Deborah Burst
Tim Ursin, former firefighter and owner of Escape Fishing Charter
Tim Ursin thrives on conquering the task at hand, so to speak. The owner of Escape Fishing Charter in Slidell, Ursin takes pride in his nautical nickname, “Captain Hook,” and openly recounts how he lost the hand and gained the title. He keeps a firehose nozzle on display in his home—one souvenir from his vivid former life.
January 7, 1973 was a cold, gray day in New Orleans, made grayer by the smoke rising out of the Howard Johnson Hotel on Loyola Avenue, across from New Orleans City Hall. Tim Ursin, then 29, was working at the Engine Fourteen station when the call came in. Nine years into his career and a lieutenant, Ursin thrived in his daily work as a firefighter. “I wanted to be a fire chief,” he said. “I loved fighting fires, and I knew how to do it.”
Ursin and his fellow firefighters sped the quarter mile to the downtown hotel where, they soon learned, lone sniper Mark Essex had set the curtains on fire—using lighter fluid—in several of the 17-story building’s 300 rooms.
Deborah Burst
The sniper’s spree had begun over a week earlier, on New Year’s Eve, when Essex killed two police officers. Six days later, he shot a grocer. In his siege at the Howard Johnson, Essex gunned down four guests and three officers. The New Orleans Police Department, armed with short-range pistols and shotguns, struggled to combat the long-range .44-caliber Magnum carbine.
At the scene, the firefighters found the building inaccessible. Hotel guests fled from the stairwells, while the NOPD manned the elevators, trying to capture Essex as he shot at hundreds of officers on the ground. A national television audience watched the chaos unfold as the sniper had complete control. “There was a lot of confusion,” explained Ursin adding that radio frequencies between police and firemen weren’t connected like they are today, and there was no communication between the two departments. “We didn’t know if it was one sniper or several snipers.”
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Ursin heard four people screaming for help on the eighth-floor balcony. Truck Eight was parked nearby, so he raised the hundred-foot ladder, grabbed the sixty-pound hose used for internal fires, and threw it over his shoulder. As he made his way up, the nozzle began to hit the back of his knee, slowing him down. Eighty feet in the air, with one hand gripping the ladder, he reached down and tucked the nozzle between his chin and left shoulder.
Essex, from his position just above where Ursin was climbing, aimed his rifle and fired at him. The bullet drove through Ursin’s left forearm and pierced the hose nozzle. Be it luck or divine intervention, the brass nozzle stopped the bullet on a steady path to puncturing Ursin’s neck. But the firefighter remained in peril as a steady stream of blood poured from his arm.
Weak and losing a dangerous amount of blood, Ursin slowly began his descent with only one functional arm. Aiming at Ursin again, Essex pulled the trigger, but, miraculously, the gun jammed. The police returned fire, forcing the sniper back inside the hotel.
The bullet in Ursin’s left arm blew straight through a bone and both arteries, but he didn’t realize then the extent of his injuries. “When I got about thirty feet from the bottom, one of the firemen helped me down,” he said. “The doctor didn’t think I was going to make it.”
Rushed to Charity Hospital, Ursin entered another chaotic scene, as the incoming casualties screamed and begged for pain medications. He recalls a dark room with a bright light shining in his face and blood everywhere.
Weak and losing a dangerous amount of blood, Ursin slowly began his descent with only one functional arm. Aiming at Ursin again, Essex pulled the trigger, but, miraculously, the gun jammed.
“I was laying on a stainless steel table in the surgery room; it was cold as ice,” said Ursin. Father Rogers, the chaplain for the fire and police departments, leaned over him. “He started giving me the last rites, and boom, I fainted.”
Meanwhile Essex moved to the roof, using a cement bunker for cover. A military helicopter arrived and hovered over the roof of the Howard Johnson while the NOPD surrounded the bunker. After multiple rounds of gunfire, Essex died with over two hundred gunshot wounds.
Ursin spent six weeks in the hospital, undergoing multiple debridgement surgeries as doctors tried to save his hand. Several months later, the doctors amputated his hand but managed to save enough tissue and blood flow to use a cosmetic prosthesis. Later he switched to a hook. “I had the top hand surgeon in the country,” said Ursin, referring to the esteemed New Orleans orthopedist Dr. Daniel Riordan. “Number one in the United States.”
Although he lost his left hand, Ursin looked on the bright side: he was right-handed. “You can’t do things as fast or as efficiently,” explained Ursin, adding that it doesn’t take long to learn, just a little patience. “Most frustrating thing was tying shoelaces, but I was determined.”
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Married with three young children, Ursin didn’t have time to mourn the end of his career. After two years on sick leave, Ursin retired from the New Orleans Fire Department in 1975. “My life as a firefighter ended,” he said simply. “I accepted it and moved on.” He started working at a sporting goods store, and at times over the years had to balance two other jobs as well to make ends meet. Eventually, though, he made the decision to pursue his lifelong passion—fishing—as a career.
Ursin started Escape Fishing Charters in 1982. The business took time to flourish, but Ursin eased his way into it, working part-time over five years. “Took me a long time to decide; it’s not a business you just walk into and make money,” he said, “[but it’s] very rewarding, you meet a lot of people.”
In his early 60s, Ursin joined a gym, hoping to gain more symmetry in his arm movement, reach over his head, and cast better. He set a goal to lift 200 pounds, and after three months, he set another goal of 220 pounds. A month later, it was 240 pounds; after hitting that one, he knew that was his limit, and he stopped. “If I wouldn’t have pushed myself,” Ursin said with a smile. “I would have never known that I could do that.”
Tim Ursin, Jr.
The customer base for Escape Fishing Charter stretches across the south, with locals and tourists as well as many regulars. Whether for large family reunions or more intimate gatherings, Capt. Hook, as he now calls himself, believes fishing brings peace and a special bond with others.
One of his most poignant memories is the day a husband wanted to take his terminally ill wife on her final fishing trip. It wasn’t the best time of the year for fishing, but Capt. Hook was determined to make the trip worthwhile. After one unsuccessful stop, he noticed a three-way bayou with the tide moving. He cast the line out for the woman, and the cork immediately went down.
“She kept reeling them in, and caught a good fifteen trout,” said Ursin, smiling. “She hugged and thanked me, then a couple of days later her husband called and said she had passed away.”
On other trips, a boat will sit silent with focused fishermen, until a young boy catches his first. “Someone hooks a big one, and they never stop laughing,” said Ursin, adding that he sees the “transformation” especially with families. “People have so much tension, and they need some kind of release.”
