About three weeks after Scott and I we're caught by the police in the office of LaTijera School, and about a week and a half after I returned to school after my three day suspension, and less than six months after the sleepover, I was walking home from school, when I had the terror of my life.
The reason I was walking rather than riding my bicycle as I usually did, was because my dad had put me on restriction which meant that all privileges were revoked including the privilege of riding my bicycle to school; something that actually placed me in greater danger.
I believe it was the middle of the second week in February. This was the last week I would be attending LaTijera because my parent's had already enrolled me in a new school that I would start attending at the beginning of the following week; a parochial school in the entire opposite direction of LaTiejera, on Market Street but still in Inglewood.
I had been walking to school and home, like I said for about a week and a half. I think it was a Wednesday, and it was about 3:30 PM, when I began walking East down 64th Street in the direction of my home.
For the last week and a half I took the same exact path home. Anyone could have easily identified this path if they observed me one or two afternoons.
I was walking East on the South side of the street, on the sidewalk, when I saw a familiar looking car, parked on the right side of the road, the same side of the road I was walking.
The reason it looked familiar is because the car looked almost exactly like my parents' 1972 Mercury Montego, especially from the back. The other reason it looked familiar, is because I believe it was the very same car that Scott had directed my attention towards on the night of the sleepover; the car that was parked just around the corner from Scott's house on that fateful night.
I believe the car was a Ford Gran Torino; the same car made famous by the hit TV show Starsky & Hutch. The TV show had not yet debued however, and this car was not painted with the infamous bright red with the broad white racing stripe.
A yellow flag automatically went up inside my head. I didn't like this. The car looked new. It looked less than two years old and was in very good condition. My guess is that it was a 1973 Ford Gran Torino, or possibly a 1972 but still looking very new. A relatively expensive car in that day, almost as expensive as a Cadillac. I'm not sure what color the car was, I think it was a gold or copper color with a hard top.
As I passed by the car on the sidewalk on the right hand side of it, I passed by quite nervously. I noticed that there were two men in the car; a driver and a passenger and that the motor was running. This made me even more nervous. It also made me very nervous that the passenger made direct eye contact with me as I walked by his side of the car and that the person looked familiar to me although I couldn't quite place where I had seen him before.
I now believe he was the same person Scott and I met at Centinella Park.
I couldn't get a good look at the driver.
I walked passed the car, and when I got about a hundred feet ahead of the car, it pulled slowly out into the street, and paced behind me.
Now I was more than nervous. This was weird. I was on the edge of a panic but kept telling myself, 'it's nothing, there going to pass by me' but they never passed by me. I looked nervously over my shoulders several times as I walked the next couple hundred yards, and the car was pacing behind me, at barely 3 miles per hour.
What happened next made me to realize that I might very well be in a gravely serious situation.
I heard a car door shut, and it made the same sound the car door of my mom's Mercury made. I looked behind me, and was startled to see that the passenger had gotten out of the car.
For the next block, both the car, and the passenger now on foot walking on the sidewalk, were both pacing me.
This continued until I passed that block and was approaching Fairfax Avenue; the street I lived on, although about a mile North up the road.
I didn't know what else to do, so what I did was I cut a straight diagonal line, crossing 64th Street in front of the car which was still about a hundred feet behind me, along with the man who was still walking alongside the car.
I crossed to the other side of the road as I approached Fairfax Avenue, and looking over my shoulder, I saw the passenger get back inside the vehicle.
When I got to Fairfax Avenue, I should have stayed on the West side of the street walking against on-coming traffic. This would have made it harder for them to pace me like they were, but I was young, and wasn't thinking that clearly, and so continued my diagonal, to its completion, ending up heading North on Fairfax Avenue on the East side of the street, allowing the perpetrators, once having negotiated the intersection there at 64th Street and Fairfax, to retake their position behind me.
Once the car was behind me it started pacing me again, except this time closer, only fifty feet behind me.
Once again, I looked over my shoulder to see the passenger get out of the car and pace behind me on foot; this time however, he didn't remain side by side with the car, but started walking closer trying to close the gap between me and him.
The passenger was a white male about thirty years old, with dark colored hair. He had wild staring eyes. He looked like he was having fun.
The man continued to close the gap between us, getting closer and closer while the man in the car kept his distance behind me, although still pacing me.
As I approached 62nd Street, I had an intuition they were going to try and make some sort of move there, and I was right. I just didn't know what to do.
As I steeped off the sidewalk to cross 62nd Street, the vehicle suddenly sped up, and tried to cut me off in the middle of the street with the man on foot running up behind me.
However, another car appeared on Fairfax to make a left turn and I think this freaked them out. They didn't want any witnesses, and so, just as soon as they tried to make a move, they aborted their abduction attempt, for the moment.
