Yesterday at work

Here's the basic story. I had come out of my building and saw a man carrying a woman by her throat, savagely pummeling her as he dragged her toward his pickup truck. I shouted at him, the gist of which was to stop, that he couldn't do this ...to people, that this was wrong, that it's not okay for him to do this, that he had to knock it off. He threw the woman into the passenger seat and slammed the door and turned to me, screaming and swearing at me. He walked up to me and cursed me out, telling me to get out of here before he f'ed me up. I simply continued to say, "Man you've gotta stop! This is not okay! You can't be tearing people up", etc. He screamed and shouted at me, and I actually thought he was going to hit me. I went onward toward my car and tried to get my cell phone out to take a photo of his license plate. He saw me do this and ran to his truck cab and got a handgun, a glock-style pistol. He pointed it directly at me at arm's length and came at me shouting at me again. "What the F are you gonna do? Get the F out of here before I blow you MF'ing head off!" I told him, "I'm out, man. I'm done. I'm not in your business--I'm leaving." He continued to hold the gun at me and walked me back to my car; I walked backwards to keep facing him. When I got to my driver's seat, he turned and ran back to his pickup. He'd torn out of the parking lot before I even had my seat belt on. I called my coworkers, who put me on speaker phone and called 911 so that I could talk to them while this was being reported to LE at the same time. I began to drive randomly around the area, and saw his pickup truck at a light. I took a photo of it while trying not to be seen in his mirror (so the photo is obscured). I talked to an officer and texted my photo to him. I gave him a detailed description of the man and his car. About 20 minutes later, the officer called me back and said, "I just got the guy! I got him, got the woman, got his gun, got his truck." He told me to come identify the guy by sight within an hour, so I turned around and went back. It was him. The officer told me that the description had been so detailed that he'd been able to spot the guy driving, because by sheer luck the guy had been stopped at a light while the officer drove past. The woman was beaten and her face had a very long cut from top to bottom on it. I had to fill out a report, and the officers told me that the guy will be charged with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and one count of kidnapping. They regard me as one of the crime victims, and plan to use my statement to help convict him. The woman gave a statement to police too, which corroborated my account, and the guy was taken to jail and is ineligible to bond out. After all this happened, the woman got out of the police car and ran up to me, saying "Thank you! Thank you! He was going to kill me!" She wasn't exaggerating; he had left a 4-minute message on her phone telling her he was coming to kill her, that she was a dead woman, that she needed to dig her grave, etc. Turns out, this guy has some prior issues with larceny and violent offenses.

Replies

butterfly9
butterfly9

I am so glad that you are ok. How are you doing?

You are so brave to make sure that woman was saved. It is an honor to know you.
deleted_user
deleted_user

Very brave of you, so glad there are men like you.You know the lady was so thankful to you.You just may have save her life.Good going.
deleted_user
deleted_user

Matt, thank goodness that you are safe! And I am so glad, for that woman\'s sake, that you were the person to bear witness... not everyone is willing to get involved in something like that. I am sorry that this happened to you. I cannot even imagine being in such a situation; how frightening! It never ceases to amaze me the kind of things that some people will do. I already thought of you as a hero, and now, well now there is just more evidence of it. Thank you for helping that woman, and thank you for helping all of us, every day, in the things that you say and do and the support and guidance that you offer. I too, feel honored to know you. I hope someday we can meet so I can say it to your face and shake your hand....
deleted_user
deleted_user

Wow, I am so glad that you were able to help and that you are okay.
deleted_user
deleted_user

It\'s so clear that your diligence saved this woman\'s life or saved her from another moment in that situation! I know how much you know how appreciated you are to all of us and this is just so meaningful to have prevented and intervened and kept your cool during such a harrowing thing...also grateful for the officer getting the detailed description who was with luck in driving next to him parked at the light!!!
deleted_user
deleted_user

Also so glad that you are okay! : )
EmpoweredOKC
EmpoweredOKC

It was a murder in progress, not just a beating. But I\'m still not sure if I did the right thing, or if I should have just called the police without ever confronting the guy.
deleted_user
deleted_user

Hmmm...\"still not sure if I did the right thing...\" now where have I hears that before? Matt, you did what you could do...you engaged him enough to stop him from fleeing straight away...you had the presence of mind to get enough of an identity to actually be useful, and you spoke up. Now, as for the issue of afterthought and how close you came, yeah...doing the right thing for someone else certainly puts us in harms way at times. I know you were under protection. No question about it. And...hopefully you know that it is IN you to step up, to intervene on behalf of a hurting person...to get involved...to speak for one who cannot, even when you \"don\'t know the details of what is going on\". You knew what you saw, and you reacted. You sir..the man I know, could have done nothing less.
Heptet
Heptet

Gentle hugs - if okay?

Matt, there really is no right or wrong in that situation..confronting or not confronting. Confronting him might have turned out very badly for you and the woman but it didnt and it helped distract him from harming her long enough that an arrest was possible.

You did an amazingly brave thing and you recognised when it became too unsafe to continue confronting him. Be gentle with yourself hun
deleted_user
deleted_user

Consider this, Matt, confronting him probably bought some time. Valuable and precious moments. And I would imagine that your confrontation made that woman feel like there was hope, perhaps even made her feel a little less afraid during the time between when you confronted him and when he was stopped by the police. Further, you are now even better able to give an accurate description of this guy and there is another charge that can be added to his sentence. That is not to say that what happened to you was a good thing, but it DOES build a stronger case against this monster. Who knows what he would have done to that woman. Also, there is a chance that what you said, your calm and determined demeanor, may have caused him to doubt himself. Even if only to make him pause long enough to give the police an extra few minutes to find him.
deleted_user
deleted_user

--\"now where have I heard that before?\"-- I thought the same thing, Mockingbird.
deleted_user
deleted_user

I love the idea of a man standing up to another man to stop cycles of abuse, but I like the idea of you around better...

you had no no way of knowing just how violent this guy was, or you probably would have just silently followed im guessing. I think it just goes to show you never know in this day.

Standing up for that woman was your instinct, and you acted on that. It just sucks that he was that much of a threat. Id be lying if I didnt think knowing all the details, \"follow and call 911 next time!\"
EmpoweredOKC
EmpoweredOKC

Jennifer, Rachele and I were talking about this, and they suggested that being confronted may have thrown off his plans. After the confrontation, the guy started driving aimlessly down random roads, holding her at gunpoint, as if he didn\'t know what to do with her now. It is possible that someone getting in his face derailed his \"kill mode.\" I\'ll never know.

BUT, the fact that he held me at gunpoint has one advantage: it supports a double charge of assault with a deadly weapon, and adds me to the case as a victim. I won\'t hesitate to testify. All this happened after spending the morning training the Oklahoma Bar Assn. lawyers on how to prosecute batterers! That, plus the Coalitions association with the District Attorney, and it being DV Awareness Month during elections means...the guy\'s fucked.
deleted_user
deleted_user

Bravo!!! God love ya!!! Mom would be proud of you, friend!!!
deleted_user
deleted_user

I wonder if you had called the police without confronting him. Would they have responded as quickly and surely? It wouldn\'t have been known that he had a gun. He wouldn\'t have been thrown off. What if the police hadn\'t taken it seriously enough and then you followed. We don\'t know ... but we do know how this worked out. So again HERO

You know yesterday I had been going over my thing and at one point in the day I tapped the back of my head and realized that in the back of my mind was this concern of him getting or having a gun. So when got home and read about what had happened it I just felt that there was some divine protection.