Doug Crockett
Okay, this happened in 71. During Easter vacation many people from Southern California would go to the Imperial Dam, Squaw Lake, [the lake behind the dam] on the Colorado river for a week long party. I forget who went out there with me, but I drove my 57 chevy apache pick-up out there and we were partying with a bunch of people from Lakeside and El Cajon. I met this guy there whose name was Red, which at the time was what a lot of people called me. We looked like we could have been brothers. I think he was from Long Beach. Anyway we started drinking and smoking and probably some pills. We were going around from camp to camp and partying with different groups of people. After dark we wound up at a camp out on the end of a point that stuck out into the lake a couple of hundred yards. There were 3 dudes there. I was talking to 2 of them getting ready to smoke a joint, when suddenly Red started yelling for help. I looked up and the 3rd guy was standing over him with a knife. I jumped up and went for him and he poked me in the belly with the knife and told me to back off and help my friend. I turned to Red as he was yelling that he was going to bleed to death. When I turned to him the 3 guys jumped up and ran off. I knelt down by Red and saw that he was bleeding from 3 knife wounds that I could see, 1 in the chest, 1 in the side and the other in the pit of his arm. This wound had cut an artery and the blood was spurting out. I took off my belt and used it as a tourniquet and got that bleeding stopped. I then picked him up in a fireman’s carry and carried him 200 yards to where the nearest people were. I took him to some people who had a van and put him in it and told them to take him to the hospital, which was in the town of Imperial. I then picked up a big rock and a club and went looking for the guy who stabbed him. After a while the police showed up and found me like that. They questioned me and got a description of the guys then they left me and went looking for them. I was still looking for them when I came upon a volkswagon bug that had two guys sitting in it. I knocked on the window and got no response. I opened the drivers side door and the dude sitting there tumbled out onto the ground, His arm was tied off with a syringe still stuck in his arm. He was dead. I opened the door on the other side and that guy was barely conscious. He too had a syringe in his arm. I pulled him out of the car and started walking him around. I did this for awhile when the same 2 cops showed up and called an ambulance for him. They told me to go back to my camp and lay down. They never found the guys who stabbed Red, and to this day I still don’t know if Red Survived. I figured he must have as I thought if he had died they had my info and probably would have wanted more of a statement from me. In the morning I woke up laying on my sleeping bag back where us Lakeside people were camped. Everyone was standing around me in a circle looking at me. Someone, I think it was Hank Patouse, asked me if I had killed somebody last night. I looked at myself and my whole front was caked with blood from head to toe. I think about this night a lot and wonder about the two lives I likely saved. I really wish I knew though how they fared. I also think about what I must have looked like to the cops and others who saw me like that