A long road to a huge moment
Man who saved trooper opens up
Time seemed to slow for Thomas Yoxall. He soaked in the details: the four flares set up roadside, the patrol car’s lights in the predawn darkness. The trooper on the ground, being pummeled by a man.
Yoxall pulled his car over and exited. He held his handgun in a threequarter draw, ready to fire. He walked, step over step, trying to keep himself as narrow a potential target as possible.
Yoxall yelled at the man to back away from the trooper. The man did not. Instead, he raised his fists high in the air.
Yoxall saw his opportunity. He fired three times. He watched through the gun sights as the second and third shots hit their mark.
Yoxall,44, saved the patrolman’s life that January morning on Interstate 10. He also lived out an argument-ending episode about why upstanding in-
dividuals should be armed.
Yoxall believes that. He also believes there should be ownership restrictions.
Part of that comes from his own knowledge that guns are not always used for celebrated purposes.
He has been on the wrong end of a gun at least four times, during confrontations in his youthful hellion days. Those were four times when he also could have fired at a person and had that homicide potentially ruled a justified use of force.
When the story of what he had done was initially reported, no one knew anything about Yoxall. Not his name. Not that he was heavily tattooed, that he was a journeyman plumber who dabbled in portrait photography. Not that he was a former felon. The public only knew what he did on the side of the freeway.
And for that, Yoxall was given a title: “good Samaritan.”
In the biblical story, a man is beaten and left lying on the side of the road. Two people pass by the man. But a man from Samaria, a region that feuded with the Jewish people to whom Jesus told the parable, stopped to help. The Samaritan tended to the man’s wounds and took him to a nearby inn. No one died in that tale. What is similar in the stories is that people who could have stopped to help kept moving.
“I loathe society,” Yoxall said. He figured there must have been dozens of cars that drove by the scene. He said he was later told no one called 911. “I can’t fathom that,” he said.
Yoxall said he had no choice but to stop. Throughout his life, he had always seen himself in the role of a protector. This incident validated that notion.
“You always hope that at that moment, that critical moment, you can be able to perform based on what your convictions are,” he said. “You never know until that moment of truth.”
A rocky start
In 1999, Yoxall was not a good Samaritan. He was a youth counselor working at a group home in Glendale called Pathways. According to court records, he didn’t get along with many of the kids and thought they were stealing from him. He devised a plan to even the score.
One evening, he drove the group of residents to a movie. He returned to the home and, with an accomplice, stole stuff: a PlayStation gaming console. A CD player. A camera.
When the juveniles came back and saw their belongings gone, Yoxall called police to report the theft. Months later, someone implicated him in the crime.
When questioned, Yoxall confessed. He said he did it for the money, court papers say. He also said he was sorry.
Before he was sentenced, he told his life story to an officer charged with determining his punishment.
Yoxall said his childhood was marked by physical and verbal abuse. He has a knot on his forehead from being thrown against a piece of furniture.
He started drinking at 12, smoking marijuana at 11 and added LSD and mushrooms by 14.
He was diagnosed as bipolar and spent time in a mental facility in his junior year while battling depression. Part of his tailspin was the loss of three close friends that year, two to accidents and one to suicide.
For Yoxall, his three months in the “loony bin,” as he described it, marked the first time he felt calm. He was free from what he felt was the chaos at home.
Yoxall moved out of his house at 17, lying on a lease application to get his own apartment.
He told the details of his childhood to the probation officer, who wrote that Yoxall felt “ashamed and humiliated” and that the thought of the crime made Yoxall feel “sick all the way down to the pit of his stomach.”
The report recommended probation. The judge granted it in January 2001. As a condition, Yoxall was not allowed to own a firearm.
The images of a life
Yoxall got his first tattoo at age 17. Something small, stupid and easily hidden under clothes, he said. As the years passed, the ink creations became larger, more elaborate and more meaningful.
