Hey guys, it's Chris here. Before we start the episode, I wanted to give a little heads up. This story does contain gun violence and graphic details, so if you're sensitive to that, listener discretion is advised. Enjoy the episode. I shot the first man twice. There was blood in the water. I'm sitting there with my 1911 in my hand. I didn't want to be put into the situation of having to draw my sister from HV Studio. This is unnerved. Welcome back to the Unnerved
podcast. It's where normal people share their abnormal stories, and if you enjoy true stories of the strange and terrifying, then you're in the right place. I'm your host, Chris Fricke. What price would you pay to protect the ones you love? To what extent would you go to
ensure their safety? In Hollywood movies, it's a very popular theme to have the bad guys take advantage of the innocent and bring harm to them, but there's always a hero that arrives and saves the day by any means necessary. These means can range anywhere from a swift exchange of words to an intense fight scene. In the movies, light always prevails over darkness, but there's usually a cost, a deadly
cost. In today's story, Cam recalls an event that happened on the Buffalo National River in Arkansas. What was supposed to be a pleasant kayaking trip would completely change in minutes. The evil that Cam and his friends encountered that day would quickly turn into collateral damage. This is his story. My name is Cam. I am from southwest Missouri and I have a love for the outdoors and nature. I've always grown up in nature and to be able to experience wildlife on many levels.
As a kid hunting with my grandfather and my father and those things are, you know, beneficial to learn and be like, hey, I have the skills in my brain and nothing really could prepare me for what I went through in Arkansas. My friend, I will call him Derek. We usually do an Arkansas camping trip in December every
year. We planned on doing about a week trip on the Ozark Francis National Forest, the east fork of the Buffalo National River. Very remote, not too mountainous on the southern end, but enough where we could access it. We would still have emergency services. We were planning for about a week and a long day. Five We had kayaks in the back of his truck.
He drove a Ram 1500. And on day five, my fiance and Derek's girlfriend drove down and we met them at Ponca AR and we drove back down to the East Fork of the Buffalo National River. It's December. There's no leaves, if any. The blue Cedars on the the Ridge are beautiful. You know, the Buffalo National River is out of the 48 states that I've been to including, like Alaska and Maine, that you know, some really neat
territory. There's very few places, even outside of the country, that have been, that are like northern Arkansas and southwest Missouri. I am not much of A fisherman at all. My friend Derek goes into competitions, he wins a bunch, and I was not too excited about how long I was going to have to fish for. I really like kayaking. I enjoyed just sitting out there enjoying creation and whatnot. I'm not catching anything, but he's having a great time.
My fiance, she can catch fish more than I can. I'm kind of like in a whatever mood at this point. I'm still happy, but my mind is a little fried because I'm not catching anything. Everyone else is. And that's when we started smelling pot and weed. And you can just kind of hear the, you know, reverberating bass of speakers in the distance.
It's actually kind of common for a lot of people to do floats, not necessarily in December. I can see if you were to go floating on a river in July or August or you know, even in the spring, the fact that there were people in the water and on the beach and kind of having a little bit of a cookout drug out, whatever I'll call it was a little strange.
We're paddling and we're hearing these things and we're the voices kind of come clear and we're on the right side of the Buffalo National River. It's flowing West to east and we round this bend and I just see the group of of people I didn't know what I was getting myself into definitely did not expect this group of people as we got closer to you know acknowledge us that we were there. Typically when other people are floating by me if they're of a like manner of are they fishing.
I might you know ask them how their fishing is going. But you know we're just mind business and this group of guys is on the beach some of them in the water. As we got closer, we got within, you know, we were at 100 feet and then we were drawing in and we're trying to get to the right side. And their roughhousing just kind
of pauses in a way. And they're mouthing us off, but not to us, like to each other, like, hey, check that out, We got some meat to use up, you know, like just really weird terminology. I heard the word rape at least once or twice, and that's when I'm like hardwired. I am protecting my family at all costs. I had just like that Big Brother, because I'm the eldest of many siblings, you know, I just, I had that protective mindset. I felt vulnerable in a moment
where I train. I do go to ranges, private ranges, you know, all my friends, we grew up with firearms and I had mine close by. My heart's racing, getting closer and realizing that two or three of them are waiting out farther to intercept where we will be. I'm like, oh crap, you know, this might actually happen. I'm going to have to get out of the water and tell these guys to not touch us or not do anything. I mean, who knows what these guys had, at least in the
moment? Like, what are their intentions? You don't just approach people and stop four people kayaking. If they didn't have anything wrong that they were going to do, then why'd they come out there? The guy on the paddle board and then there was a guy in a doughnut. These two guys approached at first. Next thing I know, these two guys up at the front and a third guy waiting out even more are pushing at me hard, like very fast. Do you do you draw your your pistol?
