Sheriff in the spotlight
“This has been the worst thing I ever have had to deal with,” says Joe Tackitt, who has served town for 25 years.
SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas – For nearly 25 years, Joe Tackitt’s career as Wilson County sheriff was about as quiet as the neighborhood streets in the small towns tucked away in farm and cattle country.
The peace in this town of about 600 just southeast of San Antonio was shattered Sunday by the deadly hammering of gunfire in the middle of a worship service at the First Baptist Church. Tackitt’s life as a low-key rural sheriff changed dramatically.
He found himself in demand via satellite by the cable news networks and in person by a shaken community badly in need of comfort.
“This has been the worst thing I ever have had to deal with,” said Tackitt, 70, who grew up and raised his family in the community he has served since his first election in 1992. He spoke with the USA TODAY NETWORK almost 48 hours after the violence started. “I was raised here, and I raised my family here. This really hits home for me.”
Tackitt is every bit the Southern sheriff many would imagine. He’s tall and gray-haired. He wears a white cowboy hat, a sheriff ’s star on his white shirt and a pistol in a brown leather holster on his hip. He has made himself available to the battalion of reporters and camera crews that set up camp blocks from the scene of the worst mass shooting in Texas history.
He answers sometimes repetitive and rhetorical questions with patience and resolve. A low speaking voice conceals what he said are deep emotions about the tragedy in the county that has been home to four generations in his family.
Like many of his neighbors and friends, Tackitt said he expected a quiet first Sunday in November. He was at a turkey lunch about a half-hour away when he was alerted about the horrific events in Sutherland Springs, a farming town bisected by a four-lane stretch of U.S. Highway 87.
“I was told there was an active shooter at a church and I needed to get over there,” he said. “It took me a little time because I was 35 miles out.”
Tackitt’s deputies responded to reports that the gunman was chased by two civilians, one of whom grabbed his own rifle and hit the killer with two rounds — one in the chest; one in the arm. A Wilson County deputy was among the first to find the killer dead in his vehicle from a self-inflicted shot to the head.
“I just couldn’t imagine going through what these folks are going through,” Tackitt said, noting that he has two grown daughters and two young grandsons. “I think, ‘What if this was my family?’ ”
“This has been the worst thing I ever have had to deal with. I was raised here, and I raised my family here. This really hits home for me.” Joe Tackitt Wilson County sheriff