Calgary man hits the road to find redemption, healing and a killer
原始发布日期： 2016-03-05 发布者：李方字变大 字变小
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Calgary man who helped capture Charles Ng hits the road to find redemption, healing and a killer Sean Doyle, the teacher and Bay security guard who was shot while capturing Charles Ng over 30 years ago talks about why he is on a mission to forgive the convicted serial killer. For years in the mid-1980s, Charles Ng would visit Sean Doyle every night. It was always the same nightmare. But Ng, one of America’s most notorious serial killers, was never the aggressor in the dream. He was always helpless, stranded in a bear pit at the zoo. Doyle had a high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight. Night after night he would line up Ng in the crosshairs and pull the trigger. “It was so realistic, I could literally see the bullet ripping into his chest and slamming him into the ground,” said 
As Ng lay dead or dying, Doyle would see the killer’s mother. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes did. “They were saying to me, ‘You’re no better than he is. You just killed him,'” Doyle said. “Night after night after night.” The nightmares took their toll, and his health began to suffer. Doyle now believes he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He was scared to go to bed at night for fear Ng, and his own anger, would return. “This one night I got out of bed and, for some reason, I knelt beside the bed and I prayed for the power to forgive him,” Doyle says. “And, like that, it was over.” Doyle is telling the story to a rapt audience at the Blind Beggar’s Pub on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. The speech is ostensibly part of a fundraiser for Doyle and Dovilio Binotto, an elementary school teacher and a fledgling filmmaker, to help film the final chapter of a documentary called Forgive/Ng. The two plan to travel to San Quentin State Prison north of San Francisco in hopes of talking to Ng on death row and delivering a letter — Binotto calls it the “redemption letter” — in which Doyle forgives the killer for shooting him and sending his life, at least temporarily, into a downward spiral. They hope to be there from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. 
On July 6, 1985, Doyle and another security guard attempted to arrest, unbeknownst to them, a mass killer. There was a tussle. Ng shot Doyle through the hand, permanently damaging his middle finger. Despite the wound, the shoplifter was subdued until police arrived. 
At the time, Doyle didn’t know he had just apprehended one of the most wanted men in North America, a fugitive who had butchered at least 12 people in a remote horror house in California with an accomplice named Leonard Lake. When the crimes were discovered, Lake committed suicide. Ng fled, somehow evading police and making his way to Calgary, where his sister lived. He slept in a lean-to discovered after the arrest in Fish Creek Provincial Park. “I’m not a hero, I did what was necessary to survive and that’s all,” Doyle says. “Thank God I was able to do that. Because I’m not sure how many people would be dead right now. But that’s not heroism. A hero plans something. I didn’t plan anything. I just survived.” 
A staunch opponent of capital punishment, Doyle was nevertheless there for the trial in Orange County that ended with Ng being sentenced to death in 1999. 
Of course, visiting someone on death row in San Quentin is not without its complications. Binotto and Doyle sent a letter to the warden, who has so far not answered. So they don’t know what will happen when they arrive or if they will get permission to film or visit Ng. Calls to the press office of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation by the Calgary Herald were not returned to offer any clarification. “We’ll go down, we’ll be there, we’ll have a letter,” says Binotto. “Worst-case scenario, we will present a letter at the doors of San Quentin.” Which will be the end of the documentary, Doyle says. Forgive/Ng is almost complete and focuses on themes of forgiveness and overcoming trauma. Meeting and forgiving Ng, he reckons, is a necessary step in a search for spiritual wholeness. Should he find himself sitting across from Ng, what will he say? “Even though you shot me and you wanted me dead, I forgive you,” Doyle says. “I won’t know how he’s going to react to that,” he continues. “It doesn’t matter. People say to me, ‘How can you forgive a person who would do the things he has done?’ It was really terrible stuff. I can’t even tell you what he did. It’s got nothing to do with that. My forgiveness of him is not forgiving the behaviour. I’m forgiving him. When I do that, I heal myself.” evolmers@postmedia.com 
(摘自Calgary Herald) |