Chapter 4: A Question of Physics

Speeding down County Road 16-A, Dale was still fuming about cigarettes when he stopped for the red light at Greenville Highway. In the distance, he could hear sirens, but he saw no corresponding red and blue flashing lights behind or ahead of him. He had no reason not to move through the intersection, following another car after the traffic signal cycled to green.

Thirty minutes earlier, Andrew Limbaugh was yelling at a clerk in a 7-Eleven convenience store. On the counter, he had put down a 30-can carton of cheap canned beer. He wasn’t arguing over the $28.00 price. Instead, the clerk, who was a 22-year-old female student, insisted on seeing Limbaugh’s ID. Since he was only 17, he was unwilling to comply.

Abruptly, he pulled out a pistol and pointed it at her face. That’s when Larry Barton, 48, reacted by pulling out his own gun and leveling it at Limbaugh from about 12 feet away.

“I think you’d better walk out of here, boy, while you still can.”

Foolishly, he swiveled toward Barton without lowering his pistol, and they both opened fire. Unfortunately, Barton’s bullet whizzed past Limbaugh’s ear. That noise spooked Limbaugh and he fled. Limbaugh’s round tore through Barton’s upper arm near the shoulder, sending him to the floor.

Bravely, the clerk went to the window and (through the glass) watched him screech away, seeing the license plate number. Already connected to 9-1-1, she relayed the details to police dispatch.

Limbaugh was compounding his offenses by trying to rob a convenience store using the conspicuous large SUV he had carjacked that afternoon from the middle school’s parking lot. That’s when he walked to the driver’s door and brandished his gun, taking the vehicle from a mother, her daughter, and the daughter’s two friends from school. When the mother hesitated slightly, Limbaugh pistol-whipped her, breaking her jaw.

Imagine three 6-foot tall men on the floor arranged in a line, feet next to heads. That’s eighteen feet. He had stolen a Ford Expedition Max SUV, their largest model, which is 18.5 feet long. It weighs nearly three tons (5800 lbs.) not counting passengers or their luggage.

Both the local police department and sheriff’s office had fully briefed their officers and deputies when their shifts began at 7 p.m. A single mother had been beaten at the middle school and was now in the hospital, traumatizing her daughter and her two friends (all three only 12-years-old). With no one to care for her, the daughter was being kept in foster care.

This level of violence was unusual for their quiet community. The officers and deputies were obviously seething. Their superiors felt it was necessary to remind them to follow procedure carefully so that “this fool doesn’t get off on a technicality.”

When regional dispatch reported that the Expedition had been sighted, eight different units from two jurisdictions began to converge on Limbaugh’s predicted location. After being spotted, their sirens and red-and-blue rooftop lights came on. Limbaugh floored the accelerator pedal, and the chase was on.

Unwisely, he made a turn at such extreme speed that his two right side wheels actually came off the asphalt surface, momentarily. Once he straightened out, he floored it once more, and the powerful engine impelled the heavy SUV to lurch ahead. The first unit pursuing him tried to cut the corner too tightly; loose gravel caused a spin out.

The following units decelerated and maneuvered more cautiously. The new leader keyed his microphone.

“This is 6A3, now leading eastbound on Greenville Highway passing Hollis, speed 70 and increasing.”

Behind the wheel, Sergeant Dwight Carlson (“6A3”) was scowling and gritting his teeth. He couldn’t believe that rookie had spun out his unit. But he wasn’t worried about catching up to the fleeing SUV. He knew his Charger Pursuit could overtake the lumbering Expedition. Rapidly, he was closing up the gap between them.

In Limbaugh’s mirrors, he could see the flashing lights of five pursuing units converging on him. They kept just enough spacing so there wouldn’t be a chain reaction if they crashed. Ahead, Carlson saw traffic signals changing from green to yellow to red. At the suspect’s speed, it was inevitable that he would be running through the red light, so he backed off on his accelerator out of caution.