Attempted Murder, Hit and Run

It's 2:15 AM, August 31st, as I start writing this. I'm home, alone, behind locked doors, with the dog. She was a great hit with the cops, by the way. Steve flies in early this afternoon, and has been apprised of many of the details. On our way back from the airport, rather than stopping first at the grocery store, we're going to the local range to purchase a pistol and some ammo. He's got a concealed carry permit. This time, rather than trying to tolerate his owning a gun but letting him know I'm pleased when he changes his mind, it's my idea for him to get one. 

Rich is in the hospital ER, exact condition unknown. Lots of scrapes - his back is a royal mess - possible broken rib(s), and a knee he can barely walk on. I'll pick him up when he calls. Physically, I'm fine. I wasn't involved, just picking up the pieces. Literally.

But now that you know the highlights, I'm going back to the beginning, at least of my awareness of the growing problem. I wrote this earlier, just after getting home from Minnesota, and sent a copy to my daughter, just in case Adam escalated. I didn't want to worry Steve since there was nothing he could do but fret long distance.

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If you go back to May 6th and my post on vandalism to the house, this was my first indication of the problem. Recent news and events have given rise to the information that it started long before that. And yes, it is personal. There is now a who. And a why, crazy as it is. We’re evaluating the what, as in what we’re going to do about it, meaning when we’re bringing the county sheriff back in and sharing our latest information.

Rich is pretty much a night person. Down here, especially in summer, it’s the only sane time to be out and about. During his wanderings, he makes friends, because that’s who he is. He’s also become vulnerable to those we stereotypically think of as the night element, including thieves.Or worse.

One of the friends he made is a woman named Amanda. (No last names here.) They talked, even got together - as platonic friends - a couple times. One day she announced to him that her old boyfriend was back in her life and she needed to discontinue their friendship. The boyfriend would not understand. Rich respected her wishes and stopped contact.

She has returned as a friend again, with a long, disturbing story. Back when she and Rich had met, she’d had a restraining order against the old boyfriend, now identified as Adam. One night when the cops showed up about a report that he'd violated the restraining order, she denied any problems. The cops left, never knowing that he was in the house, behind the door, with a knife to her neck.They do know now.

Some time this summer, she enlisted the help of several large, burly men friends and they physically threw Adam out. Now free to talk with Rich again, still as friends lest you misunderstand, more of her back story has come out. Adam’s too. 

He has a long history of violence, is emotionally and physically controlling. He knows about Rich, considers him a threat to his “relationship” with Amanda. Further, his long standing MO is using lug nuts as a weapon. (Sound familiar?) Rich described him using something with a purpose of shooting blanks, drilling it out, adding an actuator to put force behind the lug nuts. Rich explained that one to me, reminding me of one being used when our MN garage was turned into a 4th bedroom, but the remodel revealed many missing carriage bolts. An actuator was combined with a nail gun to seat proper bolts.

This makes Adam our prime suspect in the vandalism to our siding. But it doesn’t stop there.

Amanda uses a bicycle to get around, like Rich does. She reported that the other night Adam stole her bicycle, just after he was thrown out. It starts to seem likely that he may have been involved when Rich’s bicycle was stolen from the back yard a couple months ago also, well within the time frame when he knew about Rich, and shortly after the lug nuts incidents. Not only was the bike stolen, but Rich had worked on making a trailer to haul behind it which was loaded with items he was to bring to somebody the next day. Fortunately from just a transportation standpoint, Rich had stockpiled a variety of bike parts, and he put together what he fondly refers to as his “Frankenbike” so he could still get around easily. He now even had another trailer hooked up behind it, again put together from scrap by Rich.

Rich doesn’t go anywhere right now without a knife for defense. It rattled me to hear about it, just because I know how dangerous they can be and hope his temper doesn’t get out of hand in the wrong way. Then he informed me of the threat he has saved on his phone of Adam promising to rape him! Self defense is a whole different thing. 

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 (Note: I don't know why this is color changed. The above between asterisks is what I copy-pasted in.)

Well, Adam escalated.

One night right after I came down here, Rich was up late, sitting out in the patio, doing whatever he does on his phone. He fell asleep briefly and when he woke, the phone was no longer in his hand. He hadn't dropped it. He doesn't sleep walk. When he got up and went into the house, he found his phone had been placed inside. Now we had reason to believe Adam had trespassed in the house without our consent.

Rich has heard Adam outside when Adam has visited a friend named Craig who lives across the back yard and two doors down. In one instance he was clearly calling the local home owners association trying to get Amanda in trouble with them. (She lives nearby.) We suspect he's been behind our troubles with them, and Rich has been given information from a third party to that effect. Rich occasionally sees Adam's truck driving slowly past the house. All I know to look for is a white Chevy pickup. Right now it probably has some front end damage.

Tonight - well, after 11 PM on the 30th - I woke up to hear my cell ring twice. Voicemail was left by Rich asking me to come and pick him up, and where, and why.I didn't even stop to get dressed, just grabbed my keys and purse and left.

