James Tully of Canadensis, who has to walk to work in the heart of the Eric Frein search area, has been stopped by police more than 20 times, including an encounter Friday night when he says he was roughed by an officer.
Posted on 10/21/2014 1:47:36 PM PDT by Bettyprob
James Tully of Canadensis, who has to walk to work in the heart of the Eric Frein search area, has been stopped by police more than 20 times, including an encounter Friday night when he says he was roughed by an officer.
Police searching for Eric Frein have questioned James Tully so many times that he started carrying his driver’s license and work identification on a neck lanyard to prove his identity.
But that wasn’t enough to keep him from being forced to the ground by gunpoint Friday on Route 447, and being held there, face down in the gravel, by a law enforcement officer driving a knee into his back, Tully said.
Tully, 39, lives off Snow Hill Road in Canadensis which has been a key area in the search for fugitive Eric Frein, the man accused of ambushing the police barracks In Blooming Grove on Sept. 12, fatally shooting a state trooper and injuring another.
A father of two, Tully has held a job at J.A. Reinhardt on Spruce Cabin Road, in Mountainhome for more than a year. He keeps up on his child support payments and barely makes the rest of his bills.
Tully does not own a car. The five-mile walk takes two hours each way. He walks to work in the early afternoon and walks home from midnight until 2 a.m. It hasn't been easy, Tully has a bad knee and sometimes walks with a brace and a limp.
The walk takes him along Route 447, a hot spot in the search for Frein. Since the search began, Tully has been stopped well over 20 times and questioned by law enforcement officers. Tully says he's been questioned as much as seven times during a round-trip walk to and from work.
Until Friday, it has usually been the same. Law enforcement rolls up and asks for his name and identification, where he is coming from, where he works, and then they move on. Some have asked him to keep his eyes and ears open for Frein and Tully did report a suspicious person to police once, since the search started.
Tully left work around midnight Friday and about 25 feet from his job’s driveway, police stopped and questioned him as usual.
A co-worker saw him and gave him a lift off Spruce Cabin Road to Route 447 where he walked for five minutes before another routine police questioning. He continued on for 10 more minutes and was near Brinkers Bridge near the intersection of Route 447 and Mill Creek Road when a silver SUV stopped.
"The driver jumped out screaming like a lunatic,” Tully said. He was dressed in camouflage and a tactical vest and had a rifle held high, pointing at Tully.
He did not see a badge or words on clothing. The man did not identify himself.
“The only I.D. I saw was the barrel of the gun,” Tully said.
“He yelled at me to get down on the ground with my arms out wide and he demanded my name.”
Tully says he complied immediately and that the man drove his knee into Tully’s back and continued to ask his name.
Tully told him his name over and over and explained that his identification was on the lanyard on his neck but that he was laying on it.
The law enforcement officer removed the bandana from Tully’s head and then grabbed the lanyard and yanked it off his neck.
“Good thing it had a break away clasp or he would have choked me.”
He continued to badger Tully.
“I will break you right here. What is your name?” the man asked, while still driving a knee into his back, Tully said.
Tully did not know where the gun was but he was afraid the man would shoot him.
“From the minute I saw him with that gun I thought, let me survive this.”
This went on for what seemed like 15 minutes or more when a state trooper who recognized Tully from previous questioning arrived and told the other officer that Tully was telling the truth about his name.
The trooper held out a hand and helped Tully stand up and helped him gather the items he had been carrying, which were scattered on the ground.
No one apologized.
It is unclear what agency the other officer is working with because Tully does not recall seeing any identification on the vehicle or the man’s clothing, and state police did not answer questions about this incident in time for this report.
The FBI, ATF, and US Marshall service are helping state police in the search.
“The trooper took a photo of me and my I.D. and said he would show it to searchers in the morning briefing,” Tully said.
Then, with scrapes and bruising on his bad knee, and pain in his back, Tully limped the rest of the way home.
He walked to work the next day, and was stopped three times. A trooper strongly advised Tully to find a different way to work, but the only other route for Tully is to walk through the woods. That would be even more suspicious. He cannot afford to give anyone money for gas and his parents, who live in Bushkill, cannot drive at night. He is out of options.
Tully did not finish his shift because he started to notice pain while breathing. He was taken to the hospital and learned that his ribs are bruised from the encounter.
He hopes police will pay for the time he had to take off work and for the X-rays and other medical expenses.
“We understand they have a job to do. Bur there are certain protocols,” said Bob Tully, James Tully’s father. “This guy apparently had delusions of grandeur that he would be the one to catch Frein. We completely commiserate with the police but this guy went full commando on my son.”
His mother, Linda Waddington Tully, bought a reflective vest, hat and gloves which he will now wear during the walk.
“Frein isn’t going to be wearing that,” she said. “I believe if not for that state trooper, he could have killed him.”
James Tully says he is having a hard time sleeping at night and he is nervous to walk to work now. “I’m worried about what is going to happen with the next one. Is he going to shoot first and ask questions later?”
Amen! A two hour walk at midnight along a dark country road every damn night...and winter's coming on......That just sucks!
It would be nice if someone could donate him a car.......
Then maybe you could drive by Mr. Tully's house and offer him a ride to work in the afternoons.....
Self ping
“pigs”
Charles Manson, William Ayers and the Black Panthers must be so proud of you....
And Stalin and Kim Ill must be proud of you.
"You guys keep posting that picture of the blue truck shot in California [from] two years ago and the situations are so different it is ridiculous."
Is it all that different?
In that earlier California case, police thought the blue Toyota Tacoma was a gray Toyota Tundra. They *somehow* thought the 47 y.o. and 71 y.o. female Latina occupants was a black male perp.
The next innocent person they nearly killed on this manhunt was a white male driving a black Honda Ridgeline...yet triggerhappy police shot at him and rammed his vehicle, too. He apparently closely resembled the perp, who was of a different race driving a different make/model vehicle.
Tamzee...John Tully is your NEIGHBOR, for goodness sake! Police have stopped him nearly two dozen times to the point that he wears his identification on a lanyard around his neck to avoid reaching into his pockets...for fear of getting clubbed or shot.
Do you agree there has to be a better way by which to enable this innocent resident of your SAME neighborhood to travel to his workplace without fear of police guns being pointed at him? Someone steps on a dry stick, drops a flashlight, or farts...and your neighbor John Tully could be shot to Swiss cheese.
Then I come onto Free Republic and see these same men and women being painted as the Gestapo and I am "Stalin" if I don't agree that "cops=pigs". It is like reading a New York Times article about Ronald Reagan. Twilight zone unreality.
“What systemic inappropriate attitudes and conduct, contrary to civil liberties, do you perceive on the part of law enforcement in general in the United States today?:
Well, are you referring to our civil liberties as outlined by the Founding Fathers, or the warped caricature of civil liberties we have today where a free government paid cell phone is considered a civil liberty but my driving over the NY State boarder with a loaded 38 special is not?
Either way, regarding attitudes, there are good and bad apples in every group of humans. Some law enforcement agencies as a whole will be worse than others depending on the leadership and level of corruption tolerated. I personally know some LEO’s I wouldn’t spit on if they were on fire. But what I have seen with the Frein search has been very professional and considerate of the public so far. Threads painting these Frein searchers with same shot-up Blue Tacoma truck brush makes Free Republic look like MSNBC.
Tamzee wrote earlier:How does not a single bullet hole here equal “a knee in the back” in your mind?
I’m dealing with facts and the reality of what is happening around us here.... you’re apparently insisting on some twisted, dark fantasy world in your head. Careful, the Unabomber thought his twisted fantasy world was real, too.
How does "a knee in the back" NOT equal “a knee in the back” in your mind? Do you have some loose connections up there?
BTW - I'll take the peasant's word at face value. Plus, you really should think about your accusation of a "twisted, dark fantasy world in [my] head", because I repeated a line from the news story. If you want to be a spearcatcher for the police, just say it. Don't beat around the bush.
Then I guess you didn't read this part of the story where another cop, a state trooper, witnessed it:
The trooper held out a hand and helped Tully stand up and helped him gather the items he had been carrying, which were scattered on the ground. No one apologized.""This went on for what seemed like 15 minutes or more when a state trooper who recognized Tully from previous questioning arrived and told the other officer that Tully was telling the truth about his name.
Tell us, what police department are you affiliated with?
“With which agency are you affiliated?”
Figures. In your conspiracy-soaked minds I MUST be law enforcement to be challenging your statements. The answer is ZERO. I am not and have never been a member of any law enforcement agency. No family in law enforcement, either. I am just on the side of truth and what I am seeing on the ground here is very different from how you all are portraying it on Free Republic.
I am also on the side of Free Republic. It used to be such an amazing resource for news and information on current events right from local Freepers. Now news threads are overwhelmed by rabid misinformation like what is posted here by folks clear across the country. Very sad.
So Frein is such a threat to them that they have the time, resources and inclination to repeatedly harass and terrorize an innocent man who looks nothing like him.
Got it.
Are you willing to acknowledge that you have erred and that you jumped on the side of the government employee who assaulted an innocent man over your non-government employed neighbor, who did not?
Are you willing to acknowledge that you are defending government employees who claim to find Frein so “threatening” that they are willing to repeatedly harass, terrorize, and assault an innocent man who looks nothing like him, even though doing so is tactically foolish and dangerous?
This is the assassinated state trooper's widow and two little boys.
If they were squirrel hunters they probably would have found him by now.
That’s my last post on the thread. I’m done wasting my time.
For what it’s worth, there’s a GoFundMe site set up to raise money to help Tully get a car, or to afford gas so he can get home more safely.
http://www.gofundme.com/g43pg8
There are good folks following this story.
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