The Truth is Stranger Than Fiction

 "Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction" 

Or: Things Are Not Always What They Seem

Back in the 1990s, I worked as a Cameron Parish Deputy Sheriff, patrolling the sandy beaches of Holly Beach, Louisiana.

Me on Holly Beach

One weekend, dispatch called about a fight on the beach near the Four Corners Bar. Two men were involved.

When I arrived, I found a crowd gathered in a circle. That is rarely a good sign. Nobody forms a circle to discuss the weather.

I stepped out of my patrol car, made my way through the crowd, and immediately spotted one of the men lying on the ground.

He had a knife sticking out of his leg.

Standing off to the side was the other man.

I asked who had been fighting, and the crowd pointed to the man on the ground and the man standing nearby. At first glance, this appeared to be a fairly easy case to solve. One man had a knife in his leg. The other man did not.

I walked over to the man who was still standing, pulled out my handcuffs, and prepared to arrest him for aggravated battery.

That was when he said, “I didn’t stab him. He stabbed himself.”

Now, during my time in law enforcement, I heard plenty of creative explanations. But “He stabbed himself” sounded like one of the least creative—and least believable.

I told him his story made absolutely no sense, handcuffed him for everyone’s safety, and went to help the wounded man while I figured out what had actually happened.

I knelt beside the man with the knife sticking out of his leg and asked him to tell me what happened.

And this is where the story took a turn.

The handcuffed man was telling the truth.

The injured man explained that the two of them had been preparing to fight. The other fellow was bigger, so he pulled out a knife and warned him to leave him alone.

The bigger man was apparently not impressed. He laughed at him and, using some rather unkind language, told him he was too chicken to stab anybody.

The man on the ground decided there was only one reasonable way to prove him wrong.

He stabbed himself in the leg.

Apparently, his thought process was: I’ll show you what I’m capable of—even if I have to do it to myself.

So there I stood on Holly Beach with one man in handcuffs for a stabbing he didn’t commit, another man on the ground with a knife in his leg that he had put there himself, and a crowd of witnesses who had just watched the whole thing unfold.

True story.

And yes, alcohol may have been involved.

Actually, there wasn’t much “may have been” about it.