At site of the NYC shooting, loss is signified by bullet holes and food truck orders
It was a different kind of busy on Tuesday afternoon, the day after a gunman entered the building, which houses the headquarters of the NFL, and opened fire, killing four people and himself.
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On a sweltering summer day, 345 Park was surrounded by cop cars and news vans, with national and local media on the scene. Police had blocked off an area of the building where a bullet had pierced a large glass window. A few feet away, the bottom of a revolving glass door had also been hit. The police officer standing by the large window would turn every few minutes and stare at the bullet hole. The window hadn't shattered, though it looked ready to collapse.
Passersby stopped to pull out their phones and snap photos of the scene. Some not-so-subtly kept their phones by their waist, recording videos as newscasters and cameramen shouted at them to get out of their live shots. Slowly, bouquets of flowers filled up a hand railing in view of the broken glass window — a few feet away from where Uncle Gussy's was serving up Mediterranean food to police officers and cameramen looking for a lunch break. One man stopped with some flowers, placed them on the ground, dropped his head and said a prayer under his breath. He shook his head in seeming disbelief as he walked away.
In front of the Bank of America chain attached to the office building, a large group wearing orange 'Life Camp Inc' shirts gathered in a protest against gun violence.
'One city. One mission. Let's unite as one,' they chanted after a woman spoke about supporting individuals with mental health struggles.
When the chant finished, the crowd dispersed and for many, it was business as usual — even as the cameras and the cops remained.
The area is surrounded by a half dozen food trucks, like Uncle Gussy's, whose employees admit they had a hard time bringing themselves to get back to work today — but they had to.
'We weren't planning on being here,' said Hank, the cashier at Gussy's who respectfully declined to disclose his last name. 'But we're a small business and we've got to survive.'
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Hank said a friend in the NYPD called him on Monday night to make sure he and his coworkers were ok, which they were — Uncle Gussy's typically closes shop around 4 pm, same as most of the food trucks on the block. The gunman entered the building a little before 6:30. Hank checked on his friends in the area, including other food truck drivers, to make sure everyone was safe and they were.
But he dreaded the moment he turned on his TV to see the faces of the victims. He feared that he'd find a familiar face — there are a lot of them for a food truck driver in a busy area. He considers the workers at 345 Park Ave co-workers. He doesn't know all of their names, but he remembers their orders.
'We feed this building not every day but we have a customer base and it's in that building,' Hank said. 'I knew it would be hard to look at those faces and I did and it was like oh my god, I know that girl, she gets the chicken Greek salad.
'It sucks. It's heartbreaking.'
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An 18-page lawsuit against the Barnwell County Sheriff's Office filed by Columbia lawyers Joseph McCulloch and Robert Goings lays out why peace of mind is so hard for Dixon to come by these days, citing, 'fundamental police investigative failures, and shoddy, incompetent, and utterly inexcusable actions' by the office. The suit says the office's false statements also subjected Dixon to ridicule, contempt, disgrace, suffering, anguish, horror, nervousness, grief, anxiety, worry, shock, humiliation, and shame.' A 12-page response from the sheriff's office asserts immunity, among other defenses, but this is not a simple mix-up. It's an error easily avoided, and seriously punishable. Not only are the two accused men's names different, they don't look similar. Both are Black and more than six feet tall. But Ty'Ran Tyrell Dixon is 6'3'' and 295 pounds. Tyren Rommel Dickson is 6'1'' and 180 pounds. Side-by-side photos appear in the lawsuit, which says Dickson 'looks nothing like Dixon, a fact easily determined by a simple exercise of fundamental police work.' Dixon was released on Dec. 6, not long after he finally arrived at the Barnwell County Sheriff's Office after stops in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Oklahoma and Georgia. He said he got an apology and a ride to his mother's house. He said she 'never hugged me that tight in her life.' Twenty-two days later, the sheriff announced Dickson had been arrested in the 2023 killing of 21-year-old Jasmine Roach and her unborn baby. Dickson's criminal case is proceeding in Barnwell County Second Judicial Circuit Court. Dixon's suit is in the court of common pleas. Barnwell County Sheriff