Charlie Decker survives sniper shot

The morning of May 14, 1974, at Placerville High School had already seen two killings and a classroom held hostage when the authorities decided to take direct action. State police captain Frank Philbrick, coordinating the response from the administration office, had brought in the state's best sharpshooter, Daniel Malvern, a small man with a crew cut who looked like an accountant. Malvern was given a Mauser rifle with a telescopic sight, test-fired it at a gravel pit several miles away, and then returned to the scene. He positioned himself in the prone position behind the front fender of a police cruiser parked on the lawn, in deep shadow, and gauged the windage with a wet thumb. Through the 30X cross-hatched lens, Charlie Decker, standing behind Mrs. Underwood's desk in Room 16, must have looked as big as a bulldozer. There was no window glass to throw a glare, because Decker had earlier shot out the panes to stop the police from using a bullhorn. It was an easy shot, but Malvern took his time, knowing this was probably the most important shot of his life.

The Shot and Its Impact

At 10:55 AM, as Decker half-rose and half-leaned over the desk to put a bullet in Ted Jones, his body twisted toward the window. Malvern fired, placing the bullet exactly where he had hoped: through Decker's breast pocket, directly over his heart. The impact knocked Decker straight backward against the blackboard, where the chalk ledge bit into his back. Both his cordovan loafers flew off, and he hit the floor on his fanny. A huge auger of pain drilled his chest, followed by sudden numbness. The ability to breathe stopped, and spots flashed in front of his eyes. Irma Bates began screaming with her eyes closed and fists clenched, her face a hectic, patched red. Ted Jones started getting out of his seat, moving in a slow, dreamy motion toward the door, shouting, "They got the son of a bitch!" But Decker, despite the pain, managed to fire the pistol into the wood beside Jones's head, forcing him back down. Grace Stanner calmly announced, "You're shot, Charlie." Decker fired twice more at the rushing police, making them retreat, and Philbrick yelled, "Get back! Get the Christ back!"

The Revelation of Titus

When Decker finally looked down at himself, he expected to see his blue shirt matted with blood. Instead, there was a large dark hole dead center through his breast pocket, with an uneven scattering of smaller holes radiating outward like a solar-system map. He reached inside the pocket very carefully and remembered Titus, the Helpful Padlock, which he had rescued from a wastebasket earlier that morning. He pulled the lock out, and the class went "Aaahhh!" as if he had just performed a magic trick. The bullet had smashed through the hard, high-density plastic dial, sending high-speed bits of shrapnel through his shirt, but not one of them had touched his flesh. The steel behind the face had caught the slug, turning it into a deadly lead blossom with three bright petals. The whole lock was twisted, as if by fire; the semicircular lock bar had been pulled like taffy, and the back side had bulged but not broken through. When Decker unbuttoned his shirt, Titus was imprinted on his chest in angry purple, the flesh mashed into an indentation deep enough to hold water. He felt nauseated and closed his shirt.

Aftermath and Significance

The failed assassination attempt marked a turning point in the hostage crisis. Decker, now furious and emboldened, screamed at Principal Denver over the intercom, demanding that Philbrick be told he almost had a bloodbath on his hands. He declared a one-hour truce, during which the class continued its psychological unraveling, culminating in the students' collective attack on Ted Jones. The padlock, a mundane object of school routine, became a symbol of Decker's improbable survival and the chaotic, almost farcical nature of the violence. Later, in the Augusta State Hospital, Decker would see a television commercial where a rifle shot at a padlock looked just like old Titus did when he took it out of his pocket. The first and only time he saw it, he leaned down between his legs and puked between his ankles. The incident also echoed his earlier life: the Creaking Thing of his childhood, the father who threw him to the ground, the hatchet he had once held in the garage—all moments where survival and defiance were intertwined with objects and acts of resistance. The padlock, like the pipe wrench and the hatchet before it, became a tool of survival, but this time it was not a weapon he wielded but a shield he unknowingly carried.