The Chase after the Mexican Adventure.

Later at about ten o'clock that night as I sat in a chair in the living room of our home in Columbus, I had just completed the police report of our adventures in Palomas when I began to hear tires squealing on the road pavement near my home. I decided to make one more pass through town to let all the little bad boys know I was there, and so I told my wife I'd be back in a little while and entered my patrol car to do so. School street is a street in Columbus that runs east and west in front of the Columbus Grade school, and as I was patroling east bound on that street I saw a pickup truck traveling west bound on the same roadway with it's high beams on. I used my high beams to indicate to the driver to dim his lights, but I did not do so.

This is sometimes an indication that a driver is intoxicated, and so I turned around in the street and began to pursue the vehicle with the intent of stopping the driver to determine if he was intoxicated. When I turned on my emergency lights, suddenly the pickup accellerated it's speed, ran a stop sign at the the intersection of School Street and Highway 111 that runs between Deming< New Mexico and Columbus and then began traveling north bound on Highway 111. By this time I knew that the driver was attempting to elude me, so I called the Sheriff's dispatcher in Deming to let them know I was in pursuit of a pickup traveling north bound. I accellerated my vehicle until I was immediately behind the pickup and pacing it at speeds in excess of 100 mph.

The vehicle continued traveling north at this high rate of speed for approximately five miles without slowing, until suddenly the driver began to decellerate and slowly pull to the side of the road. I quickly stopped at a safe distance behind the truck and got out of my vehicle with my 9mm submachine gun in hand. At this point I will stop and back up a bit to explain some things that had happened during that day that I did not mention. There was an open contract on my head place there by the drug cartels, and the man who warned me of it stated that it was $25,000.00 in cash for the man who killed me. During the ambush in Mexico that I described earlier, the assailant had screamed at me during the confrontation that they were going to kill me that day, and warned me that I was a dead man, etc. etc.

Threats on my life were common in Columbus, but to be on the safe side I had ordered a Colt selective fire carbine to give me an advantage in a gunfight in which my adversaries had the advantage of numbers over me. I left the vehicle with the submachine in hand, believing that what may be happening was an attempt to lure me out of town to kill me. I could see the driver of the vehicle clearly, he was gunning the engine of his truck and trying to see me in his rear view mirror; but I had positioned my high powered spot light in the rear window of his truck to prevent him seeing me as I walked up.

I also noticed the top of another person's head that I could see protruding an inch or so above the lower edge of the rear window. It was my feeling then that it was possible that the passenger would come out of his door with a gun and so I kept an eye on him as I walked up behind the vehicle. Suddenly the driver of the truck threw it into reverse and gunned the engine towards me. I rotated away from the left rear edge of the truck bed as it went past me backwards barely missing me. I made a mental decision to not kill the driver which I could have easily done and instead I fired a full auto burst from the submachine gun towards the tires of the vehicle, hoping to disable it.

When I opened up with the machine gun the driver threw the vehicle in drive and surged forward. I had five round left in the 22 round magazine in the carbine and finished it off by blowing the glass out of the rear window as the truck sped away. I returned to my vehicle and attempted to continue pursit of the vehicle, but I realized that I had a large bump on a front tire, that was making a lot of noise; so I reduced my speed but continued fast enough to keep the fleeing vehicle's taillights in sight. I chased the vehicle along the straight roadway for approximately fifteen mile, until I saw it turn west on Waterloo Road,(I don't know if the name of this road was significant to me, or the bad guys), a dirt road. The dust from the chased vehicle obscured my vision to the point I couldn't see it, and then the vehicle turned off it's headlights. I continued carefully down this road until I saw the vehicle's brakelights come on which allowed me to see that the vehicle took a 90 degree turn to the right.

I continued to follow behind it until I heard crashing sounds ahead and then saw a large dust cloud billow up in front of me. When the dust cloud dissipated I found that the truck had gone off of the roadway and crashed into a dry dirt water tank used for watering livestock. I carefully approached the vehicle that was stuck up to the axles in sand with both doors open. It became apparent to me that the occupants of the vehicle had left the area, but to be careful I returned to my vehicle and called for assistance from Sheriff's Deputies I knew to be in the area. When they arrived along with several Border Patrolmen we tracked both men out through the desert until we lost their track in the rocks.

I decided to leave the area and return home after I made arrangements to have the suspect vehicle towed by a wrecker service. Border Patrol conducted a massive search of the area for the suspects with a helicopter, but they were unsuccessful in finding them.