Police Chase

I perform another dramatic reenactment for Chuck.

We were in the white vehicle pulled off to the side of the highway. The suspects in the black vehicle pulled in front of us and the police followed. (The space shuttle did not really land in the median. I just decided to include it for dramatic effect).

Wiley meets Mr. Tucan for the first time.

Wiley is suspicious of Mr. Tucan.

Wiley decides to attack first, ask questions later.

(In actuality Wiley is yawning. I bore him.)

Today, Erica and I were in a Christian volunteer work with our friends Marilyn, Suzanne and Shirley when we became witnesses to a news story. We were headed West on 1-70 towards Paxico, Kansas, when we noticed all the cars up ahead were coming to a dead stop and a police helicopter was buzzing overhead. We assumed there had been a bad accident and pulled over to the side of the highway to wait.

Next, we say a grey Taurus driving east on the westbound lane directly towards us. As it got closer, I saw it was very battered and thought it must have been one of the cars involved in the accident. The taurus pulled in front of us, sideways, and stopped. Then, we saw a highway patrol car speeding towards the taurus. The taurus began to move again and drove off the highway entirely into the grass, headed towards the Auburn road exit ramp. The highway patrol car never stopped and rammed directly into the taurus' drivers side door. The suspects drove a little further until they were rammed again by another police car coming from the opposite direction. At this point, the suspects jumped from the car and started running. One was caught immediately, the other made it across a frontage road and into a marshy, wooded area before being apprehended.

While this event was unfolding not 30 feet away, I was desperately digging in my purse for my camera which I always carry with me. Except not today. I then remembered I had taken it out of my purse last night to download some pictures I needed for a project I have been working on. I always carry my camera to capture such events as: tornados, fires, riots, building implosions, plane crashes, celebrity sightings, streakers and of course, high speed police car chases. I have now seen a tornado and a police chase and didn't have my camera with me either time. This is perhaps why I have been unable to get my news photojournalism career off the ground. So far the only picture I have had published is a picture of some 3-inch hail that I took a couple of years ago and e-mailed into Bruce Jones, our local weatherman. Even when he showed the picture on the 10 o'clock news he credited the picture to Chuck, not me.

Tonight on the news they reported one of the suspects was an escaped felon from Colorado. The police had originally tried to pull him over for "failure to yield" when he took off. The chase lasted about 15 miles and reached speeds of up to 105 miles per hour. Several times the police put down "stop sticks" but the suspects just drove through the median into oncoming traffic to avoid them. They interviewed one of the highway patrol officers who rammed the vehicle and he said they felt it was imperative to stop the car before they reached a more populous area such as Topeka. It is amazing that they did not hit or kill anybody before being stopped.

I stopped by my office to drop off some stuff on the way home and told my story to a couple of my co-workers. I expressed my frustration at not having my camera and one of the attorney's suggested I just perform another of my dramatic reinactments. Thankfully, I still had Joel's hot wheels stored in the attic. After viewing the wonderful job I have performed on this reinactment, I assume I will be put in charge of making all trial exhibits from now on.

Go to http://cjonline.com/stories/122806/bre_chase.shtml for more information on the big chase.

Less dramatically, I bought Wiley some new toys today. Erica is bringing her dogs over tomorrow night and I wanted everybody to have plenty of playthings. Perhaps Mr. Belvedere and Raina will appreciate my puppeteering skills more than Wiley.

As always, we can be e-mailed at chogan2@cox.net.

PS: Sorry if you have had problems logging on lately. Blogger just upgraded from Beta to something else. That's why you now have to sign on to view the blog. I think they have worked most of there technical difficulties out now.