Do you not draw your pistol? Do you get out of the kayak and stand your ground? And if I did stand my ground, you know, would they have pushed me under? I didn't know what to do. You know, I have my fiance and my lifelong friend right next to me and I'm terrified. I didn't want to be put into the situation of having to draw my pistol. I saw one of them had a rock, a river rock, and the other guy actually had a pistol. But I didn't know this. The guy that was on the donut
had a pistol. He probably was concealing it in his like from a rear draw. He was probably pressed up against his back in his swim trunks, and as they they got within just a few feet, I knew that I was going to be taking a shot because he was too close. I feared for my life in that moment. That's when I drew my gun, and in a matter of 10 seconds of drawing that pistol, I shot the first man twice in the chest. Once I shot him, he then drew,
shooting twice as well. Then he just kind of fell down. He then fell face first into the water. The one guy that was kind of swinging over to the left, he would have been in front of my kayak. He dove towards me and I actually ended up putting around through his face the group of guys that were on the beach, some of them just kind of stood there. The rest, they all just ran off. And that's when I'm like, that
just happened. I was starting to cope and be like calm down, evaluate the situation. Derek actually ended up calling the cops just as I was firing, but he also had a handgun on him which he never ended up using because the girls were in between us. In that moment I get out. There was blood in the water and I I grabbed the one guy that his face 1st and I kind of rotate, lift him into where he's his face is up out of the the water. It was such a mess. I was angry.
I was terrified, I was sad. In that moment I'm sitting there with my 1911 in my hand and you know I'm holding this man that I just, I took his life. The guy that I shot in the face, I just started quivering, looking at, you know, the exit wound. One of the three guys that took us round on the beach, kind of waiting in the water area, they
ended up, you know, collapsing. They got hit in the leg and they were, they just weren't running away and they were yelling at me and they were cussing me out and they were, you know, crying for their friend. Then I remember putting my pistol in my kayak. Derek and the girls are trying to keep everything floating away. My fiance is sobbing, I mean just distraught. And it was. It was horrible. We had to get the bodies up on shore because everything was
kind of floating away. When the police arrived, I was put in handcuffs and they did take Derek and I's firearms and the girls, they were. Nothing happened with them. Everyone kind of got searched. There were some, you know, EMS that eventually came out, some Park Rangers. One guy was still bubbling some stuff and speaking even 1015 minutes after. And you know, those EMS were trying to, you know, work with him. And this was, you know, a moment of just replaying everything
that happened. You know, the sound of something hitting human flesh, people crying. And it's something that I can't erase out of my mind. I've tried. Maybe I don't need to erase it. Maybe I need to harness that to help people who have gone through a similar experience, or maybe who have experienced something worse. Self-defense situations are very lengthy in court if you know people are decide to choose that
action. But you know the police needed to evaluate what happened and they questioned all of us. And over the next two or three weeks everything kind of got, you know, resolved after all the paperwork and signing and I was found not guilty. Some of the weird things that I was asked is did you tell them to back away? Did you know? Why did you do this or why didn't you stop or why didn't get that? You know, there's always those, you know, Why didn't you do
this? Like, if I was in that situation, I would have done something different. I have said that so much in my life that I no longer do it
after that situation. You know when someone's six feet away from you, even 10 feet away from you, they've proven that police officers, trained police officers, even in the military, that a charging person within, what is it, 20 feet can reach you before you can like pull your, you know if if they're running full Sprint and so these people are doing this, my handgun is right there. I'm not going to be like, hey guys, I have a gun or hey back the way I have that.
It happened so quick. It was like and maybe I should have tried to say something like hey, wait or. But if their intentions are to harm, they're not stopping when I say something to them. A lot of going on. Gun owners, like they think that just because you shoot means they're down. But there are multiple police reports where they, you know, discharge their weapon and that
person keeps coming. For him to pull that out and and then shoot, you know, with two in his body was, you know, I I wasn't expecting it. But you know, I I completely understand. I mean the human body is very durable and especially on drugs. I mean, I've heard stories of people that are high. Apparently they have like not in human strength but just like adrenaline constantly. I have experienced people on drugs, people that are not themselves, that are not in a safe environment.
I know how violent they can be. And so I did have that kind of in the moment. Like this is not a good situation. I knew what they were saying. They were talking about raping our our women in our group. It's sad that that's where their lives were, and it also makes me sick to think that something could have happened to my fiance if I was hurt or killed. I mean that just it makes me sick to my stomach to think of that stuff.
The things that we do for people we love are sometimes a shock to us, but are also the most natural, deeply driven and rooted things that we want. We want to hurt people that are going to hurt our loved ones, but not because we want to hurt people. It's a deep thing. It's a intimate to the way that reality works. You know, I am sorry for those people's lives that I took.
And I don't know, a lot of people may feel like it's wrong, but it's if you're going to hurt the ones I love, then you know, they will then in turn be, you know, hurt. And I No one wishes that we wish it wasn't such an evil world, but it is. The fatal incident that happened that day was a harsh reminder of the darkness that can arrive when least expected. The choice that Cam was forced to make is something none of us will hopefully ever need to
face. It's impossible to know how we might react in a similar situation. Ham was prepared if such an event ever arose. It's not the ending he would have preferred, but it could have been much worse. Wherever you are, a threat could always be present. And if a threat were to present itself to you or your loved ones, are you prepared? Do you have a plan in place to protect them? Having a simple plan is better than no plan at all. Thanks again for listening to Unnerved.
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