On Sunday night Ian and I were driving down I-205 southbound, heading towards the bowling lanes in Gladstone [to meet up with Jake, of wedding-toast fame, and his brother Josh, of courting-Maggie fame/shirt-stripped-off-by-Stefanie fame--see the wedding post in January], while carrying on a spirited discussion about our love-hate relationship with Oaks Park.
Casually, Ian said, "I think that car's door is open." I squinted at the car ahead of us, one lane to the right, where a light seemed to be hovering to the side of a sedan. The outline of the car door was hard to make out in the dark, but after a moment I realized that Ian was right, that the light we were seeing was the one from the inside of the door.
I thought of the time years ago when my aunt had been driving her minivan down the highway with her kids in the back seats. My four-year-old cousin somehow managed to open the door to the van, and no one noticed--not even his much older brother, sitting next to him--until the police pulled them over to ask about it. So I assumed it was the back door and had been opened by a child. I waited for the parents to notice and close the door. But they didn't.
I began to wonder how the door could be open wide enough for me to see the light. Wouldn't freeway speeds cause enough wind resistance to hold it closed? And how could they fail to notice that the door was open?--this wasn't a minivan, it was a small sedan.
"They haven't noticed that the car door is open--do you think we should pull up beside them and honk or something?" I asked.
"I don't think we want to get that close," Ian said. "I think they know it's open--and they're fighting!"
"What do you mean, fighting--how can you tell?" I asked impatiently, still focused on the car door.
"Look inside the car," Ian said.
I peered through the darkness and realized that I could, in fact, see the figures in the car--and their heads were jerking back and forth, each into the space above the other person's seat. Then the car swerved, and righted itself. Ian immediately sped up and passed them; I turned around to watch for the sedan to pull off at the next exit.
And they didn't pull off. Then the car swerved again.
"I think they're still fighting--and they didn't pull off! I think we should get behind them and watch to be sure they do," I said.
"I don't know if that's a good idea....if they swerve too far they could jackknife and block the lane," said Ian.
We waited a few moments, and again the car swerved. We were unable to tell, looking back, if the car door was still open.
"This is dangerous! And they're still not pulling over! Do you think we should call 911?" I asked.
"Maybe we should....yeah," Ian responded.
I found my phone and dialed--
"All operators are busy. Please hold for an operator." --while Ian slowed down and let the car pass him again. As we watched, the woman in the passenger seat put her sandaled foot out of the car door; it hovered inches from the ground. "Oh, $%@&!" I exclaimed. "Honey, look, she's trying to get out of the car!" I glanced at our speedometer--we were going 60 and we weren't passing the blue sedan--it wasn't slowing down. Then a 911 operator answered.
"Hi, I'm on I-205 southbound and there is a car in front of us that is having an altercation. They have been swerving and now her door is open and she is trying to get out of the car--now the door is closed--she's hitting him now! The car is swerving--now it's straight--"
"Which exit are you at?" the operator cut in.
"Exit 14, we're coming up on the mall, Clackamas mall...maybe they'll take the exit.....they're not, they're still driving! Oh my God, she's got her foot out the door again!"
"I'll have to transfer you," the operator said.
"Okay--"
"Please hold."
Moments later--"Hi, this is police dispatch,"
"Hi, I'm on I-205 southbound, just past the mall! There's a car in front of us--we've been following them, we can see blows being exchanged--right now I think she's choking him, his head is jerking back and forth and they're swerving but he's not pulling over!"
"Just a moment, I'll transfer you," she said.
I held again, for over a minute. Ian and I continued to watch the cycle repeat--the woman would open the car door and stick her foot out--her head would disappear. Then the door would close and the woman would attack the man--the car would swerve--then the door would open.
An third operator answered. "Hi, you are on the highway? What's going on? Where are you now?"
"Hi, we're still following a car that has a couple in it who are having a fight. Her door is closed right now, but they've been swerving, and they won't take an exit."
