The demise of a stolen truck.

I've wanted to write this story for some time, but I was not sure whether the statute of limitations had expired on the actions I took, but I am sure it's safe now.

In the late 1980's law enforcement on the New Mexico/Mexican Border were pulling out their hair trying to stop the rash of stolen Ford pickups being driven into Mexico by the brave Mexican bandidos who stole them from everywhere in the state and then drove them across the border into Mexico and immediate sale. There was a premium in Mexico for the trucks and many willing suppliers brave enough to challenge the gauntlet put in place to stop them along the two hundred and fifty mile border. Many times the law became involved in chasing the trucks, but in most cases the bandidos out ran the cops who were bound by strict agency policy that did not allow the extreme measures needed to stop them....that is untill I came along.

When I started the Columbus Police Department and became the first Chief of Police of that town, I determined that stopping the vast number of stolen vehicles being driven through my town was of utmost importance, and so I let it be known through official chanels that I would appreciate being told when a stolen vehicle was being chased through my town and I would assist in stopping it for the agency involved. In private communication with individual officers I let it be known that I intended to shoot the trucks to stop them and I advised the officers that if they heard me tell them to back off, it meant that they should back way off to make sure they were not hit by any stray bullets when I fired.

A short few days later I received a call from a Sheriff's Dispatcher advising me that two County Deputies were in pursuit of two Ford trucks traveling towards Columbus. I immediately set up wooden roadblock barricades completely blocking both lanes of the roadway at a pre-determine location. The drivers of the truck would be forced to either leave the roadway and hit an impassable sandy wash and become stuck, or run through the roadblock barriers and then face me and my guns a little way down the road.

They both chose the latter and shattered the barricades, striking them at speeds in excess of 80 miles an hour, throwing wood fragments through the air in my direction. From my prone position in a protected positon where I could not be struck by either vehicle, I opened up on the lead vehicle firing many rounds of high powered rifle ammunition directly into the grill of the first truck, reloading and doing the same to the second truck. The majority of my rifle fire hit my intended target, but the fearless drivers kept on going.

The lead truck traveled towards the border crossing gate three miles south of town, and I knew that if he attempted to run the Mexican Border crossing he would receive an unhappy welcome. I had previously notified my friends at the Aduana Comandacia in Mexico to be waiting for the truck, and they would be waiting for it armed to the teeth with full auto Uzi submachineguns.

Sure enough the by now adreneline charged and possibly cocaine charged driver of the truck rammed the gate into Mexicoat high speed, clearing the gate posts of the gate by inches and was greeted by the wild, full auto fire of ten Aduana who were fortunate to not kill each other in the hail of gunfire that ensued. The driver escaped the gunfire unscathed, they never touched the vehicle with the wild firing of their guns, but he later was forced to abandon the truck because my rifle rounds from earlier had pierced his radiator and the engine became hot, disabling it, and the driver escaped on foot.

The second vehicle turned left at the intersection of Highway 9 and Highway 11 and then cut across country traveling towards the border fence about three miles east of the Port of Entry. The driver smashed through the border fence and then the engine quit for the same reason the first truck quit, the rounds I had fired earlier had taken out the radiator. This driver left the vehicle on foot and to my knowledge he was never apprehended by the Mexican authorities.

We recovered two stolen vehicles, although they were not in the best of conditions. The next stolen vehicle I had contact with, I was not able to set up a roadblock in time and I ended up chasing the truck into Mexico. When the driver of the truck crossed through the broken wire of the border fence four miles west of Palomas, Mexico, he drove up onto the Los Chepas Road, a raised roadway that leads from Los Palomas, Mexico to Los Chepas, Mexico twenty miles to the west. When he exited the truck I was just a few short yards north of his location, the invisible American/Mexican Border the only thing between he and I.

He immediately began laughing at me in derision, flipping me off and then making the mistake of dropping trousers and mooning me. That was the last straw, while he was in the act of wagging his brown buttocks at me in the wind, I put a pistol round between his spread eagled legs that struck the right rear tire of the truck. He yelped and jumped like I had shot him and ran off of the opposite side of the roadway and hid from my sight. I then systematically shot out the three tires left on the vehicle, and because I knew the truck would never be recovered, and returned to it's owner, I shot out all of the glass in the windows with my pistol, and then I got out the real hardware. I used my 12 gauge pump action shotgun and shot the radiator out of the truck. Then I took a high powered rifle and shot it through the fenders of the vehicle which I am sure punched large holes into the engine block.

This truck would never be serviceable again by those that stole it. You see I knew that most of the trucks that were being stolen and taken into Mexico were under the protection and authorization of the Chuihuahua State Police, The first two that I wrote about earlier in this article were recovered by my friends at the Aduana as a favor to me, but this one was headed further south to the town of Madera, a notorious town filled with smugglers where it would be turned over to the crooked State Police Comandante there and I intended to see that this didn't happen.

I later put the word out in Mexico that any truck I chased that made it into Mexico would end up like this one, and miraculously when you take the profit out of an enterprise it simply dries up. I never had another stolen truck come through my little town again, to my knowledge. _________________