Eyewitness

I’ve heard about it, read about, but never witnessed it myself.

It was Friday night on March 4. We had stopped to eat in E. St. Louis, and when we headed for the bridge into St. Louis, we were hoping rush hour traffic would be gone. Instead it was stop and go. It’s a little complicated there. There are 3 major freeways converging there. There’s I-70, I-55, and I-64. For those needing to stay on I-70 you need to be in the far right lane. If you need to take I-44,(the south route to Oklahoma) you need to be in the second lane. All others need to stay in the left lanes. Right before the bridge there are only 2 lanes. We were in the 2^nd lane creeping and crawling almost to the merge point where we meet the other lanes on the left.

As we were creeping along, I noticed a black Lincoln Sable, 2 cars ahead of us, veer into the right lane, where a Landstar truck was moving slowly as well. At first, it looked like maybe someone wasn’t paying attention to the road. Mind you, we were not going very fast, probably 10 mph. It got back into the lane and then seemed to slow down a little bit and I watched in amazement as I realized that this car was driving into the back trailer tires of this truck. Larry was sitting in the passenger’s seat and saw it as well. Then the car pulls away and pulls up to the truck driver’s window, stops the car and a black lady jumps out of her car and starts yelling at the truck driver. She was screaming at him that he had ran into her car!! We could hear her even back where we were. I said to Larry, “ You need to go tell that driver that we saw the whole thing and it was her that ran into him.” So Larry jumps out of the truck and runs up to the driver and says we saw the whole thing. Well, that did not make her happy and she started screaming some more, then must have realized that there wasn’t anything she could do about it and jumped back in her car and took off.

Larry came back to the truck and quickly wrote his name and our phone number on a piece of paper and we eased up to the Landstar driver and gave it to him. We told him if he needed a witness we would be there for him.

He just took off. We never saw him again, and we made it passed the merge point and were almost to the crest of the bridge and saw that the Sable was still 2 cars ahead of us, so we were keeping an eye on her. What we saw next was absolutely incredible and we realized she was up to no good.

Traffic in the right lane was almost at a complete stop. It was bumper to bumper. There was an Atlas Van Lines truck, with cars in front of him and cars in back of him. The Sable tried to nose her way in front of the truck. I got on the CB. “Atlas, Atlas, watch out. She’s going to hit you. Back off. She’s going to hit you.” I mean, we knew what she was up to. He saw her and laid on his horn, but she knew what she was doing. As she was trying to maneuver her way in front of him, she hooked her back bumper onto his left front and shredded her back right quarter panel, pulling off the bumper half way. Damage was done, so she stopped and got out of her car screaming at him that he ran into her.

Again, we were right there and we stopped next to them and Larry was out there telling her that he saw her run into the truck, but she yelled back that he didn’t know (….) and that the truck ran into her. Larry then pulled out his little phone camera and started taking pictures. She jumped in her car screaming racial slurs and got on her phone screaming at someone on the phone. Since I could see that my truck was blocking traffic I pulled up in front of the car, but really wanted to be back there with the drama.

Finally a traffic response vehicle came and told them they needed to get off the bridge so Larry and I took off. We figured if they needed anything, they had our number.

About an hour and half later we got a call from the Atlas driver. He said that the cop that finally showed up, gave her the ticket for failure to yield the right of way, he was not convinced with her story, especially, since the damage did not show what she was trying to say happened. At the point, she had four different stories going and tried to say that the Landstar truck had jack-knifed and hit her. He also said, that she was on the phone and the officer asked her who she was talking to and she said, “My Attorney. I’m going to sue this driver.” And the officer said, “Why, he didn’t do anything wrong.”, which made her angry at the cop. She got her ticket and took off.

He said we may get a call from his insurance company, so this might not be over.

I don’t know her motive, but I wonder if she’s tried this before. And I know she doesn’t even realize what consequences her actions have. Because of her own selfishness, she could ruin someone else’s life, and livelihood. It could mean that this driver could lose his job. Maybe no one got hurt, but any accident involving a truck has many consequences in terms of insurance, and a driver’s record.