By now you’ve heard of the Police pursuit that ended in a scary crash at 59th and Folsom, right in front of Corti Brothers, on Saturday. Well, we hadn’t yet when we found ouselves at Big O (just across the street) just after lunchtime, just a few hours after the incident had taken place. (Link below, but wait for it, trust me.) The manager reported to me that the suspect had tried to run, and had been taken down and taken from the scene in an ambulance. Later, I overheard the same manager saying that it had taken several officers to subdue and handcuff the suspect, that he had been “a pretty big dude.” Police tape cordoned off the entire intersection of 59th and Folsom–clearly, some bigtime shit had gone down.
Not being satisfied with one source, I chatted up one of the shop guys while he rolled my repaired tire out to my car. According to this young man, the suspect had flashed a gun, and when cornered, had fired into his own car, killing his passengers, before being gunned down by officers and “taken away in a body bag.” How did he know this? His boss had gone down there, don’t you know, and asked around.
Well, imagine my chagrin when the official reports came out. Some pretty major stuff, a long high-speed chase ending in a gnarly collision which left the driver in critical condition but innocent bystanders (aren’t they always? just once I’d love for someone to be a bystander but actually guilty of a totally unrelated crime) unhurt. There was indeed a passenger in the suspect’s car but she will live to flee the law another day.
I assume what happened is that the boss and some of the other front office guys had played a prank on the young tire jockey who had been stuck doing alignments and rotation in the 105° heat. But part of me wonders whether it wasn’t me, dear reader, who was the butt of that young man’s own prank. That could have been a nice play on his part–imagine if I had been the sort to irresponsibly report local gossip to large numbers of people!
Side note about local coverage: The promo for this story on CBS13 mentioned that the officers involved “may be on the hot seat.” What did they mean by this? That one (1!) of the witnesses they interviewed thought the officers might have used excessive force. What did the Bee’s witnesses have to say?
“We watched (the television show) ‘COPS’ the other day and it was kind of like that,” said Joseph DeNigris, 21.
Dude, totally.
The Sac Rag 
Wow. Man on street quotes are frequently so painful.
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Hearsay is the best and most entertaining form of information! My husband aka Scooter was over there at Albertson’s that day and he heard there was a carjacking and kidnapping.
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Did you hear about this surfer guy who pulled a knife on Mr. Hand this morning?
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