So this morning, I arrive at work, and settle down into the breakroom with a cup of vending machine coffee for a final cigarette, before I have to clock in, to watch the “light and fluffy” morning news. This morning, they actually have a “big” news story, about a kidnapping and high speed pursuit that occured the night before.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t really news, after all, it’ll have a mere 15 minutes of local fame and then quickly be forgotten. I do, however, find them, uh, “interesting,” as they remind me that no matter how screwed up my life may be at the moment, there’s always some yutz out there who’s managed to screw his life up worse.
The break room’s pretty noisy, so I can’t hear all the details, but it seems some guy showed up at his estranged wife’s house, forced her into his truck at gunpoint, and then sped off. I don’t know if the cops were called, or if they spotted his truck speeding and tried to pull it over, but at some point they began following him.
There’s no pictures of the chase, just a map showing the route through four counties that chase went through. The newscaster mentions the name of the man driving and his estranged wife, but I can’t make out their first names. The last name is pretty common (think “Smith” or “Jones” for the level of commonality), so that doesn’t tell me anything. The guy was finally stopped when the sherrif’s department of one of the counties used spike strips to flatten his tires.
They did have pictures of the arrest. They showed the wife, standing outside the truck, looking pretty shaken up as a police officer draped his coat around her shoulders. It was a distant shot, so you couldn’t make out her face, then they showed pictures of her husband as he was put into the back of the police car. Suddenly, everyone was shouting at pointing at the TV. Holy Flurking Schimdt! That guy used to work here!
He still worked for the company (I’m sure that as soon as management saw the news pictures, they were busy filling out his termination papers.), but had transferred to a different division and was no longer at our facility (He moved from receiving to security!), but I worked with him when he was here.
Most of us, myself included, weren’t really surprised that he had finally gone over the edge (many of the folks were pointing at the TV and laughing). He wasn’t very popular as he was a “by the book” kind of guy, even when management admitted that the book wasn’t working and we had free reign to do whatever we needed to do to get the job done. His wife, whom I’ve also worked with, is a good looking woman, who had an innocent look about her.
Of course, the topic of discussion at work today was his arrest, and their marriage. According to my coworkers, he was known to have beat her on several occassions, but she never pressed charges. One has to hope that this was a wake up call to her, and she’ll press charges.
Personally, I never understood their marriage. She’s beautiful, and could have had a date with any guy in the company, but she chose to date and marry him, despite the fact that people had told her he’d beaten some of his ex-girlfriends! I’m glad that she’s okay, and I hope that their one year old child is okay as well (the piece didn’t mention the child), and I hope that this serves as a lesson to other women out there who are in an abusive relationship: Get out! Get out now, or he will kill you! (We’re wondering if he’s going to get out on bail, because if he does, then it’s certain that he’ll kill her.)
The surreal part was when the showed him getting into the police car. He was totally calm and collected talking to the police as they were helping him in. I have no doubt that he was thinking that if he explained his reasons for doing it, they’d see that he was right, and let him go. That’s not going to happen, if I know the local cops. They’ll see to it that things are “properly” explained to him the first chance they get.