Haunted Houses and High Speed Chases: Part Two

Part One

It only took us a few seconds to realize that the car that had just jumped in behind us was the same one we had given a 10 minute head start. They had decided to wait for us which could only mean they were seriously mad.

We were sitting at a light to get on Interstate 71 which goes straight through downtown Columbus. As soon as we entered the freeway the guys in the other car immediately speed up and it seemed like they were trying to hit us from behind. Thankfully we had drove my Celica that night and it had a good amount of get up and go. Dave of course speed up but they kept coming at us. Very quickly things had turned into a high speed chase. Dave grabbed his cell phone and called 911 again letting them know that we had just called and now these guys were chasing us down 71.

The next 5 to 10 minutes seemed like hours to me. Lindsay and I were in my very small back seat holding onto each other while Dave was driving and Rob was in the passenger seat. Somehow Dave was able to talk to the dispatcher giving them points of reference as to where we were all while driving speeds from 25 to over 100 miles per hour depending on what these nut jobs were doing. At one point Dave was even able to pull off one of those moves where you are side by side and then you hit the brakes while the others go flying by. Shortly after that while we were behind them some of them climbed out of the windows and started throwing things at our car and we think one of them had pulled a gun. It was at this point that Lindsay and I had crouched down as much as possible so that we could not be seen from outside the car.

The only truly clear thing I remember about this time period was that I really thought I was going to die. It seemed like it was taking way to long for the police to find us and I couldn't figure out why. Then finally we see a police car blacked out sitting on the side of the highway. As we fly by him we flashed are lights and also told the dispatcher we had just passed them. Within seconds the police car was on the road with lights blaring. This caused the nut jobs to immediately get off at the next exit which happened to be one of the most dangerous streets in the city. There was also a white small pick up truck following the police car which we thought was strange and then we followed them.

As soon as we got to the bottom of the off ramp we were all surprised and unbelievably relieved to see about six police cars all with the police outside of them guns drawn on the car. It was at that moment that we also realized we had had the ghetto bird (police helicopter) above us. the police were doing a felony stop on these guys and we watched as they called each person out of the car one by one making them lay on the ground as another officer cuffed them. The thing that seemed to shock me the most about this was when they pulled the girls out of the car. I know I had said in the first post that there were some girls but it was still shocking to me to see them being pulled out and cuffed, yelling and screaming at the police. The other shocking part was how many people there were in this car. There ended up being 7 people total, 2 girls and 5 guys.

At some point during all of this a couple of officer started walking towards out car so Dave got out. The next thing I know they have their guns drawn on Dave yelling at him to get on his knees with his hands above his head. This was my finally breaking point of the night and I started crying. I couldn't understand why they were arresting Dave. Rob was very calm at this point because that is just him but he kept telling me it was going to be ok and they were probably just taking precautions which ended up being the case. Once the police finally were able to determine who Dave and the rest of us were they took the cuffs off and let him come back to the car.

Quit a while later a police officer came over to get all of our information and our statements. He also found it necessary to tell us that the we were all extremely lucky that night because the people in that car were all members of a local gang. Two of them had warrants one for a murder and they were being arrested and actually sitting in the back of the patty wagon staring at us. They were also going to arrest the driver of the car and we were going to have to go to court for his hearing. Non of this made me feel any better what so ever. In fact I was very happy that the next day I was going back to Dayton where I wouldn't have a chance of running into these guys or any of their friends!

To this day when I see an older white car that looks like that one my heart races a little and I am reminded of that night. It was without doubt one of the craziest and scariest nights of my life.