The Citizen's arrest

Ok, Thanks Shauna for being the single person who wat interested in hearing the story. At least I know someone is still reading my blog! :) Anyway. It starts as I stop by the house around 10:45pm to pick up Cindy, my 13 year old sister. And as we get about 5 blocks from home, I come to a stoplight with a car in front of me with no lights and an SUV in front of it. The guy gets out of the SUV waiving his hands and at the same time the car with no lights makes a U turn. At that point I thought, "I know what just happened"> A hit and run. So as I floor it in reverse to make the intersection for a U turn, the car is now going down a side street and has not yet seen me following. I already have a 911 operator on the phone and I'm trying to tell her, hit and run at Lawndale and Robbins.. As I round the corner I see the car spinning about 3 times in the middle of the street. He had just hit about 6 parked cars doing about 65mph. As I flew down Lawndale 4 males jumped out of the car and ran. I had just enough space to squeeze by and followed on male that I was sure came from the car. To backtrack, when I made that U turn I had a split second decision to make. do i follow or drive on. Now I apologized 10 times to Cindy for scaring her and having her witness that. but I made the decision and never looked back. OK, so the male is running around the corner and as he hits a driveway I'm right behind him in the car. I hit tha breaks, throw it in park and reach under my seat for my 4 cell mag light! He is now at a slow job since he saw me come in. As I ran up the driveway, I told him (more simplified) to "hit the ground (sir)" ha. He ran toward a fence and I told him again. "Do not jump that fence, Stop and put your hands on your head and hit the ground" at that (thankfully) he stopped looked at me and layed down. I proceeded to kneel on the center of his back, his hands under his head. I asked him, "you got anything on you, drugs, a gun"? When he said no, I quickly patted his pockets and pants to make sure he didn't try something sly on me later on. I got back on the phone with a 911 operator and notified them who I was and where I was. In the driveway. The suspect complained that with me kneeling on his back made it hard to breathe, so I told him I was going to stand up so he could breathe but he better now move. He still complained about being hard to breathe so I let him sit against the fence and he cooperated. I asked him why he ran, he replied "I got 4 warrants, what did you expect me to do". To which I replied, "well with 4 warrants, i guess i'd say run". Lucky for me there was a lady standing at her back door who witnessed everything from me chasing him to the end. The police officers finally got there about 10 min. after the initial call and thanked me. Oh and by the way, immediately after apprehending the suspect I made a phone call and had Cindy picked up by my sister because I knew she was scared. And just incase you are wondering, "is what I just read legal?" the answer is absolutely YES. The law states that if you as a civilian see a crime being committed or a suspect running from a crime and you are more than certain that you have the right man, you have the legal right to apprehend the suspect and if he resists you have the right to use only the force necessary to apprehend the suspect and hold him for police to arrive. Granted that it may get you a day in court as a witness, I thought of that only after the fact and thought, well for that adrenaline rush, I'll go! I've been subpeonad before it's only a day out of my life.!! And in the end it turned out that the car was stolen, the tag was stolen, the driver has 4 warrants for arrest, he was only 17 and never had a license to drive a car. For my heroic efforts I recieved a "Thanks". Which was good enough for me.

-The End-