A Bad, Bad, Bad Night Behind Carolina Drug

About the author...Michael Martin (pictured front row, far right in the 1981 photo) is a retired veteran of 25 years on the Eden City Police Department, and has penned a number of anecdotal writings recalling his experiences.

XIII. A Bad, Bad, Bad Night Behind Carolina Drug

This, I think, was in the late seventies. When Mr. Hill McCollum retired, Tommy Kirkpatrick took over and ran the drug company as the owner and pharmacist. His son, Mike Kirkpatrick came out and rode with me on night shift on a weekly basis. I had an informant whose name I will not reveal even today. I will call him Mac. not his name at all. I quickly found out that Mac knew the game. You grab him, he dolfs off a bigger fish. Both Mac and I were experts at this game. Mac was a middle class fella and should have done much better, he was very intelligent...but Mac was into everything shady and when I saw Mac, I knew he was holding. I grabbed Mac real often. Mac made some good cases for me. It was the classic game of grab the little dog and find out where the big dog is sleeping.

Buddy Moretz and I grabbed Mac on Bridge Street one night in the seventies, he was holding a little grass, one thing I knew from experience, when Mac was sweating, he was not lying. Mac did not want to do the thirty days I promised him. He said "if you can make all this go away, I will give you a drugstore burglary that's to go down this weekend."

OK, that got our attention, We knew Mac would not dare to lie to us, so we listened. Mac said a gang from Charlotte, North Carolina was going to hit a drugstore in Eden this weekend. They had cased Carolina Drug, Draper Pharmacy and a couple of others. The first thought thru my mind was "oh god..manpower." Where are we going to get the bodies to stake out all these drugstores?? Mac was sure that Saturday was the night. He said he was supposed to buy some of the good stuff and he had to have money by Sunday morning.......money, which, by the way, he did not have.

We poured his grass out onto the streets and let Mac go for the time being, under a threat of death if he was lying. We went into a planning mode and tried to figure out how to cover so many drugstores. The one thing we did not want was to be staking out one drugstore while another was being robbed. I told Mike Kirkpatrick that his dad's store was the main target so far and he and his brother Tim wanted to help. We found a vantage point on top of Pace-Stone Furniture and we devised stake out places near every drugstore in town, We asked for volunteers from patrol division and Eden Reserves. Myself, Moretz and Mike and Tim were on Pace-Stone. other volunteers and detectives were at other points. Late in the night, bud and I got worried that the action may go down at another location, so we left Mike and Tim on top of Pace-Stone and went to check out some of the other locations. Radio equipment was marginal back then, there was some communication...but it was marginal, at best. we went to Draper and walked in to check with the boys, we checked another place and heard that there was some action on Washington Street and we floorboarded the car to the Carolina Drug.

What had happened was that Mike and Tim had seen an old Toyota turn from Washington Street onto Henry and slow and a man got out and he ran to the rear door of Carolina Drug and began th beat on the rear door. Mike Kirkpatrick and his brother, Tim ran down to street level, crossed the street and as the man was breaking into the door they confronted him. He thought they were cops and he pulled out a large handgun, put it in Mike Kirkpatrick's face and tried several times to pull the trigger. Out of the dark, Tim Kirkpatrick made the best flying tackle any North Carolina Football Player ever put on an opposing player. Buddy Moretz and I were at Monroe Street at that time and by the time we slid around the corner at Henry Street, Mike had the guy's .45 auto and Tim Kirkpatrick was walking all over his face..real real real hard. The guy was screaming for help when we put the cuffs on him. We prevented the burglary, Mike and Tim caught the burglar and the burglar gave up his pals in Charlotte, glad to be alive.....but I lost out...Mike never came out and rode with me anymore. I really, honestly hated that, those two Kirkpatrick boys would have made some damned good street cops.

Michael D. Martin