The Public Safety Forum (SAFETY)

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Memphis police officer Timothy Warren felt danger closing in, wife says

By Beth Warren

A few days before he was fatally shot in a Downtown hotel, Memphis police officer Timothy Warren sensed he was in danger.

He warned his wife, Betsy: "I have a feeling something really big is going to happen. It's going to happen Downtown. It's going to happen really fast," she recalled.

"Betsy, I have a feeling I'm going to be right in the middle of it. It might cost me my life."

She tried to reassure him: "Surely not. God has other plans for you." But when Warren and other police officers stormed the DoubleTree Hotel, Warren took a bullet in the head. "Now I realize God did have other plans," his widow said. "He wanted him in heaven."

Today is the Warrens' ninth wedding anniversary, but Betsy Warren will be making funeral arrangements and filling out police department paperwork.

Their son, James, 8, is trying to come to terms with his anger toward the bad guy. Daughter Jewel, 4, doesn't understand that her dad is gone. Monday night she sang a tune her dad made up for her.

"Jewel is completely innocent and doesn't grasp it," Betsy Warren said. "I have a feeling in a couple of days she is going to miss him and wonder why he hasn't come to see her."

Timothy Warren cherished time with his kids, chasing them around the house and crawling on the floor while they rode his back. He would take his son to play with remote control cars. He and Jewel would have ice cream dates, which often left her with a chocolate mustache.

In order to spend more time with his kids, Warren left an assignment he enjoyed -- 11 a.m.-8 p.m. with buddies at the Airways Precinct -- to a more hectic shift, 7 p.m.-3 a.m. in the Downtown entertainment district.

This way, he could walk his son to and from the bus stop and play with Jewel during the day while his wife taught kindergarten at Idlewild Elementary.

But something didn't feel right about his new assignment. Hours before Warren went to work for the last time, he expressed dread.

"I really don't want to go in, but I got to," he told his best friend, Jerome Gray. "He kind of felt like something was going to happen," Gray said.

Warren was exhausted after his Saturday night shift dealing with holiday revelers who were drinking and cruising Memphis' entertainment district. Gray said Warren told him he expected more of the same as the weekend continued.

Hours before Warren was shot, Gray urged him to leave the police force.

"He felt that's where God wanted him," Gray said.

Working Downtown allowed Warren to see many of the city's needy.

The night before he was killed, he handed out bottles of water to officers and any homeless who passed by.

Some officers scowled, but Warren didn't flinch, his widow said.

Before finishing college, Warren briefly ended up homeless, his widow said.

It was winter and he would sleep on the floor curled up in a ball inside unheated, abandoned houses. So as an adult, he and his wife often passed out food to the homeless.

And when he recently encountered -- at 2 a.m. -- a woman at the bus station who had fled Texas with her young daughter to escape an abusive husband, he gave them money for a motel.

Warren often urged Gray to join Memphis' police force, while Gray said Warren should leave law enforcement to start a church.

This made Warren chuckle. "Well, police work is all I know," he had told Gray. "I enjoy it. It also gives me the chance to minister to people because I'm right there."

Warren wasn't always religious. He was struggling with his faith when he met Gray, an ordained minister, in 2000, while both trained to become deputy jailers.

Warren talked about how his mother had died of cancer on Mother's Day after he finished high school. "He kind of had a resentment: 'God took my mother.'"

But over time, Gray said he helped Warren find his Christian faith in 2002.

Warren became devout, ministering to Memphis' downtrodden. He bought a big grill, hauled it to Overton Park and fed the homeless. Betsy and the children helped, along with Gray and his son, Jeremiah, 7.

The men sometimes teased each other about their differences. Warren, who was white, grew up in a largely segregated area of Cleveland, Miss., while Gray, who is black, was raised in Detroit.

Hours before Warren's death, the two had a long talk at Warren's home. Gray left so Warren could take a nap before work. The two made plans to catch up over coffee at Starbucks when Warren finished his shift.

Instead, when Gray's phone rang a few hours later, it was Betsy.

At the hospital, the Grays' son tried to comfort them, saying; "Mommy, you've got to stop crying now. Uncle Tim is in heaven and he's an angel."

The two families, who say they feel like relatives, gathered around the slain officer in his hospital room.

"I held his hand," Gray said. "I prayed for him and told him bye."

-- Beth Warren: [phone]


http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2011/jul/05/warren-felt-danger-closing-in-wife-says/

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When you feel that hair on the back of your neck 'standing up' .. pay attention to it. It's your sixth sense. I've experienced it and have always heeded that warning. Always better to listen and come back another day.