I got cuffed and thrown in the back of a squad car on Sunset Boulevard in LA. They had the drawn guns and the cop on the loud speaker telling me to show my hands and step out slowly. They frisked me too.
It was all a case of mistaken identity. I was an Iowa farm boy on vacation in the big city and had picked up a guy whose car was stalled at an intersection to give him a ride home.
Turns out the stalled car had been involved in a hit-and-run accident a few blocks back. The guys he hit had taken off on foot after him (the traffic was pretty bad), caught him at a red light at an intersection and took his keys out of the ignition.
Meanwhile, I was lost, after visiting the Comedy Store, and couldn't find the turn that would take me back to my hotel. This is WAY before GPS.
I pulled over into a side street to look at a map and found that the street I had come in on had changed its name right in the middle of it, so the street I was looking for didn't actually intersect with Sunset. I pulled back on Sunset and found the right street, which just so happened to be the one where the car was stalled in the turning lane.
I had no clue what was going on and pulled in right in back of him because I had to turn there too. This guy about my age immediately came up to my window and asked me for a ride to his house so he could get a spare set of keys. He had somehow lost them in the middle of the road. (I didn't know about the hit and run then).
I agreed to help him, he got in my car and I pulled back into traffic shortly before the cops came. They got there in time to see me leaving and pulled me over about two blocks later. After the dust settled, the cops told me they thought I was the hit and run vehicle. They pulled up on the scene, saw two cars at the intersection and one leaving and just made an assumption.
I sat in the back of the squad car for about half an hour while they sorted it out.
OH, yeah, I had been drinking too. But this was back in the day when cops didn't bust you for drunken driving unless you were really blitzed out of your gourd and stumbling around drunk. I knew I would be driving later in a huge, unfamiliar city so I didn't drink THAT much. I had maybe five beers over a 3-hour period at the Comedy Store.
It was all a case of mistaken identity. I was an Iowa farm boy on vacation in the big city and had picked up a guy whose car was stalled at an intersection to give him a ride home.
Turns out the stalled car had been involved in a hit-and-run accident a few blocks back. The guys he hit had taken off on foot after him (the traffic was pretty bad), caught him at a red light at an intersection and took his keys out of the ignition.
Meanwhile, I was lost, after visiting the Comedy Store, and couldn't find the turn that would take me back to my hotel. This is WAY before GPS.
I pulled over into a side street to look at a map and found that the street I had come in on had changed its name right in the middle of it, so the street I was looking for didn't actually intersect with Sunset. I pulled back on Sunset and found the right street, which just so happened to be the one where the car was stalled in the turning lane.
I had no clue what was going on and pulled in right in back of him because I had to turn there too. This guy about my age immediately came up to my window and asked me for a ride to his house so he could get a spare set of keys. He had somehow lost them in the middle of the road. (I didn't know about the hit and run then).
I agreed to help him, he got in my car and I pulled back into traffic shortly before the cops came. They got there in time to see me leaving and pulled me over about two blocks later. After the dust settled, the cops told me they thought I was the hit and run vehicle. They pulled up on the scene, saw two cars at the intersection and one leaving and just made an assumption.
I sat in the back of the squad car for about half an hour while they sorted it out.
OH, yeah, I had been drinking too. But this was back in the day when cops didn't bust you for drunken driving unless you were really blitzed out of your gourd and stumbling around drunk. I knew I would be driving later in a huge, unfamiliar city so I didn't drink THAT much. I had maybe five beers over a 3-hour period at the Comedy Store.
