![]() ![]() but we’re not going to try to run our sheriff’s department like the military.” He added that he, like Foley, was an Airborne Ranger with combat wounds: “I served my country, I took a bullet for my country . . . “My military doesn’t have nothing to do with what I’m doing for the county right now,” he said. I’m respectful, like all military people are.” Jowers seemed thrown by his opponent’s tough-guy posturing, and offered a different vision for law enforcement in the county. “I’m on time, like all military people are. “I’m not cop-trained, I’m military-trained,” he said, during a debate in Cross Plains, in January. Someone you could actually call and feel comfortable about it,” said Marcia Shumway, a local stay-at-home mom and home-school teacher, who, with her husband, Paul, supported Jowers in the race.įoley repeatedly invoked his time in the Army. “He was just a good old country boy who wanted to help you. “He did his job good, got along with people good.” Jowers had worked for the sheriff’s office for eight years, five of them as chief deputy. “He was a darn good deputy,” Terry Joy, who had been the sheriff of Callahan County since 2013, told me. Jowers was well known, and largely well liked, throughout the county I heard stories of people calling him for help wrangling loose goats and managing family disputes. “I was born a protector and an overwatcher,” he told a local television station.įoley’s opponent in the Republican primary was Rick Jowers, a mild, approachable sheriff’s deputy with a handlebar mustache. On his campaign Facebook page, he displayed his medals: a Silver Star, for valor in combat, and a Purple Heart. He talked about his sniper training and the bullets he’d taken for his country. A tall man with a square jaw and closely cropped hair, he touted his eleven years as a member of the 75th Ranger Regiment, an élite special-operations Army unit. He called the current deputies “a bunch of yahoos” and mocked them for wearing cowboy boots instead of tactical shoes. He photographed the trash can by the road to show that its contents never changed.įoley promised to professionalize the sheriff’s department. He began to film himself knocking on the door and getting no answer. ![]() Foley’s apparent lie about his residence offended Bart. After Bart buried her, he reviewed his security-camera footage to identify the culprit, then spent several nights perched in a tree with a pistol until he got his revenge. Just before my visit, one of the family’s cats was killed by a raccoon. If something strikes him as wrong, he feels obligated to fix it. The Kendricks did a little digging and discovered that Foley lived fifty-five miles away, in another county, which under Texas law made him ineligible for the position.īart is a deliberate man with a long, wiry beard. To Bart, it seemed obvious that Foley didn’t live there but was merely using it as a place to switch out his vehicle after work. In Foley’s public filings, he listed the neighboring house as his residence. In December, Bart and his wife, Amber, read in the local paper that Leroy Foley, a police officer in the nearby town of Clyde, was running for sheriff of Callahan County. The yard was weedy the windows were covered with aluminum foil. When Bart went to introduce himself to his new neighbors, no one answered the door. In the evening, the truck had been replaced by a patrol car. In the morning, a pickup truck was parked in front of the garage. What year is it?”) Last summer, Bart saw something odd at a nearby house. (When I visited him, he greeted me by saying, “Nice truck. Bart Kendrick, whose family has lived in the county since the nineteenth century, takes particular notice of vehicles. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.Ĭallahan County, an agricultural region outside Abilene, Texas, is a place where people pay attention to their neighbors.
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