COLLEGE STATION ? The night before his life was publicly celebrated for dedication to community, Brian Bachmann was returned to his spiritual home, there to be remembered and grieved over in a more familiar venue. It was a night for tears and unabated sorrow expressed one to one, hug to hug, with his body resting safely in the church he loved and which loved him back, and his widow standing at his side.
Most lives, viewed honestly, get mixed reviews. Not so with Brazos County's Precinct 1 constable, for whom law enforcement was the simplest and most direct expression of public service. Bachmann, 41, had pulled himself up from nothing with hard work, devotion to craft, and a constant smile.
Of the man who ended his life in a burst of fire from a Czech assault rifle, little was said. Thomas Alton ?Tres? Caffall, who shot the constable just after noon on Monday, lived at the other end of the spectrum ? withdrawn, unemployed, gun-obsessed.
?Crazy as hell ... a ticking time bomb,? said his stepfather, an assessment so dismissive that it speaks volumes.
Each man might have lived to old age but for a momentary intersection when Bachmann showed up at Caffall's house with a form letter describing the eviction process. No one knows why Caffall seized that moment to go all-in with his pent-up anger. A few minutes later, as he lay dying in the small rented house just south of the Texas A&M University campus, Caffall apologized to a stranger kneeling beside him for what he had done.
Bachmann was mortally wounded, soon to leave a wife and two children behind. Christopher Northcliffe, a neighbor who happened to walk by at the wrong second, also was dead. He too was a family man, a beloved father who was walking down the street to meet a contractor at a rental house he owned when shots rang out. As he turned to look in the direction of the noise, a bullet hit the 51-year-old in the chest.
Barbara Holdsworth, a passing motorist who had come to town from Houston to deliver her daughter to college, was hit by two bullets and remains hospitalized, though she is now alert and walking. Several responding police officers had minor injuries.
Only a few minutes had passed. But the aftermath presented a depressingly familiar American tableau: Disaffected loner grabs a gun and does his worst.
Tale of two men
In the case of the 35-year-old Caffall, the clues were slight. Newer acquaintances said he appeared depressed and talked about guns a lot. And he was broke. Older friends recalled a normal guy who came across as neither threatening nor off-kilter. Something had happened in recent times, but it was unclear what. He had a marriage of several years to a woman more than 20 years older. They lived in Temple and divorced in 2010.
On his Facebook page, Caffall posted photos of several guns and chatted with online friends about the details of their purchase and benefits. Otherwise he quoted Emily Dickinson, George Orwell and Winston Churchill. He indicated he was an optimist. He said he admired a famous Russian sniper.
When informed of the shooting, Caffall's mother, Linda Weaver, seemed shocked but not surprised. She told reporters that she had been ?very concerned? after he quit his job in January and announced that he was not going to work anywhere else ? ever. She said he was mentally ill but she did not go into details.
?The minute I saw the TV, I knew it was him,? Weaver said. ?I've been that worried about him.?
Her husband, stepfather Richard Weaver, was less sympathetic.
?We were hoping he'd kill himself before doing something like this,? he told KPRC-TV. ?We are just devastated for the families this SOB killed.?
Caffall's sister, Courtney, said the family was stunned by the devastation he caused. Their attorney, W. Tyler Moore, said Caffall came from a loving home.
However, a relative of Richard Weaver described a family that had troubles of its own, at least by the time Caffall was a young adult. Daniel Weaver, Richard's first cousin and former business partner, said guns were a constant theme in their lives. Richard and Daniel and their families lived on adjacent property in Grimes County and worked together in the family beekeeping business.
Daniel and his wife, Laura, moved back to the country after Daniel grew tired of practicing law in the mid-1990s. When he learned that Richard had been indicted as part of a drug smuggling ring for which he received probation, he insisted on splitting the business. That split sparked enduring enmity and constant friction.
Daniel Weaver doesn't have strong memories of Caffall as a young man. Laura Weaver did recall one episode when Caffall was fishing with his stepbrother. A snake was spotted in the water, she said, and he went berserk.
?He started screaming and grabbed one of our canoe paddles and killed the snake,? she said. ?He just started slamming it down so hard it broke the paddle. That explosive reaction bothered us. First of all, it wasn't his snake to kill. It was not a normal reaction for people who live in the country. The snake was mostly in the water and not bothering anybody. We didn't want him on the property after that.?
