The shots rang out. In the midst of calm, terror took its place. But where would one run in the heart of chaos?
“Everyone else is running away and we’re running into it,” retired Washington State Patrol Trooper Bill Dingfield said as he thought back to June 20, 1994, at the Spokane Fairchild Air Force Base hospital. “I remember trying to get people into the ambulances and all the time we’re out in the open and expecting someone to start shooting.”
Only minutes before, Dingfield and his trooper partner had been bantering about birthday plans — Dingfield celebrating the evening with his wife, Ruth, and Sgt. Lee Boling watching his teen son blow out candles.
“Bill called me from his cellphone,” Ruth said, recalling clearly the moment she learned her husband was speeding to the scene. “He said, ‘I might not be able to contact you,’ ” and then added a plea she still remembers to this day, words that became her mission minute by minute while the story unfolded on the local news.
Fear heightened when word came that one gunman had been shot outside the emergency room and might be at large. Even worse, inside the medical center — or on the roof — there was thought to be another shooter, perhaps in military gear.
“We’re trying to control the people, all the time looking to see where the other shooter was,” Dingfield said, reflecting on the frenzied scene that hot summer day. “You saw all these people running around with guns, but you didn’t know who were the good guys and the bad guys,” he said about some in military uniform and some who were not.
All the while, believing to be in the line of fire from the upper story, the trooper assisted medics as they rushed to save lives. At one point, Dingfield worked his way over to a severely injured man he’d been asked to help, staying there for over an hour, crouched low and with only his vehicle as protection.
The man Dingfield had been guarding — and who died at the scene — turned out to be the lone gunman, Dean A. Mellberg, disgruntled about his discharge from the service for erratic behavior. He killed four and injured 23 others in the melee.
“I was praying for both my sergeant and myself that we’d make it home that night,” Dingfield, who now lives in Kennewick, said about his faith.
And throughout that tragic day, Ruth Dingfield had not forgotten her husband’s urgent plea: “Pray for me.”
In that tumultuous time when life was out of their control and evil sought to overshadow hope, Bill and Ruth Dingfield knew where to find refuge. They both ran to Jesus.
“The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” Psalm 18:2
