Breaker, Breaker…I've Been Hit

The series of events began on Tuesday evening, October 12, 1982, at about 10:30 p.m. on Interstate 84, approx­imately 20 miles east of The Dalles, Ore­gon. Three men were driving west to­wards Portland in a small pickup truck, equipped with a citizens band radio, an ample supply of beer and a seven-mm rifle. They were chugging the beers one after another, whooping it up and gener­ally having a good time at the expense of endangering the lives of others and breaking countless laws, which were designed to protect all law abiding citizens in the area. But regardless of the rights of other people, these three men were going to do as they damn well pleased on this fateful autumn night.

"Breaker one-nine, breaker one-nine," said the intoxicated man driving the small pickup as he spoke into his citizen band radio's microphone, trying to get the attention of the big rig in front of him. "This here's the big S.O.B., and I'm at your back door. Either haul ass or get your ass out of the way, cause I'm coming through." He laughed maniacal­ly into the microphone as he shot around the truck in front of him, driving errati­cally and raising his middle finger at the trucker as he passed. The trucker merely sounded a couple of blasts on his air horns in protest as the pickup passed.

About 75 miles east of Portland, truck driver Sterling Martin pulled his 18-wheel rig to the side of the road in an attempt to get some sleep. It was a dark stretch of freeway and, at that time of night, there was little traffic and therefore little noise. Until, that is, a pickup with three occupants pulled in front of the 18-wheeler and backed into the parked truck, bumping Martin back into a wak­ing state of consciousness. Giving him­self a few moments for his head to clear, he watched the three occupants of the pickup urinate at the side of the road. When they had finished relieving them­selves, Martin got out of his rig.

"Why did you back up into my truck?" asked Martin, obviously some­what perturbed. Do you have any iden­tification, just in case I have to file a report for damage?" he asked the driver of the pickup. The driver told him to go to hell, jumped into his pickup and hur­riedly drove away.

Infuriated, Martin climbed back into his eighteen-wheeler and followed the small pickup in hot pursuit, not really knowing what he would do if and when he caught up with it. Even with the pedal to the metal, though, Martin's load was too heavy for him to gain on the small pickup, and it and the three men were out of sight within a couple of minutes. It had been too dark to get the pickup's license plate number.

About 25 to 30 minutes, and as many miles later, however, Martin spotted the pickup parked by the side of the road. The three men were inside the pickup, and Martin reasoned that they were either planning to go outside to urinate again or had just finished. Whatever the case, Martin pulled on to the shoulder in front of the pickup and quickly jumped out with a hammer in his hand.

Martin first asked the passengers, par­ticularly the driver, to get out of the pickup and, when they refused, he angri­ly banged on the side of the door with the hammer. He could see that the three were drinking beer which, in his opin­ion, was a menace to all others on the highway. His anger getting hotter, Mar­tin took the hammer and broke out the driver's side window. This action brought the driver out of the pickup.

The driver shouted an obscenity at the pickup. Before he could utter another word, Martin drew back and punched him square in the face, knocking the beer drinking driver to the ground. Obviously drunk, it was difficult for the man to recover his balance and, wanting to make sure that he couldn't, Martin began kicking him about the stomach and sides. At this point, one of the other passengers got out of the truck to offer some assistance to his drinking buddy, but he, too, was knocked down by the angry trucker.

As the scuffle continued between the three men outside the pickup (one re­mained inside), another big truck approached from behind and pulled to the shoulder and parked. As that driver emerged from his truck, the two men from the pickup saw their opportunity to flee and did just that. Within seconds they were again headed for the Inter­state 84 towards Portland, leaving the angry but exhausted Martin and the other trucker behind.