to the officer's frantic radio calls. The jailer discovered the unconscious dispatcher and began to answer phones while calling an ambulance for the dispatcher. All available ambulances were racing towards the Hutchins's home, so the chaos intensified with the second ambulance call. The jailer did not know to notify state highway patrol regional headquarters in Asheville, of the situation, delaying the description of the shooter and his vehicle getting to troopers. The jailer attending the phones also did not know how to use the then-new North Carolina Statewide Police Information Network computer system, the NC link to the FBI's nationwide National Crime Information Center, which could have enabled fast communications between the agencies in lieu of the overloaded phone lines. Troopers were thus unaware that two Rutherford County officers had been murdered and that the suspect was at large in his car. Had the SHP Asheville dispatch center been so alerted, they could have located vehicle registration records on Hutchin's vehicle and issued an all-points bulletin and description to regional troopers. North Carolina State Highway Patrol Trooper Robert L. "Pete" Peterson, 37, a US Army veteran, who had served in combat in the Vietnam war. He was deeply well-liked and respected as a poster trooper among fellow law enforcement officers and the local citizens. He was stopped at the McDowell-Rutherford county line on US Highway 221, talking to a McDowell County trooper. Peterson heard garbled radio traffic on the Rutherford County Sheriff's frequency on his scanner. At that time, local law enforcement and the State Highway Patrol used different radio frequency bands, so troopers often used personally-owned scanners in their patrol cars to monitor both. Though Peterson could not make out the radio calls, he felt something was wrong, and he drove south on US 221 towards Rutherfordton. Peterson radioed state highway patrol dispatchers in Asheville and asked them to call the Rutherford County Sheriff's Office and find out what was happening. State highway patrol dispatchers were not able to get through the overloaded phones at the dispatch center, due to the chaos at the Sheriff's Office. As Peterson entered the Rutherfordton city limits on US 221, Hutchins sped past him going north. Peterson turned and pursued, apparently thinking he was simply a speeder, unaware that the suspect had just murdered two sheriff's deputies. Peterson's last radio transmission to Highway Patrol Headquarters was to give his location just north of