Mike Frazier once welcomed death.
TOM FOX/DMN
Several members of Mike Frazier's family died 10 years ago when floodwaters swept away a car. He was rescued.
His parents, fiancée, daughter and nephew drowned when a swollen creek swept the family car away 10 years ago. Mr. Frazier survived by hanging onto a nearby tree limb but fell victim to guilt and depression.
He became so despondent that he would drive dark streets aimlessly at night, hoping to be carjacked and killed.
He has since turned his life around, but just before midnight Tuesday, that old wish almost came back to haunt him.
Mr. Frazier, 34, says he was on his way to meet a friend when three men carjacked his white BMW, shooting at him six times as they fled. Mr. Frazier said Wednesday that it was a coincidence that he almost got his death wish. "But I don't think it was a coincidence that I survived," he said.
Two of the men who stole the vehicle didn't.
Within 30 minutes of the theft, the BMW struck a utility pole, slammed into a tree and flipped near the intersection of South Hampton and Camp Wisdom roads in the Red Bird area of southern Dallas. Killed were Christopher Fasom, 19, and Kendrick Canady, 20, both of Dallas.
A third suspect fled and is at large. Mr. Frazier did not have detailed descriptions of the three men.
The irony of those deaths and his own close call hasn't escaped Mr. Frazier, who credits religion and inspiration from Bishop T.D. Jakes and his Potter's House congregation for turning his life around a few years after losing his family.
On May 5, 1995, Mr. Frazier and his family -- father James Frazier, 52; mother Norma "Jean," 53; fiancée Sandy Donahue, 25; daughter Jade, 2; and nephew Courtney Roberson, 11 -- were on their way to dinner during a severe thunderstorm when floodwaters from Five Mile Creek dragged their car off the Beckley Avenue bridge.
Within minutes, Mr. Frazier was alone. All five loved ones in the car with him drowned.
"It wasn't long after losing my family that I was numb to life. I was like a dead man walking. I didn't have anybody," he said.
It was during dark times in the weeks and months after the accident that Mr. Frazier said he would drive around tough neighborhoods at all hours hoping to get carjacked and killed -- it would be a way out.
He suffered from depression and wanted to die but said he couldn't find the will to do it himself.
"I was too much of a coward to take my life," he said. "I guess I would be more of a coward if I took my life. That's the easy way out."
One night about a year after he lost most of his immediate family, Mr. Frazier thought he was about to get his wish.
"I ran out of gas on this street, and while I was sitting there, some guys that I know were gang members drove up," he told The News in 2002. "They asked me what was wrong and I told them I was out of gas. So they drove off, and I thought, 'When they come back, they're going to kill me and take my car.'
"I wouldn't have fought them," he said Wednesday, again thinking about that night. "I would have been like, 'Shoot me, shoot me.' "
But the men returned with gas. When Mr. Frazier pulled out cash, the men refused to take it.
"I was like, 'Man, I can't even get myself killed,' " he said. "And that made me even more depressed."
His turnaround came years later, when he heard a sermon by Bishop Jakes. It was called 'Forever A Victim -- I Don't Think So,' " said Mr. Frazier, who once played guitar for the large Potter's House congregation in southwest Dallas.
He said Bishop Jakes helped him decide to take his life back. "It was a spiritual thing," he said.
"Now I am very stable," Mr. Frazier said, "I'm living again."
In addition to being music director for Tyler Perry, director and writer of stage plays, he runs a Web site aimed at helping people overcome their grief through God. He has published his story in the book Surviving the Storm: Finding Life After Death.
Those lessons resurfaced about 11:45 p.m. Tuesday when he was on his way to visit a friend at Rolling Hills Apartments in Lancaster.
Mr. Frazier was getting out of his 1995 BMW convertible when three men walked up to him.
"One tapped on my window and said, 'You got something for me? Get out of the car!' " Mr. Frazier said.
He got out of the car.
"They threatened him with a gun and told him to empty his pockets," Lancaster police Lt. Joe Hall said. "He said he didn't have anything in his pockets."
One man struck him in the face, and Mr. Frazier hit him back. Another man stuck a gun in this face, but Mr. Frazier said he pulled it down.
He managed to break away.
"He began running and they started shooting at him," Lt. Hall said. "He wasn't hit."
Mr. Frazier said the families of the men who died have his sympathy. "But my thing is, I gave them my car, and they still tried to kill me. Justify me feeling any remorse for them losing their lives."
Robert Goodnight, the retired Dallas Fire-Rescue firefighter who saved Mr. Frazier's life in 1995, was surprised to hear that Mr. Frazier had survived another brush with death.
"It's amazing," said Mr. Goodnight, who swung out on a ladder and plucked a frightened Mr. Frazier from a tree.
"The chances of everyone dying in that car, and then to have people shooting at him -- this guy's got something special planned for him down the road."
Staff writer Jason Trahan contributed to this report.
