Waco Biker Massacre: Killeen couple adjusting after Waco detention

From KDH News:

Ester and Walter Weaver say they are not criminals. “I don’t even have so much as a speeding ticket to my name. Ever,” said Walter Weaver, an analyst at Fort Hood. “I’ve been driving since 1975.” 

But as they adjust to life after spending more than two weeks in jail following the May 17 Waco biker shootout, the Weavers are still reeling from their experience. 

“I was in the parking lot,” Walter said. “I was looking for (Ester). I didn’t see anything occur. I just heard the bullets. I’ve been a soldier since I was 18 years old. My first thought was, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. This is like being in downtown Baghdad.’ 

“All I could hear was bullets going off. Then it was get down and get the wife down. It was astonishing that this was in the middle of Texas.” 

Once the bullets stopped flying in the parking lot of Twin Peaks in Waco on May 17, the Weavers were swept up in a police dragnet 170 strong. 

Many attorneys have called the mass arrests unconstitutional and unprecedented. “The sheer amount of people that they pulled in did surprise me,” said Lewis Giles, the Weavers’ attorney. “And the fact that it didn’t seem like they could have done any investigation into all of those people.” 

As he sat on the curb next to his wife, Walter said he thought the police simply wanted to speak to witnesses. 

“My impression was we were being detained so we could be witnesses to whatever we did or didn’t see,” he said. “I thought we would be questioned and ‘OK, what did you see?’ and we’d make some kind of a witness statement.” 

But police weren’t interested in taking witness statements. Instead, the two were handcuffed and made to wait in the sun for hours before they were thrown in jail without being Mirandized. 

“Last month, if you had told me that this could have occurred to us in the state of Texas, I would have called you a liar,” Walter said. “That just can’t happen.” 

But it did. 

As they sat in the sun before being whisked off to one of two McLennan County jails, Walter said police didn’t provide water or food to detainees for several hours. When food or water was provided, detainees had to eat with their hands cuffed behind their backs. 

“I’m a soldier,” Walter said. “I’ve been in some pretty ugly conditions in some pretty crappy parts of the world. But to see (Ester) sitting over there flex-cuffed, trying to nibble on a piece of chicken — that was pretty horrible — having to sit there and watch that.” 

As they were at Twin Peaks to eat lunch, Ester said they hadn’t eaten since dinner the previous day. “I think it was about 10, 10:30 at night is when I finally asked if we could get something to eat because we hadn’t eaten anything,” she said. 

‘No clue’ about charges 

Once they got to jail, Walter said he was clueless as to what he was being charged with. 

“‘Shut up. We don’t want to hear what you’re saying,’” Walter said McLennan County’s corrections officers told him. 

“You’d ask them ‘Why am I here? What am I being charged with? What’s going on?’ They just kind of (ignored us).” 

Walter said he shared cells with businessmen from Dallas, weekend racers from College Station and two Bandidos club members who were “astonished and had no clue” as to why they were being detained. 

“There were a whole bunch of people in there,” he said.