Many moons ago, I was sitting in the left turn lane when my light turned green and I preceded into the intersection. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an older Suburban come flying through the intersection in front of me traveling right to left. As he flew by, I caught a glimpse of his face and I noticed bits of rubber flying through the air in his wake. When he passed, I cleared the intersection, falling in some distance behind him and I watched as he drove at high speed around the bend and out of sight.
A few seconds later, I heard sirens and could see a couple of police cars coming up behind me, so I pulled over. As I started to pull back on to the road, I heard a few more sirens and I pulled back over and along comes a few more police cars. When they blew past me, I pulled back on to the road and continued in the same direction, realizing that all these police cars were after the guy in the Suburban. As I drove along, I could see the trail of fresh rubber in the road from this guy’s truck (apparently he had run over a deployed spike strip earlier) and then I started hearing more sirens and saw two police cars coming from the opposite direction.
As I approached the next side street, I saw a large piece of tire on the edge of somebody’s front lawn on the far side of the turn and that drew my attention to the obvious fresh scars in the pavement that appeared to be left by tire rims. The scars were making a swooping turn to the right onto the side street. So... I hit my blinker and turned in to the neighborhood.
As I slowly made my way down the older tree-lined neighborhood, at about 7 or 8 houses in, I saw a few more fresh scars in the road pulling into a driveway. The driveway led down a steep incline and off to the left to a carport behind a few trees. And there, in the carport, was the Suburban I saw just minutes earlier plowing through the intersection.
I continued down the street, and after a few blocks saw a police car speeding toward me, I slowed to a stop and waved my hand out the window. He braked and pulled up to me, rolling his window down. I told him that if he was looking for a tan Suburban, go about 3 blocks down on the left and look down the driveway and he’ll find it under the carport. He rolled up his window and sped off.
Out of curiosity, I turned around and headed back that way and the police officer was in front of the house and 3 more patrol cars were rolling up. I stopped a couple of driveways up the street where I got a good view of the police and the house and within minutes, there were 10 more police cars from the state, the county and our local town. As they went to the front door to arrest this guy, I got out and was talking with some of his neighbors. Apparently, he had been layed off from a white collar job, wife and kids left and down on his luck, we found out from listening to the police radio on a patrol car sitting a few feet away, that he had just robbed a bank.
The funny part came when they hauled him off and a few officers were all standing around and one guy came up to the guy I flagged down and was smiling and reached to high-five him and said, “I heard YOU found him! YOU DA MAAAN!” The cop had a broad grin as he turned looking in my direction and I just smiled, shook my head and left.