"Some of you will recall, back in the days when I barely had three digits in my post count, reference was made to Mongo in a thread, and cropped up for some time after.
For the rest, Mongo was the name I applied to a man who cropped up in a tale or two I've woven here.
Mongo was a massive guy, about 6' 3" and built so solidly he would make BigFatslob or Tom B (both large men) look delicate by comparison. He walked in a perpetual grizzy-like crouch, hands held at waist level and slightly forward. His size sixteen feet stamped out a challenge/waring as he moved.
He was also somewhat insane. Relatively speaking. As in, every relative he had would describe him as insane.
He had spent much, if not most, of his life in prison or in mental institutions; of the two, he vastly preferred prison, and in fact he was rarely committed because the state mental facilities refused to house him. In prison, regardless of the charge producing the sentance, he was housed in maximum security, where he lived a comfortable life pulling night work for the staff. ('night work' translateing into 'maiming specific inmates').
Mongo passed away a couple days ago, from a ruptured heart vessel. It took five men to carry the (barely closed) body bag out of his apartment.
He will have no obituary. The county will bury him in a plot marked only by a number; a few LEOs will show up at the brief ceromony out of nostalgia.
So I shall reminise about him here.
I recall the time he took his landlord hostage, holding a 12" bowie to the man's throat. He was convinced Marie Osmond was in terrible danger, and his demands were to be given the chief of detective's Kimber, seven loaded magazines, and a helicopter. So he could rescue her. The standoff lasted four hours.
***
There was the time in our old PD where, about to be placed in the City Jail, he knocked down his arresting officer and thundered down the central hall of the admin section of the building, heading for the lobby and freedom. I was in the shift commander's office, heard him go by (with more noise then speed), and popped into the hallway to see him heading full tilt at our second records clerk, a saintly lady in her fifties who had planted herself in his path. She could not see me for the nearly four hundred pounds of prison-muscled maniac thundering towards her.
I immediately drew, braced on a door-frame, and put the front sight on a tattoo at the base of his neck, or where his shoulder muscles met the base of his shaved howitzer-round head. I was about to shoot when she belted out "(Mongo's full name), you stop this instant!"
And he slid to a stop. And stood there while, shaking a finger, she chewed him out for running and making noise. Then about-faced and marched back to the jail when she told him to go.
***
There was the time inmates in the old county jaul jumped jailers (again), and we had to storm it to regain control (again). I dearly loved the old jail, because there was nothing better than retaking it from rioting inmates. Charging into emergency lighting with a Roman-sized riot shield and hickory baton, dodgeing flaming rolls of toliet paper, fighting our way up hallways of sweating cement blocks coated with peeling paint, facing inmates with improvised clubs and a few fire axes...it was so great. It was the best. The new jail blows because its modern and carefully laid out and electronically controlled so a riot can't even get beyond a single eight-man pod. The old, key-operated, badly-laid-out, massively overcrowded jail was so much more fun.
Anyhow, on this occasion, when the squad I led finally fought our way to the back, battered, bruised, bleeding here and there (and generally having one awesome time), we found the missing jailer (a female, and presumed gang-raped if not dead) perched unharmed on a bench in a dayroom tank. Mongo stood in the doorway, a monolith of barely-controlled violence. When the deal went down, he had maimed two or three inmates (we were never clear if they were actually a threat or just conviently located), grabbed the girl from the corner she had been trapped in (her male partner fought his way clear, but she paniked and ran), tossed her into the dayroom, then guarded the door (crippling any inmate who got within reach-again, mainly because they were within reach).
***
I recall a screaming brawl in which Mongo lurched about his apartment in a rain of PR-24 blows, slinging officers about like a man beset by murderous pigmies, crashing through the connecting wall into a neighboring apartment, which we destroyed, before finally going down under a beating that would have killed an NFL linebacker. And cheerfully greeting the judge next morning, bruised over nearly his entire body and missing a couple teeth.
***
He did, on one occasion, take two beanbag hits to the torso at 20' and remained standing. He was once hit by a TASER I, and ripped the wires out despite a full charge.
You could tell if Mongo was on his meds or off by his hair: if he was shaving his scalp, he was off, and was stable as a one-legged duck. If he had a buzz-cut, he was on, and about as safe as two gallons of nitro in an open bucket.
Prison records indicate that he killed at least eleven other inmates, barehanded, includeing four armed gang enforcers at a single enounter. Not counted were several child molesters, I'm told, who ended up in the same holding cell with him, and whose deaths were ruled suicide.
Mongo was a murderous hulk of a man who dealt out a lot of pain in his three dozen years. But having spent some time in his company, and speaking to others who knew him as well, I know that Mongo looked out at a world through a prism, seeing only vague shapes and odd colors which made no sense at all. I think very early on, he stopped trying to make sense of the world, and simply focused on immediate survival.
Outside of prison/jail, he never harmed a person (except for arresting officers), although he did take a couple hostages. He never seriously injured a police officer or corrections officer. He never used a firearm, and only rarely a weapon of any sort (I know of only one incident where he employed a weapon beyond his fists). Besides resisting arrest and the occasional taking of hostages, his charges were littering, criminal mischief (damage to other's property), noise disturbance, and stalking (courting, to his view). He never stole anything. He voted in every election-I'm told he favored Libertarian candidates.
He was a legend in local LE circles-if his name was mentioned in a call for service, we sent at least six officers.
I shall miss him. The world is a much more ordinary and boring place with his passing. I hope that wherever he is, he is seeing clearly."