Paintball Magazine Paintball Magazine May 2020 Issue | Page 44

The Purple Wave: Who
Remembered
F
Staff Report
This story starts with a murder. On July 2nd,
2017, Ally Raber, a beautiful young 18-year-old
woman was allegedly strangled to death in a
hotel room by her ex-boyfriend. I have to say
allegedly as the case is still before the courts.
But after Ally’s death he fled and vanished.
Obviously, the whole family was devastated,
but for this story we are going to focus on
her father Andy Starrett. See, Andy is an old
school paintballer. As you can guess, he is not
the kind of person to sit on his hands and do
nothing. Paintballers are not built that way
as I am sure that you reading this are more
than aware. His daughter’s murder was bad
enough but staring at the walls made it all the
worse. His best friend Thom Boot, an Army
veteran saw his distress and made sure to do
something. After years of being away from
the sport, Thom and one of Andy’s coworkers
named Robert Pierson dragged Andy back out
onto the paintball field. Following that game,
044
paintball.media magazine
named after the action movie for obvious
reasons… The Denver Expendables were born.
A paintball team created purposely to support
a family grieving.
Unfortunately, no matter how much support
there was, it would never be enough. Not with
the murderer out there in the wind. No matter
how hard you try, you can not get something
like that out of your head. For paintballers
however, something like this is even worse.
As you well know, we paintballers are an
impulsive and aggressive bunch. We tend to
prefer to lead over following and we definitely
“do not” sit still and let others do things for
us. Andy is an alpha among alphas. Sitting still
was killing him. The Expendables saw this,
banded together, and went hunting for Ally’s
killer. Using the internet and social media, they
found him, hiding in Mexico.