Violent police pursuit and alleged abuse during the 1978 Tison brothers manhunt in Arizona

4.2.12 WC: 191694 The largest manhunt in Arizona history was under way, involving patrol cars, helicopters, search dogs, roadblocks, and a sophisticated communications system. The Tisons were exhausted, and low on money. Gary decided that they had to make a run for the Mexican border, risky as that was. At 2:58 in the morning of August 11, a van approached a police roadblock. Suddenly shots rang out, putting two holes in one of the police cars. The van crashed through the roadblock. The police chased the van, traveling at close to a hundred miles an hour. They called in helicopters. They knew, but the Tison’s didn’t, that there was a second roadblock on the other side of the pass. For a moment, Gary, who was manning the gun out the rear window, thought they had made it. But Donny, the oldest brother who was driving, saw the second roadblock. He crashed through it, but not before several shots from the waiting police cars struck him in the head. The van swerved off the road and came to rest in the desert sand. Gary yelled, “Every man for himself,” and ran. Ricky, Ray and Randy threw themselves to the ground. Gary kept going. The police found Donny, slumped in the driver’s seat, unconscious from his head wounds. They handcuffed him, called an ambulance, and left him there after removing the guns from the back of the van. At 3:40, the ambulance arrived at the scene of the roadblock with lights flashing and sirens blaring. But the driver and medics were made to wait at the roadblock for over five hours. When they were finally allowed to go to Donny at 9:10, he was dead. The police then shoved a shotgun against the back of Ricky’s head and pistol barrel into his mouth. They cut his clothes off his body. He was pulled by his hair into a police car surrounded by three officers and interrogated—naked and shivering—for five hours. When he expressed reluctance to talk, he was asked, “Do you want to see your dying brother?” He believed he would be shot and left to die if he did not confess. “T don’t want to make a statement,” he said. The police continued the interrogation. Donny, bleeding and unconscious, would receive no medical attention until his brothers confessed. Finally, the two brothers confessed to their roles in the events following the breakout. For over a week no trace was found of Gary. Armed vigilantes combed every inch of desert near the scene of the shootout. A SWAT team was lowered into abandoned mines and caves. Police dogs were used. Rumors circulated about Gary’s whereabouts. He was reported in dozens of locations ranging from the Grand Canyon to southern Mexico. Several days later, a Papago Indian smelled something foul in the underbrush. It was a decomposing body. The remains were identified as Gary Tison. He had been hiding out in the desert, just a mile north of the roadblock. The August heat proved too much for him. His end came in the Papago Indian Reservation, lying amongst the brush with a sock full of cactus berries squeezed dry near his head. Underneath him, half buried in the sand, was John Lyons’ gun. 168 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017255