Rich had been on his bike, towing its new trailer loaded with bike parts and other items to take to a  friend's house in El Mirage, two towns over. With the issues with the HOA, he was moving his bike parts there to work on, as well as taking some items over to give to the friend who was letting him set up work space there. Rich had gone only a mile when, heading down a street behind a strip mall rather than hit the highway, Adam was coming from the other direction in his Chevy, saw Rich, turned around and sped back up the street, plowing into the trailer and Rich's bike, accelerating the whole time, leaving a trail of debris about a hundred feet long, before speeding off.

Fortunately, where Rich was at the end of this attack is directly behind a bar in the mall, and somebody was outside smoking. He came over, called 911, then lent Rich his phone to contact me. (His phone was home on the charger.) When I arrived, Rich was still full of adrenaline, waving people away from the debris aka crime scene, and had one major thing on his mind.

I needed to warn Amanda! He gave me a description of her house and sent me off. It's pretty weird to knock on a stranger's door just before midnight but when I did, her housemate answered the door. (Since kicking Adam out, she's found an older gentleman friend to stay with her, and watch the house.) She wasn't home at the moment, but I told him briefly what had happened and that Richard wanted her to know and keep safe. He promised to contact her, and I returned home to grab Rich's phone, the dog, and return to Rich. The cops still hadn't shown up when I left, but had just arrived before I returned.

We both filled them in on the accident and the history with Adam, along with Rich's identification of him as the driver.Rich was sitting on the sidewalk as I pulled up the second time, now obviously in pain. He agreed to have the paramedics called. He asked me to collect whatever might be usable pieces from his bike and his load. I, in turn, after the cops were done taking pictures of the scene and Rich's back and knee, and the paramedics were discussing whether or not he wanted an ambulance ride to the ER, sweet talked a couple of them to help load the bike into the hatch of my car. They didn't believe it could go in, particularly with a crate fastened onto its back. I knew it would, if they let me show them how and I just borrowed their muscle. First however, I had to remove a bunch of glass pieces. They had no wish to cut their fingers, and I didn't want that either. But the glass was broken out of a picture frame, flat and easily picked up without incident, except for scaring the dog as pieces landed on the pavement and broke some  more. Once the bike was in and secured (straps always in the car), I wandered around loading whatever else wasn't totally destroyed into the spaces around the bike, until the cops briefly asked me to stop. By the time the scene was cleared for cleanup, up walked Amanda!

She was returning home after getting Rich's warning relayed to her. It was exactly what Rich didn't want, being where Adam would know how to find her. She, in turn, was trying to apologize, thinking it was her fault Adam had attacked Rich, since he'd tried to follow her in his truck earlier while she was walking, and she was having none of it, ducking around trees and between buildings where he couldn't follow. Well, assuming he's sane. Rich now had to spend much of his rapidly waning energy telling her it was all Adam's, not her fault. After getting introduced, she helped pull the wreckage apart with me so we could access whatever was salvageable, down to bolts and nuts scattered around. 

Rich finally agreed to sit in the car until it was time for me to drive him to the ER and the cops to leave. It was hard watching him having to move enough to bend and turn to get in. His shirt was still off from after the pictures were taken, and it looks pretty bad as well. Since the bits and pieces of wreckage were now in the car, I asked both of them if we could now please say goodbye and I could take him to the hospital. 

One little problem though. Rich needed to smoke. His rolling papers and tobacco were in his hip pocket, and he was only getting out of the car once, by damn. But his lighter was a casualty, and did Amanda have a spare one by any chance? She did. So I now just had to drop him at the corner of the parking lot near the ER because no smoking "on campus." Once he was out of the car, I drove over to the ER doors, called the guard over, explained what was going on  and requested somebody meet him part way at least after his smoke with a wheelchair. I also mentioned he had a copy of the police report in his hand, just so he would know we weren't totally wacko at too-damn-early-AM.

Rich had discussed with Amanda the idea that he'd be back home later to empty out the car so I could pick up Steve at the airport. It had to be emptied because I was driving slightly illegally with a side door that wouldn't close, and while that might work late at night going slow and with little other traffic, not so much between home and the airport. (I'd even asked the cops if they'd give me a ticket taking him to the ER and the car home with one side door  open. They declined to issue one.) Anyway, I told Rich in no uncertain terms that I'd have the car unloaded in the morning. It might not be all at once, I'd need to take breaks, but between his knee and  his ribs, no way I was letting him near that job. 

I lied though. Once home, I started pulling this out, then that out, got the whole bike and basket out with some finagling, and used my PJ top to wipe the salt out of my eyes until the car was empty!

So now I'm inside, trying to work off a big case of nerves. Not just the accident. But I keep thinking i hear sounds out in the yard. I've gone out to check once when it sounded like some things (bike parts?) got knocked over, but nobody around. Do I feel safe behind locked doors? Not tonight! Likely not till they find Adam and put him away for a long time. Maybe once the sun is up - soon now - I'll catch some sleep, waiting for the phone to ring.