Free Trooper Down! by Marie Bartlett Page B

time and I wasn’t even working in the area. I had transferred reports from one county to another and heard about this bank robbery and kidnapping on the scanner. They gave out a description of the vehicle—a light blue Chevrolet Chevette.
    This boy had robbed the bank, come out, jumped in his car, and instead of putting it in forward, threw it in reverse and went down an embankment. Then he got stuck. Just as one of the bank tellers was about to go to work, he came up behind her, put a gun in her ear, took her hostage, and got her car. He put her out down the road, but when we picked her up, she was so shook up she couldn’t even give us a description of her own vehicle. She saidit was light blue, and it turned out to be black.
    I met a line of cars and saw a black Chevy Chevette. Just on a hunch, I decided to turn around and follow it. I had already made the remark back at the station that I was gonna go out and catch this bank robber. The first sergeant had laughed and said, “If you do, be sure to give me a call.”
    After I turned around, the Chevette cut down a tobacco path and I thought, “No, it can’t be him.” But I went down there anyway—it was just a little narrow, dead-end road where two cars couldn’t pass. I had to get off on the shoulder. He had gone on up the road and turned around. In a minute he drove right by me, threw up his hand, and waved. I threw up my hand and waved.
    When he got past me, I saw the tag and knew it was him. So I wheeled around and turned the blue light on. He jumped out of the car and started to run. Then he stopped, put his hands up, and said, “I dun figured you got me. The money’s on the seat.”
    I never even had time to call in and tell anyone where I was. After I got him handcuffed, I looked in the car and there was money all over the place. I got him back to my vehicle and thought, “Now, before I call in, I’ve got to calm down. If I get on the radio right now, they’ll think something bad has happened.” I just waited a couple of minutes until I settled down. When I called in, I didn’t say anything except, “Is the first sergeant still in the office?”
    They said yes and I said, “Well, tell him that bank robber he was talking about—I’ve got him right here.”
    In a few minutes I heard a siren and here comes the sergeant just as fast as he could come. I called the Jacksonville police department and told them to bring a crime lab down. They interrogated the boy and told me to take him back up to the magistrate’s office in Jacksonville.
    This kid was only about nineteen, black, his father in the Marine Corps, a career marine. We still don’t know why the boy robbed the bank.
    On the way to the magistrate’s office, he said, “Would you do me a favor? Before I go to jail, I want to eat one last good meal.”
    I said, “Okay, what have you got in mind?”
    â€œPull in here to McDonald’s and I’ll buy us all a hamburger.” (We had a detective with us.)
    â€œWith your money or the bank’s money?”
    â€œMy money!” he said. So we pulled into McDonald’s and bought three Big Macs and Cokes, and ate them on the way to the Jacksonville jail.
    *
    Loggers and marines can be especially hard to handle. They’ve usually got arms on them the size of your leg. It took a while to learn about the marines. They’d come out of Camp Lejeune four or five at a time, all drunk. Most of the time they wouldn’t say a word. But once in a while you’d get a mouthy one. So what you did was just grab the biggest, mouthiest one first. And when the others saw him go down they didn’t say anything.
    Authority—that’s what they understood best.
    *
    I was driving an unmarked car one night and met a gray Volkswagen with a male driver. His vehicle had no headlights, so I turned around to stop him and he took off. I chased him in