POLICING THE POLICE
The air inside is stale and
hard to breathe. Belongings are
strewn about. There’s a dusty
television, an answering machine, a computer printer still
in its box, some video games
stacked on bookshelves. The police have ripped up sections of
floor that had been soaked with
blood, leaving a scar in the bathroom and another in the kitchen.
More bullet holes call out from
all sides: the walls, the doors, the
ceiling, the floor, the windows, the
molding, the kitchen cabinets. Two
of the bullets hit the brick siding
of a neighbor’s house. One pierced
a bedroom window. The trail of
damage leads out to the pockmarked backyard and the shed
where Erna’s brother-in-law, Matthew, attempted to take refuge.
Between 130 and 250 bullets
were fired in all, according to various accounts, an arsenal’s worth.
A cleaning service recently found
a bullet while vacuuming.
In the basement, in a small
room to the left of the stairs,
there’s a large pile of tubing
and plastic containers. It’s here
that Matthew David Stewart, a
37-year-old Army veteran, committed the crime that precipitated the armed raid on his home
HUFFINGTON
11.17.13
If instead of raiding the house,
the police had simply arrested
Stewart as he was leaving to go
to work, or as he was coming
home, or even at his job at
Walmart, there would have been
two fewer funerals in Ogden.
— an assault that left one police officer dead and five others
wounded, and eventually led to
Stewart’s death as well. It’s here
that he grew marijuana.
Michael Stewart says his son, a
former paratrooper, s VffW&VBg&