Towncarjack (continued)
The female passengers were a mother and her 14-year-old daughter. The mother was reportedly wandering around the area crying hysterically, and the daughter was nowhere to be found. Police combed the area for white Lincoln Towncars with blue interiors and bullet holes in the windshield. They spotted one on 23 Ave. just south, and pulled it over. However, it lacked the bullet hole, and the driver was who he was supposed to be.
Just then, a report came in of a one-car accident around 2 St. and Dunlap.
Coincidentally, it was a white Lincoln Towncar with a blue interior, which had smashed into a utility pole. It was hard to tell whether the broken windshield had a bullet hole, and the tophat had probably fallen off the dash, but nevertheless two and two were put together with the expected result
Police scoured the accident scene for the missing suspect, while others searched the carjack scene for the missing daughter, and still others questioned the victim driver and the mother.
Details began piecing themselves together, and I realized that I had picked up that same mother in my cab a few weeks before. I drove her around to search for her 14-year-old daughter, who was out with her boyfriend, of whom the mother disapproved.
That search had ended fruitlessly, though it resulted in a pretty good fare for me. Back at her residence, though, the girl had come home, and the police had come to intercede in an ongoing quarrel between the defiant daughter and the alcoholic
mother.
The taxijacker, of course, turned out to be the boyfriend in question, and his escapade started with a quarrel with the disapproving alcoholic mother. It was probably a matter of escalation and panic rather than a planned crime. The young man was found wandering, not seriously hurt, not far from the pole encounter.
The search for the daughter, with blonde-streaked hair and a black leather jacket, continued for some time. Finally, when police drove the mother back to her Sunnyslope apartment, it was discovered that the girl had made it home on her own.
So the story ended, for the moment, on a fortunate note that no one was seriously hurt...physically, at least. One can imagine the arresting officer saying, "Son, you're in a heap o' trouble!"
The fear of unrequited love, no matter how traumatic, is no excuse for shooting windshields and stealing cabs. Even Romeo didn't do that.
Still, I feel some sympathy for the young lovers, having encountered obstacles to affection myself in times past.
Of course, I'm also glad that I wasn't the driver whose cab became the scene of last night's drama.
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