The car continued East down 62nd Street, allowing the other car to make his left turn, and I should have stopped in front of his vehicle and plead for help, but he might have just driven away, and instead, while the perpetrators car was making a u-turn on 62nd Street, I tried to widen the gap behind me and the other perpatrator, because the man on foot had stopped running; apparently he needed the car nearby to throw me into.
Obviously he didn't want to be standing there having grabbed me, waiting for his ride to come back around, to throw me in the car, taking the chance a car might drive by and witness him standing there holding me.
I took this opportunity to widen the gap between us. My house, was only a quarter mile away now.
Soon, the vehicle was pacing behind me again, much closer now and the man on foot, walking now, but walking very quickly to narrow the distance behind us.
My mind was racing. I knew they were going to try and make another move. 'What should I do?" I asked myself. 'Should I scream? Should I run up to somebody's door and pound on the door and scream for help?"
I didn't know what to do. I thought about crossing the street again, but I would have to cross directly in front of the car which was much closer now, and besides, I would be crossing over to the opposite side of the street that my house was on-- I would eventually have to cross the street back.
I was terrified. I knew I had to do something. I should do something unpredictable-- But I couldn't think of what.
All I could think was to show them defiance.
I stepped out into the street and turned around and starred the driver of the car down. I wanted to get a good look at him, and I also wanted to see the license plate. Unfortunately, there was no license plate on the front of the car, but, very defiantly I pointed at the driver of the car, a man that in spite of the "beany" he was wearing, looked like Scott's dad to me, although I couldn't be certain. I pointed my index finger at him, and then to my eyes and then back at him to say in sign language "I see you" and then flipped him the bird to add "I see you Motha f-er"
This seemed to have had the effect of momentarily throwing them off guard but only momentarily. I walked back on to the sidewalk, and tried to make it to my house-- I was only a few houses away now from my house.
I heard a distinctive sound coming from the man behind me. he was letting me know he was close-- too close-- They were going to get me-- what could I do? I didn't know. At the same time the sound he was making; a metallic kind of sound, was familiar to me, but I couldn't quite place it. It was a repetitive sound, and in my mind's eye I saw a metallic key-chain, the kind that retract. I imagined he was pulling and retracting a metallic key-chain over and over like in a movie or TV show I saw once where the bad guy did that-- but it wasn't quite right-- this sound was familiar, a sound I knew I had heard before in real life, not in a TV show.
I took another glance behind me and the guy on foot was practically breathing down my neck and I had the luck of a glitter of sunlight hitting the metal thing whatever it was he was holding in his hand revealing what it was.
A pair of handcuffs.
What he had been doing was pushing one of the cuffs through itself over and over, something I myself used to do with a pair of metallic toy handcuffs my dad had given me when I was eight years old. I had done it many times and that's why the sound was familiar to me.
The man had one cuff around his own wrist already bound. I realized what their plan was now. All he had to do was get close enough to me to get that other cuff bound around one of my wrists and I wouldn't be able to get away-- he could then use his weight to literally pull me into the car since we would be shackled together.
I ran for my life, and the man immediately lept into a sprint behind me.
I thought I was dead. I knew they were going to kill me. I just knew it. I don't know how I knew I just knew it.
Good thing for me an angel gave me a big push on the back or else I could sprint faster up the steep hill approaching my house than the thirty year old man could, who looked to be in quite good shape; he looked athletic-- not so much like literally an athlete but athletic like a cop.
Either I was a faster sprinter than he was going up hill, or else an angel gave me a shove and I was able to outrun him, though just barely out of his reach.
When I reached my front yard I sprinted sideways across the front yard not looking back to even slow me down that little bit. I hoped the fence at the driveway, and then hid behind the side of the house, panting, and waited to see what happened next.
I had never been so scared in my life, but there was a method to my madness. I was waiting to see them drive by so I could get a read on their license plate.
I waited and waited and puffed and puffed, and they never drove by. After about three or four minutes I carefully peeked around the side of the house, and there was no sign of them.
Apparently, the passenger had gotten back inside the car, ever so quietly closing the door and then they had made a u-turn and headed the opposite way down the street deliberately to avoid me seeing the license plate number; ironically, they headed in the direction of Scott's house, for Scott lived almost exactly around the corner from where I had first spotted the car.
I wasn't sure at the time, but now I am convinced beyond all doubt, that those two men were the same as the adults who were helping Scott set me up to be shot and killed at the school. They knew Scott and Scott knew them.
-- Edited by The Phantom on Tuesday 6th of July 2010 02:47:22 PM
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"Sometimes when you open your mind to the impossible, you discover the truth." Walter from Fringe.
