Texas Parade Turns Deadly

HOST: For most of us, parades make for happy recollections -- holidays shared with family and friends. But for Paula Wiemers the word "parade" brings back terrifying memories more than two decades old. Paula begins her story by explaining that her young, first born son, loved parades. So although Paula was seven months pregnant with her second son in April of 1979, she decided to travel with her family to a large parade in downtown San Antonio, Texas. The Weimers walked along the already crowded parade route looking for a place from which to watch the show.

PAULA: It was a real hot, muggy, San Antonio spring day. Probably about 30 minutes before the parade was going to start, we were walking through this intersection, and it was the main intersection where the parade was going to begin, so there were a lot of police officers in that intersection for crowd control. We were actually heading across it to go to the other side, when we heard what really sounded like firecrackers going off. There were two right in a row. There was a little bit of confusion as everybody was trying to figure out who was throwing firecrackers. I happened to feel a little pain in my foot, and I looked down, and as I was wearing sandals, I could tell that my foot was bleeding. I was a little annoyed really, because I thought somebody was throwing firecrackers, and they were throwing them where the people were. As I was standing there, I stopped and was looking at my foot, and someone yelled, ‘They’re shooting, get down!’

MIKE: Still not quite believing the danger to be serious, Paula again looked down at her wounded foot. When she looked up next, she was the only person left standing in the intersection. Moments before she’d been surrounded by hundreds of people. Now, only the wounded and dying lay around her in the street. Recovering from her surprise, Paula dashed for the nearest curb and dove into a tangled pile of bodies and lawn chairs.

PAULA: As I looked around me, I noticed, I couldn’t help but notice, that a lot of people were wounded where I was laying. In fact, I wasn’t sure who was dead and who was alive. I really, in the first few moments, thought that I had landed on a lot of dead bodies. I think, at that moment, as I lay as flat as I could (I couldn’t get real flat being as pregnant as I was) I lay for a moment and I thought, ‘OK, I need to pray now! What shall I ask God for?’ And I asked him to protect my family, and I asked him to protect my unborn child, and I asked him to protect the people around me.

MIKE: Moments later, Paula found her father-in-law. The two cowered in the meager shelter provided by a telephone pole as the shots continued. They soon realized that the gunman was no more than forty yards away, firing from inside a small trailer sitting in a parking lot directly across the street.

PAULA: That day, I know I’ve seen more destruction than I’ve ever seen in my life. I also saw more kindness on the part of strangers than I think I would have ever witnessed given any other set of circumstances. As you can imagine, there were a lot of children coming to the parade with their families. My family got completely separated in the first moments. Every family did, I believe. Children were afraid. They were crying. They were being held, and held down, by strangers, because anybody who got up and ran was being picked off by the sniper. You could hear and feel the pullets whizzing over your head as we lay there on the curbside.

MIKE: Paula and her father-in-law lay trapped behind that telephone pole for ninety agonizing minutes. Eventually, police were able to begin directing those pinned down around the intersection to safety. Calling through a bullhorn, they directed Paula and her father-in-law to crawl across the parking lot behind them and into the shelter of a car dealership.

PAULA: So we started crawling, and they got back on the bullhorn, and said, ‘No, you need to crawl on your stomachs!’ because we were crawling on our hands and knees. I looked at my father-in-law, and he looked at me, and we tried to comply. So I lay down on my stomach, and he crawled behind me, and pushed the bottoms of my feet so that I could crawl. But as you could imagine, I couldn’t get very far. I probably got no more than ten yards, and I couldn’t crawl anymore. They got back on the bullhorn, and said, ‘You need to crawl faster!’ I think at that point, I just kind of lay on the pavement. I thought, ‘OK, I don’t know what to do here.’ About that time, I looked up and saw a man running towards me who was crouched down real low. He was running, and came right up to me and got down on my level, and he said, ‘Turn over on your back.’ And I did. Then he hooked his arms underneath my arms and crawled backwards, and drug me the rest of the way, which was about 30 yards, across the parking lot.

MIKE: Paula describes her guardian angel as a middle aged Hispanic man wearing a business suit. When she asked if he was a policeman, he told her no, but never volunteered any more information and she never saw the man again.

PAULA: He pulled me into the car dealership, it was actually a very waxed floor, so as he pulled me in, he let me go, and I slid across the floor like a beached whale. And people jumped out of the way and yelled, ‘She’s pregnant!’ So by the time I finished sliding, there were about ten paramedics coming over to see it I was all right. As I said, I had minor injuries, though. I was all right. About 15 minutes after we got to safety, my father-in-law found my husband and my son. They were safe.

MIKE: Paula’s mother-in-law had also escaped unharmed, but her sister-in-law suffered minor wounds similar to her own. Paula says it may seem like an unlikely passage, but when she thinks about the incident now, she often recalls the Bible’s twenty third Psalm.

PAULA: And though you wouldn’t think of a circumstance like that as God leading you in green pastures beside still waters and all those things, I think it’s the recognition that, wherever you are, in whatever circumstance, for me, it’s the recognition that he’s there. And it’s like you are in a peaceful place even when you’re not. As much fear as I felt in the actual circumstance, there was a lot of peace that I felt as well. Peace about my relationship with God, and peace about eternity. Sure, there was sadness and fear that I would not live to be with my family and my children, or see my children grow up, or maybe that they wouldn’t live beyond this tragedy, but there was as much peace, there was more peace, than there was fear.

MIKE: Police later estimated that there may have been as many as five thousand people in or near that fateful intersection when the shooting began. Remarkably, only fifty-one people were wounded in the attack and just three died, including the gunmen. Paula delivered the baby she carried through the ordeal a few weeks later. Perhaps providentially, she chose to name her newborn son Titus.

PAULA: And it was not until about two months after he was born that we looked up the meaning of the name, and Titus means ‘protected’. So that was a very apropos name. We had decided on his name before the April 29^th shooting, and we didn’t know until about 4 months later what his name meant. And I believe that’s true, and I think that’s something that he even recognizes in his life, because we believe that God protected him. He protected all of us. Our son is alive today because of God’s hand, and I think that’s been a very meaningful story in his life, and it certainly has to us, and again it just reiterates the fact that God is doing so many things that we have no knowledge of. It’s wonderful when you get a glimpse of it.

MIKE: A final glimpse of God’s Hand at work in tragic circumstances brings us full circle to the intersection where the story began. Paula didn’t realize until much later that a policemen standing near her in the street when the shooting began almost certainly saved her life and her unborn child.

PAULA: He was standing directly between me and the shooter. He was shot from the neck down. I was shot in the left foot because I was walking. His body perfectly silhouetted my body and protected me in those first few moments. Just like the body of that police officer perfectly shielded me from death and death of my unborn child, the body of God’s Son perfectly shields us from the death that sin provides.

MIKE: The peace Paula felt during that long day in San Antonio is based on her close and personal relationship with God our Father. Only He can provide a Safe Harbor to shelter us from the worst life has to offer.

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