It Was A Beauty
Without dashcams, eyewitnesses, or street surveillance, getting in a fender bender is not an ideal situation. Especially, if the other driver reported the accident as your fault. You could either do two things, give in and get scammed. Or fight and do whatever it takes to prove your innocence, even if it can get out of control. This is where this story comes in.
One day, a retired veteran, Todd (name has been changed) left his college campus to pick up his wife for lunch. He didn’t want to get stuck in traffic, so he decided to take the back roads. Little did he know, being stuck in traffic would have been less of a hassle than what was about to happen next.
He ended up behind this car at a stop sign. He couldn’t help but admire the beauty of it. The car was one of Chevy’s newest models, an eye-catching red color, driven by a young blonde woman. As Todd sat at the intersection thinking about lunch, he noticed the Chevy begin to drive. Suddenly, it stopped.
At that moment, he didn’t think anything of it. He hadn’t done more than put his hand on the gear shift to pull up when he heard a loud squealing noise. It was coming from the tires of the little red car in front of him. It was now coming back towards him!
~
She Called Who?
Realizing what was happening, he tried to put the shift into reverse but it was too late. The red Chevy smashed into the front of his truck going a little over 25 miles per hour. After a second to take in what just happened, he turned his truck off and hurriedly jumped out to check the damage.
The good news was that he wasn’t going to have to worry about that loose belt squeal anymore; however, the bad news was that the front of his little pickup was pretty much totaled. The grill drove back into the radiator, headlights were smashed, and now oil was leaking from under his truck. There was water everywhere on the road.
He sighed in total awe of what just happened. He couldn’t understand why she’d ended up stopping in mid-turn then quickly reversed back. Even though he may have been confused and upset, he still wanted to make sure the young lady was okay. He walked towards the passenger door of the little red Chevy when he saw her through the tinted window, talking on the phone. Unbelievable he first thought.
But then again, since he left the military, he noticed the new craze with cell phones among people. So seeing her yapping on one didn’t surprise him anymore. Although had he thought about it, he should have been concerned about who exactly she was calling.
He tapped on her tinted window to get her attention however her reaction was not what he expected. When she locked eyes with him, he saw pure fear. She started screaming into the phone, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s got a tire iron!’
Naturally, he spun around and looked around to see who this person was who had a tire iron. He saw no one. No one walking on the sidewalk nor driving by. He didn’t even see any businesses, houses, or apartments in view. Then it hit him. He was the man with the tire iron.
As he was standing on the road, he realized her little red car was sitting at the stop sign, almost exactly where it had been when he pulled in behind her! He stepped back and took another glance at their vehicles. Yup, it looked for all the world as if he‘d rear-ended her!
Darn! The young blonde lady had set him up!
~
Sirens Arrived
He quickly walked back to his truck, thinking as fast as he could. He knew at that point the young blonde lady was speaking with the police. And at any minute now, they were going to show up, expecting a lunatic man with a tire iron threatening her. He knew what he had to do.
He pulled his tire iron out from behind his seat and threw it as far as he could into the nearby field, then jumped into his truck. He made sure the truck was in reverse, belted himself in, and then decided to take it a notch further. He slammed his face into the steering wheel. The pain didn’t matter to him, he had to make sure he was seen as the victim.
As he heard the sirens getting closer, he opened his door and half slumped out the open door at an uncomfortable angle. He went limp just as the police car screeched to a halt. The officer was screaming at him to get out of the truck, but he stayed in his position in hopes that the police would realize quickly he was unconscious. The officer made his way to Todd, noticing his bloody nose and face. He made sure Todd was breathing before checking on the young blonde lady.
From his truck, Todd watched the officer approach the young blond lady and was amazed at her performance. She was near hysterical with fright over the lunatic with the tire iron. Until she saw him, that is.
~
“Hey, Wait A Minute!”
She stammered to a halt when she saw his body hanging limply below the driver’s door of his truck. The second set of sirens had been getting closer and the officer told the now silent blonde to stay in her car.
As the second sirens arrived, the medic cut Todd out of his seatbelt and laid him on the ground. Then proceeded to check his vitals. He was fine in that aspect, but within a few seconds, a harsh and demanding smell flooded his clotting nose. Todd fought it for a few seconds and made a pretty good display of a man coming around after having been knocked out. He took a glance at the front end of his truck, and he moaned, “What did that idiot do to my truck!?!”
The medic told him to lie back down and started asking him medical questions about where he hurts and could he feel his toes. Every few seconds, he’d look back at the wreck and mutter about the idiot backing up like that, and what had he been smoking.