"How long have you been following them?"
"I'm not sure, but it took us several minutes watching them before we decided to call when we were passing the mall, and we just passed exit 12--oh, God, the door's open and she's got her foot out of it again! They're slowing down this time, they're going 40 still though--"
"What's your name?"
"Suzanne Griffonwyd--" and I spelled it.
"What does the car look like?"
"It's brown, maybe blue? I think blue. It's a sedan--"
"Can you see the plate?"
"Yes--" I gave her the plate number.
"What does your car look like?"
"It's a champagne sedan--a '93 Toyota Camry."
"Can you keep following them?"
"Yes."
"Let us know if they take an exit--where are you now?"
"Coming up on exit 9, and they are in the exit only lane, but they might swerve out of it--no, they're taking the exit, and they're turning left--" I said, as the blue car cut across three lanes with solid white lines. As we followed, it then cut back across the three lanes to the right "--no, now they've swerved right, they're turning right."
We followed the car as it turned right and sped up Hwy 99E.
"I think we see you--turn on your flashers!"
"Ian, turn on the brights--I mean the flashers---turn on the flashers--" and I slapped excitedly at the dashboard until I hit the button.
Immediately three cop cars that were lined up in the left-turn lane for the highway turned on full sirens and lights and pulled a U-turn, racing past us and cutting between us and the blue sedan, which quickly signalled right and pulled into a Firestone parking lot, down a narrow driveway parallel to the road.
Ian followed slowly, but as he inched the car forward alongside the driveway entering the parking lot, preparatory to turning into it, he was almost clipped by two more police cars that raced in, lights flashing.
"Stay on the line, we need to take your contact information," the dispatcher said.
"Sure," I said.
We got out of the car and leaned on the hood. I felt shaky and drained. The driveway that the blue sedan had taken sloped downwards, and we couldn't see anything that was happening. Another car pulled into the lot and a girl got out of it and asked what was happening. We told her, and she said that she had seen still more police cars on the way.
After a few minutes another cop car pulled up, and the man in the blue uniform took our names, phone number and address.
*****************************************************************************
The next day, I called my brother-in-law, who is applying to be a police officer, and asked if there was any way to find out what charges had been filed. He said no, and cited some privacy act from 1940.
"Not even anonymously?" I said. "All we want to know is what we actually saw--at first we thought it was a domestic dispute, but the more we talk about it, we think it might have been a kidnapping." Ian had pointed out that trying to get out of a car at 60 miles an hour, and refusing to pull over even when someone is physically attacking you and trying to get out of the car, seems like pretty high stakes. And I think normal arguments ebb and flow--I would have expected to see them stop moving; when Ian and I have a fight, we shout and calm down, shout and calm down, until we sort something out. I would tend to think that an escalated, physical fight would also work along the same lines, though I've never witnessed that kind of domestic dispute.
"It was the Gladstone police, if that makes a difference...don't the police post briefs of the situations they've encountered?" I asked.
"No, there's no way of finding out."
So, we may be destined not to know; my google search for 'car door open i-205 02/05/06 police' was fruitless.
Overall, I think the most disturbing aspect of the whole incident is what it took for someone to call 911. Other cars must have seen what we saw, especially when the woman started to try to get out of the car. She actually had to risk her life trying to escape before we called 911...and no other car seemed to try to follow them. What if that had been me--or any woman I care about--or even don't care about, for that matter? What is the likelihood that someone will call 911 for them--or me?
It is hard to know what to do. I told my sister about the incident, and she reminded me of her first apartment, where the couple in the unit beneath them got into horrible fights. Often, she said, she would lay with her ear pressed to the floor, trying to determine if the fight had gotten physical and if she should call the cops. It was especially hard because there wasn't always a clear victim--often the woman would start the argument by shrieking something nasty.
I think from now on, though, I'm going to err on the side of calling 911 instead of hoping that a situation resolves itself.