Monday's shooting in College Station brought back unpleasant memories, Laura said.
?Most of the time Tres was quieter than the people around him,? she said. ?But I know what he was around for the last 10 or 15 years. I know they shot guns all the time around their property. Guns are a part of their matrix. There's more to the story than just saying he was mentally ill.?
For most of the last two decades, Brian Bachmann worked as a Brazos County deputy sheriff, but away from the job he was everywhere. He helped coach his kids' Little League teams, took mission trips for his church, volunteered with nonprofit groups, and even handled street-crossing duties at his daughter's elementary school one day a week. When he ran for the Precinct 1 constable job in 2010, no one was surprised when he won.
The elevation in status didn't go to his head. Bachmann wasn't a desk guy. He didn't think twice after finishing his barbecue lunch Monday about grabbing an eviction notice that a deputy constable was planning to drop off and said he would do it himself.
Hell breaks loose
Forcibly evicting someone from a home can be a dicey matter, and usually constables come in force to do it. But this was just a notice of a legal proceeding. Bachmann wasn't wearing his bulletproof vest.
Caffall opened fire as Bachmann approached the house. Then all hell broke loose. Christopher Northcliffe was struck a block away. Barbara Holdsworth, the 51-year-old motorist, was driving in the middle of the block. A quick call was made to 911, but the firing continued as officers reached the scene three minutes later.
Rigo Cisneros was working on his computer at his house 100 feet from where the shooting took place. ?I actually felt the first noise,? said Cisneros, a 41-year-old former Army medic. ?I was pretty sure it was construction, like someone had hit a pipe.?
Then more loud sounds, rapid and continuous. ?I thought, that's really loud and weird,? Cisneros said. ?What tool is that??
He opened the back door and heard the sound of a high-caliber rifle. That's when he called 911.
?Gunfire. At Fidelity and Highlands,? he told the dispatcher.
As shots kept ringing out, he hung up the phone and looked out his window at a scene not unlike those he had witnessed in combat. The first to respond, Officer Brad Smith, 54, was pinned down behind a tan vehicle parked in the front yard, taking cover, shooting his gun over his head toward the gunman. Caffall stood on his front porch about 100 feet away, returning fire.
Cisneros told his wife to hide behind the refrigerator. He called 911 a second time: ?Officer-involved shooting near Fidelity.?
When Cisneros saw Bachmann lying on the ground about 20 feet from the porch, he called again.
?An officer is down,? he told the operator.
Caffall kept coming out onto his front porch. Officers and gunman exchanged fire for several minutes. Smith kept yelling commands to Caffall, all ignored. More officers responded, flooding the neighborhood. A tactical officer ran across the street, broke through the plants at a fence and tried to get an angle on the shooter.
?A few seconds after that there was a lot of hollering and an eruption of gunfire from everywhere,? Cisneros said.
After the fusillade, officers rushed into the house. Cisneros ran to the scene, where an officer was leaning over Bachmann.
?Brian, Brian, it's not your day,? the officer kept saying. ?Come on, Brian. Get up. It's not your day.?
Cisneros and the officer quickly began CPR. He could not feel a pulse. They continued pumping his chest, blowing into his mouth, pumping some more. Cisneros thought he heard a few gurgles.
Paramedics arrived and took over. Cisneros then ran over to the wounded and handcuffed Caffall. Cisneros worked on him alongside another paramedic, with Caffall conscious the whole time.
He suddenly asked Cisneros to do him a favor. ?Could you tell the officer I shot I'm sorry?? Caffall asked in a clear, quiet voice.
Minutes later, Caffall groaned, then slipped into shock. He grew pale and tried to repeat what the paramedics were saying: ?Shallow breathing, shallow breathing.?
Soon the ambulances took away the constable and the shooter.
It was over in about 20 minutes, by just after 12:30. Police later determined that Caffall had fired 65 shots. What they could not figure out, and perhaps never will, is why he fired even once.
mike.tolson@chron.com
erin.mulvaney@chron.com
Staff Writer Cindy George contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/article/Very-different-lives-end-at-deadly-College-3798833.php
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