Random Acts of Violence
Everyone has heard that “truth is stranger than fiction” and the bizarre occurrences recounted here need no fictionalization. Many writers assert their creative license in order to “liven up” a true story. The events I am about to divulge to you are well documented at the Pacific Beach Police Department and can be verified if you so wish. This sort of life experience is what breeds the engaging material you read in novels. Art imitates life. This is my life.
I was seventeen and, like all seventeen-year-olds, I was certain I understood the world to the highest degree. I was going through a phase where I was dating younger men and so, as a senior, I was dating a junior, named Jason. I was also going through a phase wear I often drove my car without wearing a seatbelt. Seventeen-year-olds are indestructible.
I was driving Jason home from La Jolla High School in my 1986 Volvo. He lived on the fashionable end of Pacific Beach, where the high standards of living spilled over from neighboring La Jolla. It was a short drive, so in order to lengthen our time alone, indeed to discuss our life philosophies, I circled his block multiple times.
Jason was eating a bagel. I’m not sure what possessed him and I can’t imagine why I thought it was so funny, but he decided to throw a piece of his bagel at the car in front of us. It ricocheted off the license plate and I was lost in a fit of laughter.
I made a left onto Ingraham, a wide two lane street that ran both ways. Suddenly, the car behind us, a dusty white pickup, swerved into the right hand lane and sped up so he could drive next to us. The driver gave us the finger. Jason laughed, but the look on the man’s face terrified me so I sped up. So did he. I slowed down. So did he. And just as I began to voice my fears, he pulled up in front of us and slammed on his brakes.
We weren’t at a stoplight. We were right in the middle of the street, left hand lane, blocking traffic. I slammed on my brakes and Jason was furious.
“What the fuck!?” He demanded. But before Jason could take any action, the man jumped out of his truck and ran up to the passenger side of the car. Jason rolled down his window.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” The man asked. He was covered in dust, perhaps a carpenter or construction worker. As a man in his forties, or so he looked, we felt an immediate deferral to authority.
“What are you talking about?” Jason asked.
“I saw you. I fucking saw you. I’ve been following you.”
“Saw what?”
“I saw you throw a rock at that car.”
Relief. This was all a misunderstanding.
“It wasn’t a rock, it was a bagel.” Jason explained.
And suddenly the passenger side door was open. It happened in a swift, fluid movement, as if the door flew on its hinges by its own will. The man placed his hands on Jason’s chest and pushed him into the seat as though they were standing face-to-face.
“Get out of the car.” The man demanded.
“What?”
“Get the fuck out of the car!”
Jason refused and the aggressor grabbed him around the forearms. He tried to pull Jason out of the car by sheer force. The seatbelt locked and Jason remained in the car.
When the man realized he couldn’t have Jason out in the open, he began shaking him, as if, like an infant, some sizable damage could be done.
“Stop it. Please stop.” Jason pled in a semi-calm voice. He said it over and over again and all I could do was stare. “Stop. Please! Leave me alone.”
I looked around, wide-eyed and desperate at the pedestrians. A few paused, mid-stride, to see what was going on. But they quickly moved on. Not a single cell phone-toting yuppie offered to call the police or get help.
The shaking wasn’t satisfactory and the man knew he hadn’t made his point. He wound up and punched Jason square in the eye.
That was it for me. I could handle the shaking and the yelling. But when it came to blows, I wasn’t going to just sit there and let Jason, trapped in the car’s seat, take a beating.
We all wonder what we might do in a situation like this: Will we act or will we freeze? At first, I was unquestionably frozen. But the man had crossed some invisible threshold and my body was catapulted into action.
Free from the restraint of a seatbelt, I reached over and attempted to pull the man’s hands off Jason. His grip was fierce, but I was determined. This had to stop. I wasn't strong enough to release his grip, so I began digging my nails into his skin. I had made some headway when the man finally realized what was going on.
“Bitch!” He spat. And he slapped me. Hard. Very hard.
Perhaps he was tired. Or perhaps the fact that he had just struck a seventeen year old girl who fell short of the five foot mark snapped him back into reality. The three of us froze in a terrifying tableau. He slammed the door. On the way back to his car he tried to break off my rearview mirror, without success.
I was frozen in position from when he struck me. My mind could not process what had just happened. Maybe I was so inundated with cultural stereotypes that I had truly believed he wouldn’t hit me, that my femininity somehow made me immune. Shock had set in and I couldn’t even feel the pain he had surely caused.
Jason, however, was fast and intelligent.
“Write down the license plate, now!”
I didn’t move.
“Write down the license plate! Shit, where’s a pen?” He found one in the tray beneath the radio and was quick enough to scribble the seven letters and digits on a scrap of paper before the man had even started his engine.
And then we were alone, stopped in the middle of the street.
“Caroline, you need to drive,”he said encouragingly. “We need to go.”
I didn’t move.
“It’s just a block. Come on, you can do it. My house is right around the corner.”
The shock had not worn off and I drove in that state to his house. I couldn’t feel myself pressing the gas or the brakes. I couldn’t discern whether we were moving or standing still. But we made it to his house safely and he led me inside.
Jason’s eye was already turning black and blue. My cheek was beginning to swell and bruise as well. Jason's stepmother, Lucinda, was floating across the living room floor to greet us. Then everything in her body tensed.
“Oh my god, what happened?”
“I’ll explain in a minute,” the always rational Jason said. “We need to call the police.”
