What would you do?

Today on our way to lunch Heidi and I encountered a vehicle that was driving very erratic!

This man swerved to the left and almost hit an oncoming car. Veered to the right and almost hit a parked car! We all came to a red light at Third Avenue and Hover. Heidi and I were going to head South on Hover to our destination, and this man was headed North on Hover. He proceeded to turn North onto Hover only to have a car honk at him for pulling out in front of the oncoming traffic.

Heidi suggested, prior to the honking, that we follow him. After the honking I decided to listen to her! We followed him up Hover toward Mountain View where he continued to swerve left and right. At one point he almost jumped a curb, and if he had done so would have hit five or so pedestrians walking on the sidewalk. At that point Heidi called 911 on her cell phone.

We followed this man into the parking lot of Conoco on Hover and Mountain View. We called dispatch back with a license plate and strongly urged the dispatch to call for the police to stop him. Heidi stayed on the phone with the 911 dispatch as we followed this man out of the Conoco
station, where he pulled East onto Mountain View, without signaling or looking for that matter for other cars. We ended up getting stuck behind another car and watched as this man veered to the left, then to the right again, almost hitting two other pedestrians. It shook them up to the point that they moved away from the edge of the curb.

He had his right blinker on for three blocks, before we came up on another red light at Francis and Mountain View, so we weren’t quite sure he if was actually going to turn South on Francis. The light turned green and you could seen that he was trying to look for something on the floor of his car. We were directly behind him, with dispatch on the phone warning them that he was going to hurt someone if they didn’t get a patrol car to us quickly.

This man realized that the light had turned green, pedestrians on the sidewalk, he made a wide turn onto South Francis, almost hitting the car in the turning lane on Francis to Mtn. View, veered to the left and then to the right again, jumping the sidewalk and coming to a stop!

I put my hazards on, pulled in front of him and jumped out of the car to approach his car. Heidi was still on the phone with 911 trying to give the dispatch our location to get a patrol out to us!

I put my hand up to indicate that I didn’t want this man to leave. He already had his window down, so I approached his window and asked him if he was ok. He told me that he was. I asked him if he was on anything. He told me that his doctor gave him some anti depressants. I asked him if there was something wrong with him again and told him that he was driving very erratically. He told me that he was looking for his wallet and he knew that he needed to slow down. I told him that I didn’t think that he should be driving and asked him where he was heading. He told me that he was going home. I asked him where he lived. He told me Third and Bowen. I asked him if I could drive him home, because I really didn’t think that he should be driving with the way that he was all over the road and I told him that he almost hit pedestrians on more than one occasion. He agreed that I could drive him home. I asked him to sit in his passenger seat and I would drive him. He got out of his car and headed for the passenger seat. I reached in on the driver’s side of the car and pushed the driver seat all the way back!

Just then Heidi was telling me not to take him anywhere, that I needed to wait for the patrol car and they should be there any second. I went to my car, got out my little wallet and headed back to this guys car so if he changed his mind, I would be in the way and he couldn’t go anywhere, but he sat quietly in his car in the passenger seat. Just then a police officer was headed North on Francis. He pulled up behind this man’s little brown Geo Metro and then another office pulled up in front of that officer.

The officer asked for my ID. He wrote down the information, got my phone number and told us we could be on our way.

We came back to the scene after we ate and saw that the police had parked this guys car in the church parking lot that is on the corner of Francis and Mountain View.

We never intended for him to get into trouble, but I honestly believe that he would have hurt someone had we not gotten involved!

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