John Vincent Hickle was born in Ross-on-Wye, a small market town with a population of 10,089 in southeastern Herefordshire, England, located on the River wye, and on the northern edge of the Forest of Dean. He was born on November 23, 1967, to Beatrice and William Hickle, and was an only, but very happy child. He was imaginative and smart, and always had a distinct love of music, even in his younger years. When he was 15, he started a band called Crunch with a few friends, John on drums and vocals. John's band never saw the level of professional success needed to make a living, and so he worked various menial jobs to make ends meet. When John was 21, he decided to try and make a life for himself elsewhere. Seeing England as a dead end for his musical endeavors, he moved to Canada with Willie, a friend and band mate, and they came to Toronto in hopes of finding fame within Toronto's indie music scene.
Unfortunately, Canada's opportunities for bands were about as ripe for the picking as England's were, and John ended up working the same types of blue-collar jobs here that he had worked in England. This pattern of playing small gigs and balancing day jobs was the norm for years in John's life, until he decided the music was just not going to happen and he was going to have to get a good job to secure his life in Toronto. John went through all the procedures to become a police officer, like his father, whom he had always respected for his job. He did very well in his training, and was eventually on the beat with the Durham Regional Police.
six years into his career in law enforcement, at the age of 32 and the rank of sergeant, John and his partner, a large Italian man named Vince moretti, answered a call of domestic abuse. They arrived at the modest bungalow on a quiet court around 8:30pm on a warm Saturday night in July. John approached the front door as Vince checked around the side of the house. John knocked on the door and announced them as police. There didn't seem to be any movement in the house, nor any noise. Vince rejoined him on the front step, and John knocked again. The sound of locks turning was accompanied by the door cracking open to reveal the petite face of a woman, pushed into the open space between door and frame. She asked what was wrong and John relayed the reason for their call. The woman insisted she didn't know what it was all about, and that she was home alone. John asked if they could take a look inside, but the woman claimed she didn't feel comfortable allowing that. John reassured her that they were there just to make sure she was safe, but the woman declined the offer. As she backed into the house, John caught a quick glimpse of a forearm coming out of the back of her hair, as if a hand were grasping a handful of it on the back of her head. John glanced quickly at Vince, who confirmed what John had seen, and Vince's hand shot out to prevent the door from completely closing. The woman turned her head to look back out, a tear forming, then trickling down her left cheek. John figured from the direction of the mystery forearm that the man must be directly behind the door, so he took a chance and rammed his foot into the door. The chain snapped and the door exploded inwards, clipping the woman's arm, sending her spinning into the front hallway. As she fell, now free of the forearm of her captor, she landed on the floor hard, her head hitting the bottom of the stairs in the hall. the force of the door flying open also had some effect on the man to whom the forearm belonged, as it hit him square in the face, instantly bloodying his nose, and sending him to the floor on the other side of the hallway. John entered the house first, gun drawn, and Vince followed behind. John turned his attention to the woman as Vince swung over to the man. The man shook off his fall, and Vince noticed the hand that hadn't been holding the clump of hair in it had a sawed off double barrel shotgun. Vince yelled for him to drop it, but his sentence was cut short by the bellowing boom of the shotgun, which caught Vince in the upper chest. Vince flew back hard, falling right back out the open front door. John's head spun around, eyes following Vince as he disappeared from the hallway. As he turned his gaze quickly back to the man on the floor, he was away of him screaming.
"BITCH!" the man yelled. He was holding the hotgun out towards the woman unconscious on the floor, and already squeezing the trigger. John squeezed the trigger of his Glock twice, sending the small but lethal projectiles into the mans chest dead center as his shotgun roared once more, the short barrels of his gun sending buckshot in a wide spray towards his wife. John's bullets had found their mark and pushed the man back into the floor, the sharp crack of bullets sinking into wood floors behind him as the shotgun slid out of his grip and across the floor. The man's buckshot had also found their marks, hitting the woman in the side of the head, making an incomprehensible mess up the stairwell wall. John screamed a loud NO as it all happened, then stood in complete silence as three bodies lie around him in all directions. He turned and kneeled beside Vince, sliding his hand behind Vince's head.
"Vince. Vince, can you hear me?"
Vince's face was sprayed with blood, and the bottom of his neck was torn up like meat through a grinder. The majority of the buck had hit his vest, but it hit him high and the spray was wide, catching his shoulders and neck as well. Vince tried to gurgle out something, but he couldn't make it out. John grabbed his radio and called in the incident, and within minutes the paramedics were there working on Vince, trying to stop the geyser of blood that was draining from the hole in his neck.
The next day, sitting in a very uncomfortable plastic chair in the hospital, John was given the news that his partner and friend was going to survive, but that he would never speak again, and worse yet, would never move below the neck again, the shot had shattered the spine in the back of his neck. Less than 24 hours later, John resigned his position with the police force, and spent a very long time dealing with his guilt over that tragic day.
A year or so after the incident, John took on a position with a company called Security First. He found the world of security much easier to deal with than police work, and he continued to do it for the next 10 years or so. His current position was as supervisor at the Scarborough Town Centre, where he usually just did office work and training, but this particular day he had been filling in a regular shift for a guard that was off sick. John wondered what the fate of the guard ended up being. Who knows if anyone John even knew swas still alive. Or how much longer John would be for that matter.
