GAIL DRAKE: ‘O Captain, My Captain! – You’ve fallen cold and dead’

“A person will eat well by the fruit of his mouth, but the soul of the unfaithful feeds on violence.”

— Proverbs 13:2

The hand-held video image on Facebook is shocking and hard to watch. Running up to a black man sprawled on a sidewalk, blood seeping out and pouring into cracks in the sidewalk in long thin rivers.

“O.G! O.G! Come on, stay with me, O.G!” cries the voice behind the camera. The African-American man, dressed in black with a black police hat lying above his head, blinks and tries to turn his head. His eyes slowly grow dark.

The voice continues to yell as he swings the camera to catch images of young men jumping into cars. “Over a TV? For real?! This is somebody’s granddaddy!”

The Facebook caption reads: “Police Captain Murdered by Looters over a TV!”

The brutal murder of 77-year-old retired St. Louis Police Capt. David Dorn was captured live on June 2 when his body was discovered in front of Lee’s Pawn and Jewelry around 2:30 a.m. Dorn was responding to the burglar alarm at his friend’s pawn shop shortly after violent riots and protests rocked the streets of St. Louis. That night four officers were shot, police were pelted with rocks and fireworks, and 55 businesses were vandalized and burglarized, and one store caught on fire.

A makeshift memorial outside the store included a handwritten sign that read: “Y’all killed a black man because ‘they’ killed a black man??? Rest in peace.” Eventually two men were arrested and pleaded guilty to his murder.

Captain David Dorn joined the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department in November 1969 and retired in October 2007 after 38 years of distinguished service. Then he served as police chief of nearby Moline Acres for six years. Beloved by all who knew him, he and his wife, Sgt. Ann Marie Dorn, who also served with the St. Louis Police Department, were dedicated to family and community, focusing on youth programs that assisted disadvantaged youths.

His former police chief, Tim Fitch, described Dorn as “bigger than life … a fun guy, a happy guy … a true public servant. You never had to wonder what he was thinking when somebody did something incredibly stupid like a crime because he would just say it as he saw it.”

The Ethical Society of Police, that represents black officers in St. Louis, said that Dorn was “the type of brother that would’ve given his life to save them if he had to. Violence is not the answer, whether it’s a citizen or officer.”

Surrounded by their children, widow Ann Dorn made her first public statement. “His life was senselessly taken from me, from us, by an opportunist who had no regard for human life or the law. … This didn’t have to happen, but it must have been God’s will for David. We must come together as a community and do better. We need to teach young people that life is very precious.”

Hundreds stood in long lines at Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church to pay their respects to this beloved and respected man, well-known for helping others out of poverty and into a life of service. A meaningful life — cut short by thugs and criminals who pretended to be protesting violence.

Captain David Dorn: an American hero. Lest we forget.

♦ “O Captain! My Captain!” – composed by poet Walt Whitman in memorium of emancipator President Abraham Lincoln