WI: Dan Sliz Shoots Back

The man in the dark car watched the house ahead of him.  It was close to the edge of the road, and the open garage door gave him the opportunity he craved.   As usual, he had a buzz on.   Everybody had a few to keep the edge off, didn't they?  And tonight, he needed a bit more.  He came from the bar where he had telegraphed his plans.  He was going to get even with that SOB that had ratted him out for DUI.

A light came on in the garage.  He saw the door to the garage from the house start to open.  He stepped on the accelerator and pushed the muzzle of the shotgun out of the driver's side window.

Dan Sliz was in the living room when it happened.  His 11 year old daughter, Mary,  had  just stepped into the garage when two muzzle blasts and the resulting impacts came from the road only feet from the garage.  He sprang to the door, grabbing the Colt Commander .45 that was kept on a shelf out of reach of small children.  As the car accelerated downhill toward the intersection, he emptied the magazine at the fleeing vehicle.   His daughter was untouched; both shotgun blasts had missed.   It is hard to be accurate from a moving vehicle, shooting one handed with a long gun.

Two of Dan's shots had connected with the fleeing car; both bullets from the .45 ended up in the left rear wheel well.   Dan later said that he pulled most of the shots high, because he did not want to hit the propane tank alongside the road on the left, mere yards from his rural home.   Dan needn't have worried.   The .45 slugs barely managed to penetrate the fairly heavy sheet metal of a pre-76 American automobile.  They would have bounced off the curved surface of a large propane tank.   Dan was a Town Constable in Sawyer County, in northern Wisconsin.   The year was about 1980.

Scene of Dan Sliz Drive By

The distance from the house to the intersection (downhill on the left) is about 100 yards.  The trees were much smaller or nonexistent 35 years ago.  The propane tank was to the left of the house.


It is a peculiar thing how inanimate objects can stir up memories.  I was helping move my brother's possessions to a new location after an accumulation of over 30 years.   One of those possessions was an old gun rack that had belonged to a good friend and fellow member of the gun culture, Dan Sliz.   My brother retired from the State patrol after 30 years, but early in his career he had been a deputy sheriff while Dan was a Constable.   Unfortunately for the rest of us, Dan died young, in his 50's. He was the lean, wiry kind of guy who is often amazingly strong.

Dan Sliz' old Gun Rack

The shooting set off a predictable flurry of activity in the local peace officer community.  They were outraged about the attack and that the target had been a young girl.   After considerable investigation, Dan and another officer were driving by the residence of a local alcoholic.   Dan said the car in the driveway looked familiar.   As they approached the vehicle on foot, two .45 caliber holes became apparent in the trunk and quarter panel.

Dan had nothing to do with the drunk's DUI, but the pinch had occurred within a hundred yards of Dan's house.   That association was enough to trigger the idiotic attack.   The man was convicted, but the local judge was sympathetic.  As no one was actually hit in the incident, he received six months of "Huber", as the Wisconsin work release is known.  Six months of being required to sleep in the jail while being free to work during the day.   It still seems like a light sentence for attempted murder.

Several lessons can be gleaned from this incident.  Perhaps the first is that you do not have to be involved in anything nefarious in order to be a target.   Cases of mistaken identity are common, especially among people committing crimes.  If you think police raid the wrong place too often, it is a minuscule amount compared to the number of times that criminals make this mistake.

Second, under stress, accuracy is degraded.  A shotgun pattern only spreads out about an inch per yard of range.  At 10 yards, the pattern is only 10 inches across.  Shotguns still need to be pointed with some precision.   Fortunately for Dan and his daughter, their assailant was not an accomplished marksman.

Dan was an accomplished marksman.  Still, with adrenaline, speed, and increasing range working against him, he managed to connect with only two of 7 shots on a moving vehicle.   The vehicle was down the hill, around a corner, and out of sight only 100 yards from Dan's house.  Those who wish to limit us to magazine capacities of less than 10 rounds never want to talk about those sorts of dynamics.

Third, while Dan never connected with the attacker, the bullets still served a very useful function: identification and evidence.   It is likely that if no return fire had occurred, no conviction would have occurred either.

I have been a certified firearms instructor for over 40 years.  The policy that I teach is that you generally do not shoot at assailants when they are fleeing.   There are exceptions to that policy, and one of those is if the assailant has threatened you with a gun.   Then it is impossible to determine if someone moving away from you is fleeing or simply moving to a better tactical position.   Even a small handgun can easily be deadly from a hundred yards away.

The other exception is if the assailant(s) presents an exigent threat to society.  This is harder to prove, but still exists on the books in most states.  I would put drive by shootings in this category.   Of course, you do not want to present more of a threat to society than the fleeing assailant.   In this case, Dan  lived in a rural setting, with no nearby houses, so he had little to worry about in that regard.  He did not know how many people were in the car, or how they were armed.  He only knew that his daughter and home had been fired upon.

After the attack, and the lack of penetration of the .45, Dan kept a M1 carbine handy.   Dan shared his preference for the carbine over the .45 with Lt. Col John George who wrote "Shots fired in Anger" about his personal experiences in the Pacific theater during WWII.  His experience was that the Carbine far outperformed the Thompson sub machine gun in jungle combat.

The old gun rack is still fulfilling its designed function.  I like to think that Dan would have approved.


©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch