It is amazing how much scripture applies to real life situations. Proof that people have never changed since the days of the Old Testament. The above title comes from the book of Proverbs (KJV). In this post I will share two out of numerous examples I could share. These are not fiction. These events really happened just the way I am about to describe to you. The first story has a slight bit of humor in the end and fortunately no one was ever injured during the incident. The second incident however did result in a serious injury to the victim. Both of theses incidents occurred in the mid 90's while I was employed as an Investigator with my local Sheriffs Office.
My first story begins one evening while I was on duty and had stopped at a local small Police Department for a few minutes. To narrow the time frame down for you, this was the era of Ford Taurus being used for Patrol Cars because of downsizing and economics. On this occasion, I was just getting back into my patrol car when a call came in reference to an armed robbery at a nearby convenience store in a nearby town seven miles away from where I was at.
I started my car, turned the headlight switch on, and my headlights would not come on. I jiggled and tried everything, but the lights would not come on. I tried this for several minutes, while during this time, I observed at least half dozen marked patrol units whizz by me, blue lights flashing and sirens screaming all going toward the action.
I heard the radio communications state that the robbers had left the scene and there were no injuries. That was at least good news.
Finally! My headlights came on. Being a seasoned Investigator, I was not particularly excited. I was probably just as excited over my headlights now working, as to the fact that I was now en-route to the aftermath of a robbery.
I left the local PD at a normal speed, no lights or siren, after all most of the excitement was over by now, and I was getting ready to be the cleanup guy who's responsibility was to put all the pieces of information together and start a mountain of paperwork.
About a minute onto the highway, with no other traffic in sight, an older model Oldsmobile met me, flying low. It was the extreme speed of the vehicle which caught my attention. If not for the speed, I would not have paid much attention, and the vehicle would have continued to its destination uneventful, while I continued in the other direction.
Being experienced though, I knew that this was a sign of criminal behavior. I turned around and began following the fast traveling Oldsmobile, still no lights or siren at this time.
As I closed in on the vehicle, I noticed an out of state plate on the back of the vehicle. The plate was barely hanging on to the back of the vehicle.
The vehicle made a rapid left turn in front of me, and turned down a dirt road leading to a gravel pit.
I followed the suspicious vehicle on it's journey, noticing it fit the description of a vehicle reported to be stolen earlier that day. By now My adrenalin was beginning to pump a little. At the very least I probably had a stolen vehicle in front of me, combined with the reckless and evasive driving, could this possibly also be the robbers everyone was looking for?
As I closed in on the vehicle, it came to a stop in an isolated wooded area. My headlights which had failed me earlier now revealed two occupants exiting the vehicle with ski-mask still on their heads. Now my heart is pumping pure adrenalin as I had received information that one of the robbers was armed with a .44 magnum.
The two suspects split, and one ran out at about 45 degrees from me, while the other one ran straight toward me. I figured the one running toward me must have had the 44, and wanted to get a good shot at me. By now of course I had my pistol trained on the suspect and within a millisecond of squeezing the trigger. The suspect got about 10' from me, stopped, threw his hands in the air and fell to the ground and put his hands behind his back. I cuffed the suspect on the ground, looked around and the other suspect was gone. I quickly got on the radio and broadcast all this information.
Within a few minutes the other suspect came out of the woods, onto the highway, where he was apprehended by other responding officers.
The two suspects were taken down, confronted with the facts and the stores security video of the robbery, showing them wearing the same clothing which they were still currently wearing in real time.
The problem now is that the video showed three suspects and we only had two.
Of course by now it was over for these two, who gave up the identity of the third robber, whom was picked up near the location where the other two had bailed out on me. He was the one with the .44 magnum which he turned over to Deputies.
During the booking and interviewing process, the guy whom I had almost shot began laughing.
The laughing got the best of me so I couldn't resist asking him what was so funny? after all, I nearly shot him and he was probably going down the river for a long time.
He responded "You really want to know"? I said "Yeah!"
The robber said this: " When we jumped out of the car at the gravel pit, we thought you were our buddy who was supposed to be right behind us, so we could ditch the stolen car we were in, and jump into his car which is the same color and almost the same body style as your unmarked car was. I thought you were him so I was running toward you until I got close enough to see it wasn't him, and when I saw you had me, I knew it was over".
I tried to hide my own chuckles while listening.
Back to my original theme. Here's what got these robbers caught: They were running from nobody. No one was pursuing them so why run? They were several miles away from the scene with nobody in pursuit, so why were they still wearing mask? They were running wide open, in the middle of nowhere, with mask on their heads when nobody was chasing them. If they had not been running when no man pursued them, they may have never been caught.
See the next story on my next blog, please leave a comment or share if you enjoy this type of post!
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