At 24, Yoxall had etched into his right arm the character Winnie the Pooh as depicted in the Disney cartoons, but wearing a blindfold, cigarette in his mouth, and crucified. Blood from the nail hole in his paw was dripping into a jar marked “Hunny.”
To Yoxall, it was a memorial to the loss of innocence. He had just lost a friend to a car wreck. And he thought about friends he lost as a teenager, to suicide and in other car wrecks.
It is a tattoo that might startle people, but on Yoxall’s arm, it blends in with so many others. Yoxall’s collection of tattoos are along his arms, chest and back. He had letters tattooed on the knuckles of his hands that read, “Forsaken.” He had smaller letters placed vertically on the middle sections of his fingers. When interlaced, they spelled “Assassin.”
Yoxall also stretched holes in his earlobes with gauges. He started with a tunnel three-eighths of an inch in diameter, among the largest available at the time, he said. He also had small barbells placed through the skin in his back, near the nape of his neck. He said he was among the first in the city to get the body-modification jewelry.
Yoxall took the gauges out of his ears three years ago. But the holes were so wide, his earlobes will never grow back together. He doesn’t mind. Even though he is not that person anymore, he can’t deny he was at one time.
He feels the same about his tattoos. He touches up old ones and adds new ones to some of the remaining bare skin on his body. For Yoxall, his tattoos reveal his level of commitment and conviction. He took one step of commitment when he extended his tattoos below his sleeve. Then, he added the one on his neck.
“When I got my throat tattooed, everybody looked at me differently,” he said.
It is an illustration of an open straight razor, making a V shape across his throat. There are small blood drops by the blade.
It called attention to himself. It invited derision. It also brought Yoxall into a community of like-minded individuals who enjoyed decorating their bodies. At 19, Yoxall had stopped drinking, for the most part, and had stopped doing drugs. He had done so much of each, the appeal of each was gone. Among his friends, he was often the designated driver.
‘You know if they mean business’
He was also the designated enforcer.
“I had the reputation for taking care of people’s dirty laundry for them,” Yoxall said. “That’s a reason why people associated with me.”
Yoxall had been a brawler since high school. Typically, he said, there would be a fight at the beginning of the year. After time passed and, Yoxall surmised, people forgot about the brutality of the first beating, someone would challenge him at the end of the year.
Those fights continued into adulthood. Yoxall was often challenged and was not one to back down.
At times, the confrontations escalated into gunplay.
Four times, Yoxall said, someone at a party pulled a gun on him. Each time, he said, he could tell by looking at the man’s eyes that he was using the gun as a tool to threaten and that the man didn’t actually intend to pull the trigger.
“You know if they mean business or not,” he said.
Yoxall was able to talk his way out of each situation. He recalled, vividly,
one time where he calmly explained the consequences of the action and told the person he didn’t want that outcome.
Yoxall said being in those situations would help him remain calm when faced with the situation on the freeway. Those scared, irresponsible gun owners would help steel him for the time when he would save a trooper’s life.
Finding a community
When he turned 30, in February 2003, Yoxall took stock of himself. He was a journeyman plumber, a college dropout, a convicted felon and a tough guy whom his friends liked because he was an intimidating enforcer. He was also a married father of two children who were becoming old enough to be aware of the man he was.
“It’s not the legacy I wanted to leave for my kids,” he said. Yoxall stopped hanging out with old friends and worked on adopting new habits. He volunteered at his kids’ school. He started working with developmentally disabled children.
Mostly, he decided to stop carrying around the anger over his childhood. “At some point, you wake up and decide this isn’t going to control my life anymore,” he said. “I need to leave those stones at the door. This is not who I wanted to be.”
Yoxall had been released from probation the previous month, one year earlier than his sentence, on the recommendation of his probation officer.
In August 2003, Yoxall asked that his felony conviction be reduced to a misdemeanor. And he asked for his gun back. The judge granted both requests.
That same year, at a shooting range, a man came up to him and started talking tattoos. The two hit it off.
