A very memorable experience that I couldn't remember

Several years ago, I had a very extraordinary experience of the I-hope-nothing-like-that-ever-happens-to-me variety. I was giving a lady-friend a ride to pick her car up from a mechanic's garage located near the State Capitol. As I was approaching the corner of NW 23rd and Western Avenue from the North, a police car turned onto Western from 23rd with its lights on and stopped sideways in front of me, blocking my path. The officer stepped out of the car and while looking North, in my direction, he drew his weapon. I know it's cliche to say this, but time did in fact slow to a crawl.

The lady in my passenger seat looked behind us and said, "Oh my God, there are two men with guns in the back of the truck behind us!" Glancing in my rear view mirror I saw a black man in a dark hoodie jumping out of the back of the pickup directly behind me and he had a gun in his hand. He was facing my direction. The police officer with his gun out was 40 feet or so in front of me looking terrified. If this was going to turn into a shootout, then I and my passenger were directly in the line of fire.

I turned my head around and looked back and saw that the gunman was walking toward my jeep. In a voice that only massive amounts of adrenaline can produce I said to my passenger, "Where is the other gunman?!! I thought you said there were two?!!"

"He took off running North. Another cop was chasing him!"

The gunman behind me was several steps closer to my Jeep, which was providing him cover from the cop in front of me. I thought about punching it and driving my Jeep over the curb to get out of the way. If the gunman behind me saw that I was removing his cover, would he try and shoot me to stop me? What would I do if I was him? A guy in that situation must be insane. How can I possibly answer that question? I thought about the Jeep. The dashboard hangs on a thick iron plate. I knew that if the cop opened fire, that plate would probably protect me from his bullets. On the other hand, if the gunman behind me opened fire, that plate would ricochet anything that hit it right back at me and my passenger.

Maybe I should put it in reverse and try to run over the gunman behind me, I thought. That idea had merit. I would have the element of surprise working for me. The downside was that he would have almost certainly shot at me. I could be killed. Worse yet, my passenger could be killed because of my stupid heroics and I would have to live feeling responsible for someones death.

The gunman was almost to the back of my Jeep. "If I yell, get down on the floorboard fast." My passenger nodded okay.

The gunman walked around to the passenger side of my Jeep. The gun was pointed straight up at the sky. Surely he was going to try to hijack my Jeep. I put it in first gear. If he starts to point that gun at me, or tries to open the passenger door, I burn rubber.

The man in the hoodie looked in my window. He looked at my passenger, then he looked directly at me. The gun remained pointed skyward. For some reason, he decided not to hijack my car. Maybe he thought an Oklahoma man that drives a jeep is likely to be armed. Maybe he thought my passenger might go hysterical and refuse to get out of the car. Maybe he didn't know how to drive a stick shift. For whatever reason, he turned and ran into the parking lot to the West. I was so prepared to floor my car that I struggled momentarily with the compulsion to punch it and try to run him over from behind.

The gunman approached the driver of a white van that was leaving the parking lot. He pointed the gun at the driver then got into the van and they peeled off down 23rd street going East. The policeman jumped in his car then sped away after him.

Just that quickly, the danger was gone. The whole episode probably lasted less than two minutes. I sat there for a moment just feeling my heart beat. I looked at my passenger, "Did that really just happen?"

"Let's go, I have got to get my car." She said.

"I think we should stay here to give a statement to the police."

"I have to get my car. I have a very busy schedule today. Drop me off at the garage and you can come back and give a statement to the police."

I agreed.

About an 45 minutes later, I was back at the intersection of 23rd & Western and there were dozens of police cars there and several cops standing around. I told one of them that I was a witness and then I had to wait a long time and eventually I had to give a statement to a lady detective.

"Did you get a good look at the gunman?"

"Of course I did, the guy was looking straight at me from my passenger window."

"Do you think you could identify him if you saw him again?"

"Sure I could." Why wouldn't I be able to identify him?

"Describe him."

"He was black. He was wearing a hoodie."

She looked very pleased. "What color was the hoodie?"

"It was black." She didn't look quite as pleased. Could that be a wrong answer?

"What kind of gun did he have?"

"A pistol." A look of displeasure on her face again. What the hell? I know he was carrying a pistol.

"How tall was he?"

"I don't know, I think he was a big guy." Again, from her look, I felt like I was giving the wrong answers.

"Okay follow me downtown, I want you to look at a suspect."

At police headquarters I was told that the white van had a 70-year old woman driving it. The gunman had pushed her out of the van while in high speed pursuit. Miraculously, the woman had survived with only a broken leg.

Police chased the van into a neighborhood, where the guy ditched the van and took off on foot. They lost him for a while and so they systematically searched the neighborhood. They found the suspect, a black man, hiding in the bushes in front of a house. He was wearing a blue hoodie. They also found a sawed off shotgun in the bushes.

How could I not have known the guy was carrying a sawed off shotgun? I thought.

They took me to the window to a room where they were interrogating the suspect and had me look at his face.

"Is this the guy?"

The man in the room was definitely black and I would describe him as short. Nothing about his face looked even slightly familiar.

"I can't say that he was the guy."

"Well thanks. We'll let you know if we need anything else. Do you know the way out? Okay bye."

I left feeling that I was a complete failure as a citizen. Surely that was the guy. They didn't just happen to find an innocent man in the bushes with a sawed off shotgun. But my memory had completely failed me. Maybe my lady passenger would have better luck. But she went down to police headquarters the next morning and had the exact same experience. The suspect looked like a total stranger to her too.

I have a friend who is a forensic psychologist. He explained to me that it is common knowledge in law enforcement that eye witness testimony is usually terrible, especially when people are in a heightened emotional state, like when their life is being threatened. In those states, memory doesn't work like it normally does. My story is a perfect example. I have just given you a very detailed account of everything I was thinking at every moment of the encounter. I was hyper aware of where the people holding guns where standing, how they were threatening me, and I was playing out scenarios in my head and weighing various strategies to maximize my chances for survival. There was no room for thoughts about what clothes the gunman was wearing or what model gun he was packing or how tall he was or how he did his hair or anything of the sort. In short, I couldn't honestly remember any of that stuff.

My friend told me that to be a good eye witness in that type of situation takes training. Law enforcement professionals force themselves to ask those kind of questions and then write down their answers. And so, I offer this story as a cautionary tale. If you are ever witness to a crime, and just as soon as the danger has passed, review what you witnessed, and write down every detail you can remember. If you don't have access to pen and paper, call and leave the information in voicemail.

On the other side of the equation, if you are ever on a jury and the case hinges on eye witness testimony, be aware of how notoriously flawed such testimony is. Read the Innocence Project website, for example, and see how many innocent people have been convicted on bad eye witness testimony. And think about my interaction with the detective and how her reactions to my descriptions of events were leading me to fit my descriptions to her facts. And how my overwhelming desire to see justice done to a man that was threatening my life, a man that could throw a 70-year-old woman from a moving vehicle, made me feel like a total failure because I was not able to help the detective do her job.