Event 7-20-2008

So I just got back from a gun show in Phoenix, and had something incredible happen on my way back on I-10. To put it briefly we encountered a situation on the highway where I was actually put in a position where I drew my firearm on individual. Even though several times I thought I was going to see someone die in front of me, the situation ended without any shots fired, and no one got hurt. I’ll explain…

My father, friend, and I were heading from Phoenix to Tucson on I-10 this afternoon at about 7:00 PM when we began noticing a vehicle swerving a few vehicles ahead of us. We were only about 20 miles south of Phoenix when this started taking place. Initially though the vehicle was avoiding debris, however we noticed there was nothing in the lane, and the driver became more erratic. At that point the driver started driving in the left should parallel to the highway for a short distance, and then at high speed continued to head into the median. The driver continued speeding down the center of the median for about ¼ mile, and then crossed over into the opposite lane, now driving against on-coming traffic heading north on I-10.

As this was all occurring we immediately realized there was something seriously wrong and we knew we had to trail the driver and do something about the situation. We ended up slightly trailing the vehicle and stayed parallel on our side of the highway. In addition to us, another pickup truck was directly in front of us keeping pace with the runaway driver. While we were following the vehicle, I got my friend to get one of our AR-15’s and some loaded magazines out of the back of our Expedition, incase we had to force the vehicle to stop.

Immediately when the whole incident started, my father called 911 and told the operator what was happening. My father informed the operator that someone was going to die, that they needed officers on site immediately, and that we were going to attempt to stop the vehicle. The operator began to argue with my father, and he ended up hanging up on them to focus on the situation. He ended up calling back, had more problems with the operator, and hung up right before things sped up.

As the driver was driving against oncoming traffic, there was multiple times where we thought the SUV was going to plow head-on into another vehicle, and almost hit head-on with several semis. Amazingly the driver never even side swiped another vehicle. At this point we were now approaching the Gila River bridge, and amazingly the driver made it across without hitting anyone. At that point I looked over and noticed an un-marked SUV with red/blue police lights tailing the run-away vehicle. As the vehicle crossed the bridge, it began to stray back into the median, and stopped in a pile of bushes.

As soon as the vehicle stopped in the median, my dad stopped our vehicle and we all bailed out with handguns drawn and approached the vehicle. The off-duty officer had stopped parallel to the runaway vehicle, and also had his handgun drawn on the vehicle. My dad however did not know that plain-clothes officer was in fact Police, and yelled to him to put his weapon down. The officer immediately identified himself as Police and flashed his badge. At this point I was standing to the rear of the vehicle slightly off to the left. My dad and friend then flanked around me and took up angle positions on the vehicle. I then moved to the rear of the vehicle and checked to see if there were any other passengers, and cover any problems from the right side. Fortunately the vehicle was mostly blocked on the right from bushes.

The officer then proceeded to yell multiple times at the driver to get out of the vehicle. After no response, he switched to Spanish, and still had no response. He then attempted to get the man to exit the vehicle, and could not get him out. At that point my dad handed his 1911 to my friend, and pulled the man out of the vehicle as the cop and us kept a draw on the driver. From here the officer pinned the man, and I moved in to help pin him once he was secured.

Once we had the guy down and pinned, the situation actually lightened up finally. He asked if any of us had cuffs, but since we didn’t we simply held him for a moment until DPS officers showed up immediately on scene.

It turned out that it was a 78 year old man that was drunk and blew a .15 when they did the test on him. He was almost completely incoherent when we pulled him out, and was in complete denial once he was in custody of the officers.

Since I just got back, and everything is fresh in my head, I wanted to document what happened since it is still fresh. I have a lot of thoughts on it, however since it is late, and I’m still taking a lot of it in still, I’ll comment on it later. I am glad however that no one got hurt, and the worse thing that happened was a few scrapes and bruises on the old man that almost killed so many people on the highway.

I do also want to add right now, that regardless of your beliefs, I believe that God will sometimes put you in a situation where you have the capacity to do the right thing. When we are put in those situations, it is up to us to act out of our own free will, and do the right thing.