By Associate Editor Joe May
NASHVILLE, Ark. (BNc)- A Christian couple is the focus of a Biography Channel special to air at 10 p.m. Saturday.
The series “I Survived” will feature Nashville, Ark., physican Samuel Peebles and his wife Suzanne, who went through a harrowing ordeal Nov., 2003. They picked up an escaped death row suspect while returning from a funeral.
The suspect, Scott Eizember, had only weeks earlier murdered an elderly Oklahoma couple, beating an elderly woman and shooting a 16-year-old boy.
The Peebles were returning from a funeral in Fort Smith when they picked up the hitchhiker near Waldon. The suspect had run out of gas.
Once in the car, the suspect brandished a pistol and ordered them to drive through Oklahoma and into Texas. Along the way, the couple shared the gospel with the suspect and attempted to reason with him to no avail.
After hours of driving, Sammy Peebles was finally able get his own gun out of the glovebox. Following a struggle in which he discovered the suspect’s gun was actually inoperable, he shot Eizember several times in self-defense.
The suspect survived and was arrested.
Peebles, who has done some preaching and mission work, has two brothers who are ministers. Their father M.H. Peebles, Sr., was superintendent of schools in Saratoga for many years and was a well-known gospel preacher for numerous small congregations in south Arkansas until his death in the early 1980s.
Peebles has written a book, First Do No Harm, which is soon to be published by Rose Publishing of Little Rock.
2008-04-10 at 8:24 am
Since this incident has been widely used by gun buffs to validate carrying a gun, it should be pointed out that the Peebles were saved by the grace of God, not by their gun. If Eizenber’s gun (which he had stolen) had been operable, he would no doubt have killed them both, since he hit them on the head with his gun AFTER he was shot, and fled in their van. They were saved, not by their gun, but by the fact that his gun did not work.
Eizenber has since been convicted and sentenced to death for one murder and to 150 years imprisonment for another. These murders were committed with his victims’ own gun that he found in a closet after breaking into their home.
Many Christians believe they should not carry a weapon because Jesus told Peter: “Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). Christians are to love their enemies (Luke 6:35) and are told not to be violent (Titus 1:7).