I'm watching a high speed chase on Channel 9 — a white car has been leading a line of cops through Riverside for more than 40 minutes. They say it contains two men wanted for armed robbery.
The newsfolks, who have to narrate and fill time without a lot of information, are speculating wildly about what the driver is thinking. It never seems to occur to them that the answer to that question is that the driver may not be thinking. Crime is not always a rational, planned act and they're talking about this guy like he's one of those crafty Columbo villains who had what seemed like a sly, reasoned scheme. But maybe he's drunk or high. Maybe he's out of his mind. Maybe he doesn't know what the hell he's doing.
Yes, drivers in these situations almost never get away. Often, they crash. Often, they wind up getting shot. If it does end without physical harm to them, they've at least made things much, much worse for themselves with charges of reckless driving and attempted assault with a deadly weapon. But you have to be sane and in possession of your faculties to realize that fleeing is not a good idea. This never seems to occur to the reporters.
I have a friend who says he can't accept that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of John Kennedy because no one has come up with a logical-sounding motive. I dunno…how logical are the motives of some of the people these days who take an automatic weapon, go to a place where innocent people congregate, and begin firing? I could certainly accept that Oswald was sick of being an ineffectual nobody and just decided to do something that would rock the world. I can also accept that the driver they just nabbed out in Riverside as I was writing the above was panicked and was just driving madly because he couldn't think of what else to do.
(Another possible thought process they never mention. He may simply have believed that if the cops caught him, they'd certainly shoot and kill him. They did that with the driver in another high speed chase a week or two ago. Panic can make someone do a lot of really stupid, self-destructive things.)
Okay, chase over. The guy's car spun out, possibly because of a spike-strip. He crashed into a fence, jumped out and ran through a field and tried to get into a house. Policemen swarmed over the area, tackled him…and Channel 9 lost interest in him. The reporters were unsure if there was anyone else in the white car but now they're on to weather and sports and the chase no longer matters. That man was only of interest while he was fleeing from the police. Maybe that's why he did it.