Broken Blue Dish

29-year-old Clifford Lynn Draper claimed to have served in the military. More recently he’d worked as a Christmas Salvation Army bell ringer, but he’d been reprimanded for erratic behavior and he’d abandoned the job after a few weeks. The morning of Saturday, March 5, 1994 he showed up at the Salt Lake City Library where a Tibetan sand painting ceremony was taking place. Armed with a pistol and a homemade bomb, he herded hostages into a conference room and began issuing demands. 22-year-old Lt. Lloyd Prescott, a policeman in civilian clothes with a concealed weapon, inserted himself into the situation as an extra hostage. While Draper was deciding which hostage to sacrifice first, Prescott drew his weapon, ordered everyone to the floor, and shot Draper five times. A real-life hero, Prescott put his own life at risk to save the lives of 18 innocent strangers. In his words, he was “just doing my job.”