An off duty Chattanooga Police officer involved in an incident with a tow truck driver near the Deep Blue club in Brainerd said the incident started when the wrecker driver was driving aggressively and brushed him with the vehicle window.Here's an update to this.
Officer Phil McClain also said that he revealed his weapon after an owner of nearby property, Jeff Whitley, pulled his handgun "in a very aggressive manner."
The officer also claimed that Mr. Whitley told him, "Get off my property black boy."
It does somewhat mitigate. We shall see...
[Via Firedbrass]
McClain is lying. I have driven a great many trucks, I have logged more than two million miles in them over my lifetime. I tell you now that if the driver was driving aggressively and brushed McClain with the mirror on the inside of a turn, McClain would be dead for having been run over.
ReplyDeleteThere is a maneuver called a buttonhook that is necessary to turn right off a city street into a driveway or intersecting street in order to keep the rear wheels from jumping the curb and running on the sidewalk. The buttonhook requires a move to the left to increase the arc of the steering tires past the target lane so that when coming back into alignment with the intended new line of travel the rear wheels while cutting across the arc are moved far enough left to avoid any obstructions or curbs or gateposts. Anybody brushed by a mirror in that situation is definitely on the morgue side of the situation.
When turning left into a driveway or intersecting street the buttonhook is not necessary, but still a slight drivepast is needed to get the rear wheels in alignment with the new line of travel. A pedestrian on the r/h side of this truck would have the mirror moving away from him and would have to pursue the mirror to be touched by it. If he claims he was brushed by the l/h mirror then he was in the middle of the street where he should not have been and would not have been unless intent on doing something he should not. Like trying to drag a driver out of the truck, maybe?
Either way, McClain is lying.
Oh, and suspicions are raised when looking at his statement. It does not go unnoticed that he got two accusations that one dare not defend against.
ReplyDeleteThe "I feared for my life" excuse, though he didn't say those words he painted the picture with his unsubstantiated account of being "brushed" by a mirror. One wonders if he had not seen the yard owner's gun if he would have shot the driver. Been done before, a lot.
Two, he managed to play the race card, as though that makes his armed pursuit of man doing his legal job in a legal manner justified, even though the alleged racial comment was not made (according to McClain,himself) until he had trespassed the private property of the owner in his pursuit of the driver.
Seems just a little too convenient, doesn't it?
Couple that with the fact that any and every body that knows anything at all about trucks and turns knows he is lying, it just smells really bad.