Extraordinary doesn’t begin to describe the life and death of Gary Black.
He was born Richard Gary Black Jr. Jan. 20, 1945, on a family farm in Anderson, South Carolina. Like most Southerners from his generation, he went by his middle name.
Gary died July 30, 2018 in his home in Northwest Aurora at 73. He was shot dead by police seconds after heroically rescuing his 11-year-old grandson and family from a drug-crazed intruder who’d broken down the front door in the middle of the night.
This was not your average Aurora break-in. Not your average hero. Not your average cop. Not your average family.
Everything about the surreal chain of people and events linked to Black’s funeral Saturday at Fairmont Cemetery was extraordinary.
Friends and family at the funeral couldn’t make clear enough what a heroic man Gary was. They couldn’t overplay how poignantly painful the irony is that he died saving his own grandson, and that he was shot-to-death by a police officer who charged into the house on a mission to rescue him and others.
Gary distinguished himself as an Army soldier in Vietnam by showing selfless valor so extreme, he was later awarded three Bronze Stars, a Purple Heart and a handful of other honors reserved for exceptional soldiers.
Those who knew him best said it may have been Gary’s resourcefulness that made his courage an uncommon force. Whether it was solving a construction problem at a motel he and his wife, Jeanette, ran together in Aurora in the 1970s, or making split-second, life-saving decisions under fire during battle, or inside his home, Gary made things happen when it mattered most.
Investigators may already know most of the details of how 26-year-old Dajon Harper became not just wasted on party drugs that night, but how he got so high his friends couldn’t stop him from stripping off all his clothes and kicking down the door to Gary’s house, grabbing his grandson and attacking him. The public doesn’t know yet.
What happened after that isn’t your average chaos that comes from naked, middle-of-the-night home invaders trailed by partying neighbors as the attacker bites into the ear of a kid and threatens everyone in the house.
Despite the pandemonium, Gary managed to get his gun and shoot Harper before he murdered his family, or himself.
Outside, police, who apparently got little and mixed information about what was going on inside the house, heard shots. They rushed to the door, see Gary holding a gun and a flashlight, and yell for him to drop the gun.
Gary didn’t. Investigators aren’t saying yet why. There’s conjecture about Gary’s hearing loss complicated by the sound of his own gun firing just seconds before police arrived. There’s been talk about shock, PTSD, even blame thrown at police for not identifying themselves as cops as they screamed at Gary to drop his gun.
There were four cops coming into the house to rescue victims inside, but just one of the officers shot Gary. That cop was a three-year-veteran on the force and himself a veteran. He had shot and killed a man with a gun at nearby motel just a month before. There have been no questions about the justification of that shooting.
Some of the family members and others question whether the 18-days that lapsed between the officer’s shooting the motel gunman and his going back on active duty was telling about why he fired on Gary, and the other three cops did not.
Police Chief Nick Metz has repeatedly balked at talk that the officer was trigger happy.
Metz, and a small group of fellow command officers, were at the Gary’s funeral Saturday, a testament to how extraordinary Metz, Gary, his family and this ordeal are.
It was Jeanette, Gary’s wife, who invited them, those close the family said. It was a singular show of grace, sympathy and compassion toward all Aurora officers. That included the officer who shot her husband, whom she also invited as well, according to two of those privy to the details. He or his supervisors apparently declined.
When Metz met with the media just days after the shooting, he was visibly distraught by Gary’s death. He didn’t make any comments Saturday. Just as he was leaving, a resident stopped him briefly to share her support for him and police.
Metz graciously accepted the praise at the funeral of a tremendous hero killed by one of his officers during an incredible conundrum.
Others haven’t been nearly as charitable to Metz and police. A community of gun-rights advocates, traditionally sympathetic to police — even after incidents that have spawned the Black Lives Matter movement — have been viciously critical of how police handled this incident.
Others have remained steadfast in their support of Metz and his force. Many, are still just baffled.
Aurora state Sen. Rhonda Fields, also at Gary’s services, marveled briefly at the extraordinary irony that has swept her into the tragedy, too.
She’s long been an avid supporter of Aurora police and Metz. Her own son and his fiance were crime-witnesses and killed because of that by a ruthless gunman in 2005.
She said Saturday that after conferring with Jeannette and other family members, she would likely push for the state Senate to examine whether 18 days is long enough to keep cops who’ve shot someone from returning to active duty.
Herself a renown advocate for gun control because of her son’s murder, Fields mused how odd it would be for those usually harshly critical of her gun bills to fall behind a police-shooting measure, if she were to sponsor one.
The “what-ifs” are as tortuous as the calamity itself. What if Gary didn’t have or use a gun? Would they have been able to hold off Harper? What if he’d stopped him with a knife or some other weapon? Would Gary then have been shot? What if the cop who fired the lethal shot had still been on desk duty or leave, just over a month after the first shooting? Would another cop have fired? What if Gary were black and Harper white? Would those who rally around police now or those critical of how they reacted feel the same way?
They’re troublesome questions as arduous as the tragedy so complicated and so extraordinary that it almost guarantees no one is going to like the answers and explanations we’re all waiting for.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com