Tow truck driver risked life for Capac chief

• April
• 30

8:26 am Trucks

Tow truck driver Mike Thorpe had a simple explanation when asked how he helped get Capac Police Chief Raymond Hawks to safety as bullets were flying Wednesday afternoon.

“I wasn’t going to leave without the chief,” Thorpe said.

Hawks, who was shot at least twice in the chest and shoulder by a man apparently upset his car was being towed, was not going to get an ambulance until police arrived, Thorpe said.

So even as the shooter remained on the loose, he and a neighbor loaded the chief on Thorpe’s heavy-duty flatbed truck and he drove Hawks two blocks to a waiting ambulance. A man who lived in the area helped Thorpe and even cut the chief’s shirt off to put pressure directly on the wound to stop bleeding. The chief was conscious and talking as the men loaded him by his belt loops onto Thorpe’s truck.

“It is just a situation that people should not have to be put in,” said Thorpe, the owner of Mike’s Towing in Yale. “It is totally idiotic. We are not in the 1800s.”

Police about 1 a.m. Thursday arrested 50-year-old Capac resident Donald Burke in connection with the shooting of Hawks and St. Clair County Deputy Tim O’Boyle.

Hawks was in a medically induced coma Thursday at Port Huron Hospital. He is listed in critical but stable condition, police said. The chief turns 64 today.