worked in pizza shops up there. He's done truck driving, taxi cab driving. He was versatile in all those trades.''
In the late 1960s, Matthews served in the Marine Corps, Perkins said. He doesn't believe Matthews served in Vietnam and he doesn't know under what conditions he was discharged, but he said Matthews wasn't receiving veterans benefits.
Perkins, who is 52, served in the Army in Germany. He said his brother-in-law rarely spoke about the military, but they shared the same view about having to re-enter American society as civilians.
``They taught me to fight, taught me to kill. But when I come back here, I have to live by their rules?'' Perkins said.
Matthews moved to the Canton area sometime in the late 1960s.
He had a son, now in his late 20s, and a wife, Kathy, who is 54. Perkins believes they have been married about 15 years.
He said the family has no photos of Matthews.
``He didn't believe in pictures,'' Perkins said.
Stark County court records indicate that in 1993, a judgment lien was filed against Matthews, apparently for failure to pay personal income tax.
In the mid-1990s, he worked for about 18 months in the hunting department at Kame's Sports Center in Lake Township.
``Don was an interesting character,'' said his supervisor, Steve Brockway. ``He felt back then that government was interested in taking his rights away.''
Matthews buttonholed co-workers and even customers into discourses on God and the Constitution.
``We didn't allow him to do that,'' Brockway said. ``He felt passionate about it. At that time, in the mid-'90s, there were a lot of people who felt that way, especially after Waco and Ruby Ridge.''
Brockway didn't know much about Matthews' life outside of work, except that he boasted he had made a lot of money gambling in Las Vegas.
``He had a tendency to embellish things a little,'' he said.
Matthews was a natural fit at the gun counter and once told Brockway about buying the weapon he later used to kill Patrolman Taylor -- a Czechoslovakian military pistol first made in 1952 and long out of production. Its firepower never stacked up to American military or police pistols, then or now, Brockway said.
``He had that when he worked here,'' Brockway said. ``They are surplus guns that are imported. I only deal with ones when they're turned in for a trade.''
Brockway said the .32-caliber bullets -- which were made for Soviet-bloc weapons -- also are rare and generally must be imported or purchased at gun shows.
Matthews' pistol weighed 33.9 ounces unloaded and racked 8 rounds in the magazine. It was a semiautomatic, which requires the shooter to pull the trigger for each bullet and ejects the bullet casing after each shot.
Sometime around 1996, Matthews left his job in the hunting department. But he dropped by the store once in either 1999 or 2000.
``I hardly recognized him the last time I saw him. He put on more weight and wore his hair shorter,'' Brockway said. ``He was looking to explore his activism.''
Rising in the ranks
Two years ago, Matthews ascended to the presidency of the National Constitutional Academy. He has been involved with the study group since the early 1990s, said his 71-year-old friend and fellow group member, David Gatto.
``This man is a strong defender of the Constitution,'' Gatto said. ``This man is a teacher of it -- he's very thorough. He knows it backward and forward, as well as the Bible.''
Gatto said Matthews led study groups several times a week at a Denny's restaurant in Massillon and at a diner near Magnolia. He also was a frequent voice on talk radio.
The station manager of radio station WERE (1300-AM) in Cleveland, Tom Bush, said Matthews was a regular caller of two programs at the station.
Bush said a station employee told him that Matthews frequently called to talk on a program with a more ``liberal bent'' called Blues News hosted by Dan Goulder from 11 p.m. to midnight. He also called a ``conservative'' show hosted by Jim Hereford from midnight to 2 a.m., Bush said.
The objects of Matthews' frustration varied.
``We are fighting the city of New Philadelphia because they have no valid oath of office. They're operating illegally,'' Gatto said. ``Don was involved to show them how to prepare the paperwork in order to take it to the highest court of the land.''
Gatto said the group found few people who would listen.
``The papers will not print it,'' he said. ``How do you fight them, if you've got the papers against you and you've got the politicians against you, and that's all they do?''
But Matthews abhorred violence, he said.
``Don't try to tie us into a militia group. We are not. We are a Christian Constitution study group,'' Gatto said. ``We tie the laws in with God's law to show how they relate.''
The group is particularly incensed about traffic laws and doesn't believe a state trooper has the authority to stop a vehicle or demand to see a driver's license.
``The police have become the standing army of our country,'' Gatto said. ``They are deliberately taking control of our people and the American people are sitting on their -- excuse my language, cover your ears -- ass because they won't stand up. All they want to worry about is the ballgame.''
On Friday night, perhaps after teaching his last class, Matthews drove south on state Route 21 past woods and farms.
He saw the flashing lights in his rearview mirror. A trooper clocked him doing 72 mph in a 60 mph zone. He wasn't wearing a seat belt, either.
He refused to give his license.
Matthews rolled down the window just an inch and quoted the Constitution he knew so well.
But the time for study was over.
Shooting a police officer in the back makes him a cowardly schizo anarchist and the right wing needs none of his ilk.
A lot of things have probably changed over 20 years. The two times I was pulled over in Ohio, in the late seventies, the officer actually sat on the passenger side of my car while he was writing out the ticket. At some point they probably decided that wasn't the best thing to do anymore. They probably also decided at some point that the officer needed to be able to READ the darned license, to see if it was (a) genuine (b)not expired, and that is difficult to do at night when someone decided they only needed to hold it up to the window. What's the cop supposed to do? Press his nose up against the glass to read it, so that he can be more easily shot in the head?
| REMINDER: This Sunday on C-SPAN | August 11 | ||||
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Somebody please explain to me how a 32-cal auto slug managed to penetrate the officer’s body armor.
Any body armor worth the name should be able to stop a .357 magnum round at point blank range.
Skimming through three threads on this shooting, IMO, you are correct.
It's unfortunate, but Matthews doesn't appear to have had a balanced enough life.
Occupationally, he was all over the place. He was not focused except on something which may not have earned anything.
As he aged, he may have realized he was in for some hard times in his old age, possibly not having enough set aside. (It may have been hypocritical of him to accept Soc. Security and Medicare, etc., since those programs are not Constitutional).
His error may have been spending too much time pre-occupied with political and government things and neglecting some basics, like providing for the wife and family (which includes preparing for retirement). This would mean working and staying steadily employed.
The work ethic by itself will keep most people out of trouble like this.
This is just my opinion, I have no facts about Matthews to back this up, except what I have read here.
I am deeply moved and saddened by this whole affair. I know the Massilon area and have been on Highway 21 many times, and visit there a couple times a year.
7.62x25 is a necked down cartirdge with a high muzzle velocity. The military surplus ammo, if old stcks are available would easily zip through ordinary soft body armor, but not through a ballistic plate.
From what I've read the round didn't penetrate the vest, but went up into the victim's chest starting at the buttocks. It's hard to imagine how the officer could have been shot by the suspect in this way unless he had turned his back on the guy and bent over at the waist. It seems just as likely that the cop was shot from behind by one of his fellow officers who got flakey when the shooting started.
"Driving is not a constitutional right."
Then help me reconcile your remark with the contents of the 9th amendment.
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to DENY OR DISPARAGE others retained by the people."
I assume you believe that no citizen has the retained "right" to use their privately owned, personal property, their automobile, to travel on roads constructed with the taxes they pay, to the destination of their choice.
This is my biggest gripe with you conservatives. You forget that there is the 9th amendment. The phrase, "...others retained by the people" is the core and essence of our liberty.
I don't argue about this, I just throw it out there. Take it or leave it.
The round was matched to Matthews' gun.
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