The man was ex-military and owned a shooting range. Soon, Yoxall was out shooting with the man and his friends, a mix of law enforcement and current or former military personnel.
“We were enjoying ourselves, but we were also there to hone our skills and to learn from one another,” he said.
They ran barricade drills, trying to hit targets while ducking behind an object. They practiced the one-hole drill, trying to group shots on a target as closely as possible so they made one large hole. They practiced while wearing “plate carriers,” body-armor vests.
For Yoxall, it was a professional spin on the shooting he did on his own starting in the late 1990s. He was not content to set up bottles and cans in the desert and fire away. He tried to do tactical training on his own. One of the spots where he practiced his shooting was on a patch of desert off Interstate 10, west of Phoenix.
On the side of the road
On Jan. 12, Yoxall and his girlfriend, Heidi Jones, were driving to Disneyland, where she was going to run a 10K race. As they left the city, they saw the Department of Public Safety trooper enter westbound I-10 from the on-ramp at State Route 85.
Yoxall was doing 82 mph and said something along the lines of what an awful start to the day it would be to get a speeding ticket.
But, Yoxall said, the trooper kept going, distancing himself from their silver Toyota Tacoma truck.
They caught up with him a few miles ahead and saw he had pulled to the side of the freeway. Yoxall slowed as he saw the flares on the road. It was dark, and Yoxall said he didn’t want to run over a flare or other debris on the road.
Then he looked over and saw what was happening. “Call 911,” he said to his girlfriend. He passed the scene, sped up, then pulled over. “I wanted distance between the situation and me,” he said.
What happened next, Yoxall estimates, occurred within 10 seconds. But to him, it played out much more slowly.
A woman’s body lay beside the freeway. Not a threat, he thought. The lights from the cruiser were blinding, so he adjusted his approach. He saw the trooper had his gun holstered. He saw another gun in the road. The slide was locked back. Yoxall surmised it was out of bullets. Also not a threat.
The trooper was on the ground, bloodied. His attacker was straddling him and raining punches.
“The guy’s on top of him in full mount, like a UFC fighter,” he said.
Yoxall yelled: “Do you need assistance?”
The trooper, Ed Andersson, replied: “Help me.” The attacker yelled at Andersson to shut up.
Yoxall approached, his Springfield XD9 9mm in his hand, and changed his position, giving himself a clear line of fire. He saw the attacker look at him. Yoxall said his face showed pure evil.
“He raises his arms up again to pummel him,” Yoxall said.
That’s when Yoxall squeezed the trigger. “Pop, pop, pop.” His third shot hit the man’s head. Yoxall knelt over the injured trooper. “My name is Thomas,” he told him. “I’m here to help.”
Another motorist stopped and used the radio to call in the incident. Within minutes, DPS cars swarmed the area. To Yoxall, the wait seemed longer.
As troopers approached, Yoxall placed his gun on the ground.
Yoxall told troopers he was the shooter.
He wore a hoodie and shorts and felt cold in the January air. Troopers separated him and his girlfriend. His immediate thought was of her: Was she OK? It would be a thought that would continue haunting him in the coming days, his only regret about the incident.
“I didn’t give her a choice to participate in that,” Yoxall said.
The trooper was taken to a hospital. He would survive his injuries, which included a gunshot to the shoulder.
A trooper who knew Andersson came up to Yoxall, called him a hero and thanked him. Yoxall said he just wanted to give his statement and be on his way.
It happened
Yoxall was driven to a substation in Buckeye and interviewed.
As the detective questioned him, Yoxall said he became emotional for the first time, shedding tears as he described Andersson being beaten.
“What had to be going through his mind, along on the highway,” he said. “Nobody’s coming for me. I’m dead.”
Afterward, the interviewer told him he wouldn’t face charges, Yoxall said. He was driven back to the scene.
By the time he got there, word had spread among the troopers about what happened.
“Once that genie was out of the bottle, everyone else was coming up and thanking me,” Yoxall said. “It was awkward.”