Even in my catatonic state, I found it interesting how assertive and strong he was just minutes after I’d heard him pleading, “Please stop. Please. Leave me alone.”
We iced our respective wounds and the police showed up much faster than I expected from all the movies I’d seen. We told our story and Jason handed over the license plate number. The officer said the plate number would help, but made sure we understood it was no guarantee we’d get the perp.
“Just look him up! Go get him!” Lucinda demanded, one protective arm wrapped around Jason’s shoulders.
“We’ll look into this and get back to you.”
“Get back to us!? Do you see what this man did to these kids?”
“I do. I promise I’ll work this as quickly as I can.”
He was true to his word. Within a few days, he was back with a photo lineup. Jason and I were separated and shown the photos.
Few people will experience a lineup in their lifetime. The pressure is unbelievable. Every word you say is documented and will be used in court. If you say “maybe” or “I think” you could be jeopardizing the identification. I looked long and hard. I was terrified. I had to be right, I just had to. It was only two days ago, but the men in the photos all looked the same. And they were driver’s license photos. The officer warned me that his hairstyle and facial hair might have changed since the photo was taken.
I devised a plan. I looked into the eyes of each of the men in the photos. Number One…no. Number Two? Definitely not. When I got to number five, my heart began to race. I suddenly knew I would never forget his face.
“It’s him.”
“Are you positive?”
“Absolutely sure.”
I was right. Jason had failed to identify the man, which was understandable since he spent most of the incident under attack.
The officer told us he could now go pick him up. He told us the guy’s name, as if knowing who he was would somehow soothe our pain.
“What’s going to happen to him?” Lucinda asked. Being the good Buddhist she was, she wished the perpetrator no harm.
“That depends. For now I’m just going to pick him up.”
Lucinda came up with the strangest idea. She wanted to set up a meeting with herself, Jason, me, and the perp at the police station. She said she wanted to know why the man did what he did. She wanted to hear his side of the story.
The thought of seeing him again clenched my stomach until it was rock hard. But compassion and curiosity won over fear and I agreed to the meeting.
We sat at a long table with our officer at the head. The perp was on one side; Jason, Lucinda, and I were on the other. Under these calm circumstances, I realized the man was much older than I previously thought. He was pushing 60 for sure and somehow this made it all the worse. It was like somebody’s grandfather on a violent rampage.
The perp had prepared a letter he wanted to read to us.
“I’m sorry for what I did. I take care of my elderly parents all on my own. I won’t put them in a home and it’s very stressful. I had just picked my car up from the impound lot and I was having a bad day. I talked to Jesus and he forgave me. I hope you will too.”
Silence.
“Would you like to respond?” the officer asked. Jason shrugged his shoulders.
“I would,” I said. I couldn’t look the man in the eyes. “What you did wasn’t just physically painful. I know you’re sorry for hitting us, and I can forgive you for that, but that isn’t the worst of what you’ve done. I’ve had nightmares every night since this happened. Every time I hear someone yelling in anger, I flinch. You’ve taken away my sense of security. And for that, I’m not sure I can forgive you.”
I was in tears by the end and, to my surprise, so was the man. A second cop escorted him out of the room so he could compose himself. It saddened me to know how little pity I had for him in that moment, but I just couldn’t give him any more.
“Is it possible to just enroll him in an anger management program instead of sending him to jail?” Lucinda asked.
“Sentencing is up to a judge. We can’t do anything about it," said the officer. "This is assault and battery of a minor, two counts. It may include jail time.”
Lucinda sank in her seat. “I don’t want him to go to jail.”
“Well, you have exactly one year from the day the crime was committed to decide if you want to press charges.”
Jason decided pretty quickly he didn’t want to. His Buddhist philosophy told him ‘Live and let live’. He believed the man would be punished somehow, just not by the penal system. I was not so certain.
I asked the advice of friends, family, and teachers. With our wounds visible, everyone at school wanted to know the story and it always concluded with their opinion about pressing charges.
“Hell yes you should press charges,” my English teacher, and entire English class, told me. “Why the hell wouldn’t you?”
As with many teenagers, the person who held the most sway was my mother.
“I don’t think you should,” she told me, “but you can if you want.” My mom’s characteristic fear of confrontation was evident in her response.
I have a year, I told myself. Let me think about it.
The months passed and I started wearing my seatbelt and locking the doors. If the man had come to my side of the car, he would have successfully pulled me out without the restraint of a seatbelt. At a gas station on Balboa, I heard two angry drivers exchange expletives at an intersection and I quickly got in my car and locked the doors. My heart was racing. I wondered if the fear would ever end.
To Jason the whole thing was rather comedic. This didn’t happen for me until many months later. Then I began to see it as a fabulous story to tell. Jason and I were both writers and a good story was priceless. It was a great party story because people were wowed by it and it never got boring. I favored using it as an icebreaker at play rehearsals, getting to know my fellow cast members. But the question of pressing charges still nagged at me and people continued to give me their opinion. For the young, the answer was always yes. The elders had mixed feelings.
And then, the year was up. I had done nothing. I wasn’t relieved the year was over. In fact, I felt worse than ever. It was a decision I was going to have to live with for the rest of my life. But I suppose that would be true either way. To ruin this man’s life or not. To crush his possibilities with a criminal record, or let him continue to rage unchecked.
So the question I pose to myself is this: Am I happier this way, with a feeling of not receiving justice, but sparing a man trauma? I want to say yes, but the truth is I’ll never know.