This week on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays: When the Getaway Goes for a Swim
People who run from the police make a lot of quick decisions, and most of them are bad. This week I noticed a strange pattern in the news. Three different men, in three different places, all decided that the smartest way to escape was to jump into a body of water. None of it worked. Water is slow, it is cold, and it is full of surprises. It turns out that a lake, a swamp, and a bayou are not the reliable escape routes that people seem to think they are. If anything, they slow you down long enough for a helicopter, a dive team, or an alligator to catch up.
A quick reminder before we dive in. Fleeing the police is a criminal offence, and adding a swim to the story does not help. In British Columbia, fleeing from a lawful stop and impaired driving both carry serious consequences, and none of them are washed away by a change of clothes. With that said, let us look at what happened.
The Payment Machine and the Pond
Our first story comes from New York City. A 23 year old man was allegedly told by a dry cleaner that he could not use the bathroom. His response was to grab the store’s tap payment machine and leave. This is already a strange choice, because a payment terminal is not much use to anyone once it leaves the store. But the plan got stranger.
When officers moved to arrest him on a petty larceny complaint, he ran into Central Park and dove into the Harlem Meer, an eleven acre lake near 110th Street. He then tried to swim to the far shore. An eleven acre lake is a long way to swim while wearing your clothes and being pursued, and he did not make it. An NYPD helicopter hovered overhead while emergency responders reached him in the water and brought him back to shore. He was taken to hospital in stable condition and charged with petit larceny.
So he risked drowning in a public park, in front of a helicopter, over a payment machine he took because he was denied a washroom. That is a lot of trouble for a device he cannot even use. I have seen people make questionable decisions under pressure, but this one earns a place in our collection.
The Alligator Did Not Read the Charge Sheet
Our second story is from Louisiana, and it is the one that will make you wince. This one also happens to fall squarely in my wheelhouse, because it started as an impaired driving investigation.
State police received reports of a Toyota Supra (an awesome car btw) being driven recklessly on Interstate 10 near New Orleans. The car struck a concrete barrier and blew out a tire. Troopers eventually stopped the Supra and identified the driver as 40 year old Victor Rivas, who they say showed signs of impairment. As they checked him out for a possible DWI, he took off. He jumped from an elevated stretch of Interstate 310 and landed in the swampland below.
Here is where the swamp reminded him whose home it is. Rivas was later spotted walking along a highway, fled again into a swampy area, and was attacked by an alligator. Most people would consider an alligator attack a natural stopping point. He did not. He kept running, despite injuries to both arms, until police finally located him with the help of a drone. He was treated in hospital and then booked on allegations of driving while intoxicated, resisting arrest, hit and run, careless driving, and being a fugitive from the next parish over.
The state police summed it up better than I could. They said the case shows that “impaired driving can lead to serious and unpredictable consequences.” Usually when I tell clients that impaired driving has unpredictable consequences, I am talking about IRP licence suspensions, vehicle impounds and fines. I am not usually talking about wildlife. This is a rare case where the swamp delivered the first penalty before the courts even got involved.
Two Swims and a Tree
Our third story comes from Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, and this gentleman was nothing if not persistent. Brock Robin, age 38, was wanted on an active warrant for several narcotics charges. When deputies tried to pull him over, he refused to stop, crashed his vehicle, and then jumped into a pond to get away.
That was only the beginning. Later the same day he was spotted again, and this time he jumped into Bayou Teche and swam across it. Deputies set up a perimeter. Hours after that, he was seen leaving his own home in a vehicle driven by someone else, the pair led deputies on another chase, and Robin bailed out and swam across the bayou a second time. When deputies finally caught up to him, he had climbed a tree. He was taken into custody there, without further incident, which is a polite way of saying they simply waited at the bottom.
Two vehicle chases, two bayou crossings, one pond, and a tree, all in a single day. If he had put that much effort into showing up to court, he would have been finished by lunch. Instead he gave the deputies of St. Martin Parish a story they will be telling for years. He also got a good workout.
The Takeaway
There is a common thread here beyond the obvious dampness. In every one of these cases, the water did not provide an exit. It provided a delay, and the delay is what allowed the helicopters, drones, and dive teams to do their work. Modern police forces watch from above, and a person splashing across an open lake is about as hard to spot as it gets. The alligator was simply a bonus.
The lesson, as always on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays, is that the dramatic escape almost never works, and it usually turns a small problem into a much larger one. A payment machine theft became a near drowning. A roadside stop became an alligator attack. A warrant became a full day of aquatic pursuit.
See you next week, and stay on dry land.
