GUN BARREL CITY, Texas (AP) — The past decade has taken a toll on John Joe Gray, holed up on his rural East Texas land while waiting for a siege that's never happened.
He's been living on 47 acres behind a fence without running water and electricity but with plenty of guns, daring authorities to arrest him for a 10-year-old, third-degree felony warrant. He says he hasn't left his property since 2000, all the while allowing his distrust of a government he views as evil to fester.
The handmade warning signs have faded and the hordes of fellow militia members have long since gone, leaving behind only Gray and some relatives — he won't say how many — on the tree-shaded property along a river in rural Henderson County, about 50 miles southeast of Dallas. They grow their own food and live in a shack and trailer — always wearing holsters with weapons. They don't guard the entrance anymore.
Gray is thin and pale with a long, graying beard flowing down from his gaunt face — almost unrecognizable from photos taken in 2000 showing his short, dark hair and a mustache.
"I'll never leave," Gray told The Associated Press recently, wearing a holster that sheathed a knife on one side and gun on the other. "I don't feel like a prisoner ... because I'm living out here and following God's laws."
Gray, now in his early 60s, had worked in construction and led a Texas militia group that often trained on the isolated property where he lived for about 15 years before the so-called standoff.
In late 1999 Gray was in a car pulled over for speeding in nearby Anderson County. State troopers saw high-powered rifles and anti-government materials in the car, but Gray refused to get out. When the troopers tried to remove him from the car, he allegedly bit one trooper's hand and tried to grab his gun.
cont
http://www.wwltv.com/news/national/97225784.html
No comments:
Post a Comment