Why McVeigh was a 'coward' - Former trooper who captured bomber remembers arrest

By Nolan Clay

Published: August 30, 2008

The lawman who arrested Tim McVeigh said Friday he survived the encounter because of his old-school training and because the Oklahoma City bomber was a coward.

"I just happened to be at the right spot at the right time, and things fell in place. And I was kept safe and the bad guy went to jail,” Charlie Hanger said.

Hanger was an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper when he arrested McVeigh during a traffic stop 75 minutes after the deadly April 19, 1995, bombing.

Hanger arrested McVeigh for a firearms offense after noticing the bulge of a loaded handgun underneath McVeigh's jacket.

Two days later, federal agents found McVeigh was still in the Noble County jail after identifying him as a suspect in the bombing.

Hanger, 56, now Noble County sheriff, spoke Friday at the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum to a crowd of about 100. He has described the arrest before at the museum and in testimony at McVeigh's trial.

Hanger stopped McVeigh on Interstate 35 for driving without a car tag.

Hanger said he stayed behind the door of his patrol car until McVeigh got out of the Mercury Marquis. He said that is how he was trained.

"I really feel like that if I had walked up on that car that day that I would have been shot,” Hanger said.

He said he has wondered why McVeigh didn't come out shooting. Hanger said he talked it over with FBI agents.

Hanger said: "They were convinced that he was a coward. ... I'm convinced he was a coward. He ambushed the victims of the building. They had no chance at defending themselves. He knew I was armed. If he came out shooting while I was standing behind that door, he might have hit me and killed me. ... But, if he didn't kill me or severely injure me so that I can't return fire, he is standing wide open. He's going to get shot. I don't claim to be the best shot in the world, but from that distance I'm not going to miss.”

McVeigh, who was executed in 2001, told his attorneys he did not come out shooting because he thought he could talk the trooper out of arresting him over the gun.

McVeigh said he considered having an "old-fashioned shootout there on the side of the road” when the trooper saw he was armed.

Hanger said Friday he was overwhelmed after learning later what McVeigh had done.

""To think that you arrested someone that committed this heinous act and you looked at him, you stood close to him, you talked to him, and there was no way to know that he had done that. ... You would think that someone that ... committed something that terrible you would see something in their emotions. He didn't have any emotions.”