Peace on Earth had to wait

A Richmond County sheriff's deputy was spotted this week buying his wife a present.

For Christmas.

It's not that he's a procrastinator, or that he's a big-game bargain hunter. As a matter of fact, he'd had the gift all picked out well before Dec. 25.

It's just that his job got in the way of getting it done.

Between the daily work of a sheriff's deputy -- don't even think of calling it "routine" -- and the shooting incident at Cherry Tree Crossing housing project, which led to several tense moments of unrest and protest over several days -- it was difficult on a number of deputies and other emergency service workers to clear the calendar for Christmas.

Then there was Christmas day.

Deputies were called to a house where a woman had already been stabbed with a knife and another woman was holding the stabbed woman's 5-year-old at knifepoint.

The armed woman was holed up in the home, and when negotiations failed -- and the boy was crying while being threatened with his life -- the SWAT team entered and shot the woman to rescue the boy from the eight-inch butcher knife.

What did you get for Christmas? Richmond County Sheriff's officer Scott White got a hostage standoff -- and the need to shoot a hostage-taker to save a boy.

"He saved that kid's life, there's no doubt in our minds," says Sheriff Ronnie Strength.

There's a reason Deputy White was involved in that incident and two others in which he was forced to fire his weapon stretching back to 1997: Because few of us would ever want to be in his shoes.

And certainly not on Christmas day.

White was among perhaps 15 officers who had to endure that nightmarish situation on our behalf on Christmas.

And we just wanted to say thanks.

"They got a call, they responded. My hat's off to them," says the sheriff, whose own December has been likewise complicated.

None of this ugly violence was initiated by the deputies. But it was theirs to deal with nonetheless.

In the Cherry Tree Crossing incident, a suspect was attempting to elude officers when he rammed one patrol car with his SUV and started off toward another officer, who fired his gun. The man later died.

The woman in the Christmas day confrontation will apparently recover.

And while the 5-year-old will be traumatized for years to come, he's alive today -- because of the swift and sure actions of an officer who did what he had to do

Something few of us could.

In its own way that, too, is a gift.