Steven Griffith, elected in 2020 and re-elected last year while Dixon was being wrongfully detained, did not respond to requests for an interview or a statement about the case. In his office's court response, it says a photo lineup used to 'confirm the identity of the appropriate suspect' had 'inaccurate information unbeknownst' to the office. It also 'asserts it had no control' over Dixon's transportation once he was in the custody of U.S. marshals. It says repeatedly that once it realized the mistake, it 'quickly released' Dixon — as if 67 days is quick. Behind bars, the man who eats more for breakfast than many of us do in a day — a dozen eggs, bacon, two slices of wheat bread, yogurt and fruit with granola — went from more than 4,000 calories a day to far less, ate leftovers from other people's trays, lost 45 pounds, lost his mind. He couldn't sleep. He contemplated suicide. He started to hallucinate and wondered if he had killed the pregnant woman, as the Barnwell County Sheriff's Office alleged in its warrants, after an informant said someone with a name sounding like his — but not his — had done the crime. He often thought about George Stinney, an innocent 14-year-old Black child who the state of South Carolina executed in 1944, the youngest person legally executed in the U.S. that century. He also talked to God every day, was shown strength by Him, was shown kindness by fellow humans — in jumpsuits and uniforms — who told him to keep faith and keep fighting his injustice. He kept telling officials they had the wrong guy. 'They all say that,' came one response. 'Tell it to the judge,' came another. Who could blame him if he lost some of his faith in humanity. But his faith in God grew. He stayed in five detention centers in four states as part of the wrongful arrest that involved the Barnwell Sheriff's Office letting the U.S. Marshals Service return Dixon to South Carolina. At the first, he was given a Bible that he kept by his side until the third detention center took it from him. He was told inmates smoked pages of the Bible, and he wouldn't be allowed to keep its lifelines. 'Stay strong,' he scribbled on a scrap of paper. 'Don't let this be for nothing. God strength.' He still has the piece of paper. He still has that strength. He's more spiritual than ever. The 67 days that Dixon moved slowly closer to South Carolina are seared into his memory. Over 90 minutes on Zoom, Dixon relived a nightmare that would have broken the spirit of many of us. 'I'm a positive spirit,' he reflected. 'I'm a positive soul. I'm in there around darkness, great darkness. It took every piece of mental fortitude that I had from all of the years that I've been playing football and going through life. That took every ounce that I had left.' Once too ashamed to talk about it, he now realizes he has nothing to be ashamed of. 'Of course I want to be compensated, yes,' he said of his lawsuit. 'They need to take some accountability for that. At least give me something back, but I won't ever get my life back. 'I never had anxiety before this,' he added. 'I'm having anxiety attacks now, PTSD, having nightmares that people are stabbing me. They feel vivid. Even going in the elevator out here, I freak out sometimes because it reminded me of that situation. I can't be in a small car anymore. I get sweaty and panicking and stuff.' This almost unbelievable story is his to tell, and he is telling it now, talking to media outlets in South Carolina and in Finland since his lawsuit was filed in April and the case has begun to proceed. 'Deep down in my heart, I know I'm never going to be the same again,' Dixon told me. 'It stole a piece of the drive from me.' Football keeps that drive alive, though. 'The thing that I embed myself in is the kids and the people that I can help, that I can affect in a positive manner,' he said. 'Whenever I get to tripping out or I'm starting to have anxiety, I do private sessions for kids out here…. I am embedded in the kids, honestly.' He helps them because they helped him, he said. 'I'm broken, and I feel like people are using my energy to help them because of what I went through, because of the strength that I had to sustain while being there,' he said. 'People look at it as an inspiration, especially these kids out here. They always ask me how did you make it out of that prison and how are you back playing football so fast. I'm like, man, if you guys only knew, it's because of y'all.' In other words, Dixon hasn't given up. He's giving back. The Barnwell County Sheriff's Office should be forced to do right by Dixon, who was so clearly wronged and has so clearly suffered because of the office's abject failure to get a name right. For now, what may give Dixon comfort is the knowledge that anyone who hears his story will remember his name and that home is where your heart is full when they call it. Matthew T. Hall is McClatchy's South Carolina opinion editor.