Yoxall was allowed to drive away. The couple resumed their drive to California. No radio; little talking.
Somewhere down the road, Yoxall realized what happened.
“You ended somebody’s life today,” he remembered thinking. His mind also kept replaying the incident. Not everything. Just the final moment. Just the sight of the man’s head being torn apart.
“Jesus,” Yoxall said, “that image from that last shot.”
Yoxall wouldn’t recall the whole incident until weeks later. His brain would replay the scene bit by bit, each time backing it up by a few seconds. “It’s not like you’re filling in the blanks; there’s no blanks,” he said. “But your mind lets you see more of the picture until you see the whole darn thing.”
The two checked into a hotel. Yoxall took a shower. His girlfriend turned on the news. The scene they had left behind in Arizona hours earlier was now the subject of nationwide news coverage.
When Yoxall emerged, she called him to the TV. “Coast to coast,” Yoxall thought. It started sinking in. This happened. That quick decision while driving down a freeway near Quartzsite would change Yoxall’s life forever.
Suddenly, in the spotlight’s glare
Yoxall would have preferred not to hold the news conference, would have preferred to remain anonymous and not stand in front of a bank of television cameras and face questions from reporters.
The DPS arranged for Yoxall to speak
with the psychologist who deals with law-enforcement officers who have gone through traumatic situations. He also had nearly daily calls from the agency director. He received invitations for private meetings with units from other police departments. He was quietly taken to the state Capitol, where he met the governor and legislative leaders. Most importantly, he had also met the trooper whose life he saved. He mostly retained his anonymity. That wouldn’t last, the DPS told him. His name was part of a public document and would eventually be released. Best to get in front of it, they told him, rather than have every media outlet in the city, state and country chasing him down.
He met the media in a conference room near the DPS headquarters. Yoxall stood at the podium, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with the logo of his favorite camera brand, Leica.
He was shaking. He sounded nervous. He read from a statement. He talked about how awful it was to take a life, how glad he was to know the trooper was alive and that his family would get to enjoy the days and years ahead. He was asked about the “hero” tag. “I’m an ordinary person,” he said. “I was put in extraordinary circumstances. I may have acted heroically. I don’t consider myself a hero.”
Yoxall told reporters he felt carrying his firearm was a right, and he also felt he had a responsibility to train with it.
“I have taken the time to make sure, several times a year, to go out and practice those safety techniques to make sure I’m always responsible,” he said.
Yoxall knows his has become a singular story that illustrates the “good guy with a gun” scenario. His story shows the notion of an armed citizen preventing a tragedy is not the stuff of fantasy.
A few times a year, a citizen will kill a stranger in a homicide that police rule is justified. According to statistics reported to the FBI, it has happened 8.5 times a year in Arizona during the decade from 2004 to 2014.
A sampling of those shooting reports show they involve people protecting themselves or their property. People saving someone else is rare, saving an officer almost unheard of.
Yoxall hinted, without getting specific, that he has been approached by political operatives who wish to use his story to advance a gun-rights agenda.
“I could have totally milked it if I wanted,” he said. “Get yourself on the cover of the (National Rifle Association’s) quarterly magazine.”
But there was one hitch: Yoxall believes there should be restrictions on gun ownership.
He believes potential gun owners should undergo background checks. He also thinks there should be governmentmandated training for anyone who wishes to carry any type of gun.
“You have to hold yourself to a higher standard, to be a responsible citizen,” he said.
Yoxall said firearms are tools and that people need to be well-versed in how they operate before they attempt to use them in a dangerous and stressful situation. He said untrained people run the risk of shooting an innocent person, or being frozen with fear and having their gun taken away from them.
“You have to show me you’re proficient if I’m going to let you carry those weapons,” Yoxall said.
Yoxall doesn’t think his thoughts are unique. “I believe most educated, common-sense gun owners feel the same way, too,” he said. “There’s a lot of us out there. But they don’t have that voice.”
What if he’d strayed?
Over the months, Yoxall has found peace with the incident.