After speaking with the young blonde lady, the officer came back where Todd and the medic were and asked if Todd was okay to speak. Todd said he felt fine, just a little sore. He got up slowly, moaning softly to add to his performance as a hurt man. He walked to his front seat and as he was pulling out his driver’s license, proof of insurance, and of course his retired military ID car, he asked the officer, “What happened here?”
He was pointing to his ripped seatbelt.
The officer explained to him that they found him unconscious and he had to be cut out.
Todd shrugged in disbelief and said, “Just another item for his insurance company to pay for, I guess. What was his story, Officer? Why did he back up that way?!”
The officer now looked confused and asked what he meant. Todd told his side of the story, in other words, the truth. Well maybe not entirely, because Todd did leave out the part that he knew in fact the other driver was the young blonde lady even though he kept referring to her as ‘him.’
After the officer wrote down Todd’s statement, he then asked Todd if he had any proof of what had happened.
He replied, “Proof? What do you mean, proof?”
Todd’s theory came to reality. The young blonde was indeed putting all the blame on him.
He let his jaw drop a bit and said, “Hey, wait a minute! You ain’t telling me that guy- no, that idiot is saying that I did this, are you?!?”
~
Bye, Bye
The officer admitted that the other driver’s story was that Todd rear-ended ‘her’ (not him) and then threatened her with a tire iron. Todd frowned again and informed him that he didn’t have a tire iron and that he search his truck. He left his tire iron sitting in the garage of his house, a couple of hours away. As suggested, the officer searched the truck and caught a break. The officer noticed, without Todd having to point it out to him, that Todd’s truck was still in reverse. How could that be?
He got out of Todd’s truck, frowning, then asked Todd to stay where he was and walked up to the little red Chevy. The officer then asked the blonde to step out of her car and, when she’d done so, he leaned into the open driver-side door. After a few seconds, he stood back up and asked her to repeat her statement of what happened.
Still acting as the victim, she repeated her story in tears however her oscar-winning performance was not so convincing this time. The officer instead asked her more questions. “What happened after the accident?” and “Tell me everything you had done then.” He needed more details.
She was taken back that he wasn’t more empathic. But she continued to answer his questions. She admitted that Todd did not have a tire iron in his hand, but it was probably the reflection of the window that made it seem he had something in his hand. She said, “Again, officer, I was distraught at that point. He was banging on my window.”
From that point on, she tried to convince the officer that Todd was a liar and he wasn’t injured. The officer looked over at the medic, who slowly shook his head to disagree.
Still not believing her, he asked if she’d tried to drive away or had she immediately shut off her engine after the accident. She said angrily, “Is that what he said, that I tried leaving?” She shook her head in disbelief and said, “Well maybe my engine died or something.” The officer nodded once and asked the medic to step over. He then asked the medic to sit in the Chevy and confirm if it was in reverse.
It was.
The officer immediately took out his handcuffs. As he was handcuffing her, she started weeping and confessed to the truth. She didn’t have the money to make payments for her little red Chevy anymore and her only option to afford it was to fake a car accident. She didn’t mean to hurt anyone.
That day she was arrested for making a false police report, running a car scam, and assault and battery.
~
He Beat Her At Her Own Game
Before he could leave that day behind him, he had to make his way to the police station to sign off on his statement. He carefully made sure he did not mention in his statement how his nose got banged up, or how he’d ended up unconscious, hanging out of his truck. Even the arresting officer’s report, as well as the EMT’s report, had already noted that it appeared that he’d either been partially ejected by the impact or might have been trying to get out of the truck at the last moment.
With that being said, he was in the clear of that whole car incident, as he should since it was her fault. Since then, her insurance took care of all the repairs on Todd’s truck. He got a new radiator, got some front-end work done, and received a few touch-ups on the truck to make the outside look brand new again. The mechanic even did a full overhaul, including fixing that fan belt that needed fixing before the accident. At least one good came from the car incident.
Her insurance was so good, the insurance even paid for a loaner car for him while his truck was in the shop. When he first saw it, he couldn’t help but chuckle. He thought to himself, ‘the irony.’ And lo and behold, it was a little red Chevy. The same red little Chevy that almost ruined him was now the same car he was joyriding around town in with his wife.
If Todd hadn’t been quick on a plan, his happy ending would have never happened. That day Todd decided he was not going to give in to the young blond lady’s car scheme but instead fought back and beat her at her own game. She was the loser in the end.
~