He asked his pastor if it was wrong not to feel guilty for shooting a man dead. “I can’t get over the fact I have no remorse for taking that person’s life,” Yoxall said. “For some reason, I thought I was going to get a demerit from Jesus.”
He said his pastor told him remorse came from questioning our actions. The pastor told him that his action was justified, that he was stopping evil. His psychiatrist has told him much the same.
Yoxall also met Trooper Andersson, the man whose life he saved.
“That’s when the healing really started to move forward exponentially,” Yoxall said. “There was that validation that what I did was just and true.”
They first met at a Peoria substation. Since then, they have had occasional Sunday lunches after church services.
Andersson said the two have become “real close friends.”
Andersson, who had become a grandfather for the second time two weeks before the shooting, said he had been in perilous, isolated situations before while patrolling freeways for more than two decades. He was grateful Yoxall drove by when he did during this one.
Andersson said he had a surgery recently, and his face still showed signs of the January trauma.
While Yoxall can be philosophical about the shooting, Andersson took a pragmatic approach. “For me, he was there that one day, those few seconds, those few minutes,” he said. “And that’s good.”
As Yoxall has digested the events, he has come to believe everything that happened in his past — the abuse, the fights, the arrest —helped lead him to that exact spot of Interstate 10 that morning.
He also knows there were several opportunities to stray from that path. What if he fought the theft charge and ended up in jail? Or engaged in a gun battle with any of the four people who had threatened him at parties? Or fouled up on probation and couldn’t get his gun back?
He also had altered the path ahead. For Trooper Andersson, who now had his timeline extended. And for himself.
“Even though mine wasn’t going to end, was mine still destined to go this way?” he said. “Mine’s taken a different course than what was initially there.”
Part of that was of Yoxall’s own doing. The week after his news conference, he quit his job as a plumber. He decided to turn his photography hobby into a business. He’s calling his company, cheekily, Sure Shot Photography.
It was a byproduct of the empowerment Yoxall felt after the incident.
“It was vindicating,” he said. “Not only did I stand upon my convictions that morning, I was able to act on them. That says something to me. I have that heart, that determination, that grit.”
The last few months have put Yoxall in settings he otherwise wouldn’t be. Last Saturday, he was in Prescott, speaking to a group of law-enforcement retirees. Two Saturdays before that, he was at a Scottsdale golf course for a DPS tournament. The week before that, he was in New York, being honored by a national police group. Afterward, officers circled him and got him to down a shot of Jameson whiskey with them.
Finally moving on
On Monday, Yoxall and Andersson received medals of valor from Director Frank Milstead at the annual DPS awards ceremony. Afterward, Yoxall was going to a substation, where he was going to take his first in a series of ridealongs with troopers. Yoxall planned to make a photo project out of it.
Milstead, speaking before the ceremony, said he was glad to see Yoxall embracing the DPS and law-enforcement community, just as it has embraced him.
“I just hope, somewhere down the road, outside of these mementos we’ve given to him these past few months, we can do more for him and his family,” Milstead said. “He’s just a solid community member and a great supporter of law enforcement.”
The DPS did help arrange for Yoxall to get two gifts.
One was a license plate frame that reads, “KOA.” It refers to the historic radio frequency used by Phoenix police and is only available for purchase by law enforcement. Yoxall said the police union representative who gave it to him joked it might get him out of a traffic ticket or two.
The other was a handgun. His was taken away from him, as it had become evidence in a homicide investigation. Milstead made a call, and another union representative presented Yoxall with a Glock.
Yoxall recently received a letter from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, officially informing him he would not face charges in the shooting. It was ruled justified.
A DPS detective called him and said they would set up a time to get his weapon back.
Yoxall does not plan to keep it. Part of the reason is that he has become a Glock aficionado, preferring it to his old Springfield. But he also carries no sentimentality for the object. “That’s not a memento I care to have,” he said.
When he gets it, Yoxall plans to take it to his gun store and sell it for store credit.