Genesis.... Welby Thomas Cox, Jr.

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СКАЧАТЬ bus which was in use as a church bus. The initial crash was exacerbated when the gasoline from the ruptured fuel tank of the bus ignited immediately after impact, which also blocked the front loading door. Difficulties encountered by the victims attempting to evacuate the crowded bus quickly in the smoke and darkness through the only other designated exit, the rear emergency door, resulted in the death of 27 and injuries of 34 others. Six passengers escaped without significant injury, while Mahoney also sustained injuries. The crash was the deadliest drunk driving incident and third deadliest bus disaster in United States history.

      In the aftermath of the disaster, several family members of victims became active leaders of Mothers Against Drunk Driving) (MADD), and one (Karolyn Nunnelee) became national president of the organization. The standards for both operation and equipment for school buses and similar buses were improved in Kentucky and many other states, notably increased emergency exits, better structural integrity, and less volatile fuel.

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      Officer Bill Knower, a Kentucky State Trooper, knew this stretch of highway and had patrolled it for more than eleven years. He was a rookie in 1988 and heard about the tragic church bus crash. Tonight, he had nearly worked his shift…he was serving the “grave yard shift” for the next thirty days. Bill didn’t mind, even though it was hard on family life. He slept during the day and was up for the children when they came home from school. This schedule was actually better for he and the children. He was able to go watch them in extracurricular activities but it was hard on the marriage. His wife Anne, worked at the Cumberland Bank in Frankfort, Kentucky, and most often didn’t get home until after six o’clock in the evening.

      But, Bill looked at it in a positive way…it was only a month out of a quarter…and when you are a cop, you take the rotation assigned to you. Bill didn’t mind the shift really…there was a lot of activity, truckers speeding, civilians speeding; having flats and various other break downs. It was especially hard in the winter. This stretch of interstate headed east and west, just before the Carrollton exit was treacherous with the sloping hills which got very slick…quick and the speed crazies made it more dangerous than it ought to be.

      Tonight, Officer Knower first noticed the horse van and remembered the memorandum on the missing thoroughbred from the Oldham County farm of Senator Elliott. More than anything, the Senatorial thing sent a red flag up the pole but additionally, the van, an altered Ford chassis with the van box over the axils was speeding by more than thirty miles per hour. It came flying around the bend and headed down the steep drop toward the Kentucky River which crossed the interstate not more than an eighth of a mile before the Carrollton exit. Officer Knower hit his lights and tucked in behind the van, he wanted to see the cargo, nearly as much as he wanted to go home.

      He pulled his silver Ford cruiser nearly within ten feet of the back of the van and hit the spot light so that the plates lite up. He punched the numbers into the console computer and it immediately reported that the plates belonged on this van. He picked up the radio Mike and heard the dispatcher…click…”32”

      …Click, Click!

      “Blam…blam…the shotgun blast ripped through the windshield of the cruiser…then Frank dropped the weapon to the floorboard of the van.

      “Jesus Christ, you idiot, you’ve shot a cop.” Mike said.

      “I know it, he was pulling us over, shut the fuck up and let’s get him into the van.”

      The two of them pulled the cop out of the cruiser and drug his body to the side of the van. They placed him in the back, next to the stall of the big horse who eyed the activity with a degree of contempt. The driver of the van, Mike Alteer, pulled off the trooper’s jacket and tossed it to his accomplice, Frank…the other man in the heist.

      “Quick, get this jacket on and get in the cruiser, pull up in front of the van and let’s haul ass to the Ohio line.”

      Inside of a long minute, the cruiser was headed east with lights flashing the way through the night…the pedal to the metal, pushing the cruiser and the van over one hundred miles per hour.

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      Officer Troy Currans had just come on duty. He had heard his partners’, Officer Knower’s initial call to the dispatcher, thinking it odd that he only stated his number and then Currans only heard a clicking noise. He felt, almost instinctively that his partner was in some kind of jeopardy…and knew it wasn’t a good sign. He pushed the gas pedal to the floor and the Ford responded with all it had under the hood. The cruiser squealed and the tires squalled around the intersection leading from I-75 to I-71…the blue lights lit up the interstate and the night sky. Morning was wreaking havoc on this quite cold January morning and there would be hell to pay if Officer Knower had been hurt. Officer Currans knew that his partners’ shift started at Carrollton and he wasn’t far from there…maybe ten-fifteen miles and that meant he would be there in six minutes.

      Officer Currans had tried to raise his partner on the radio and the phone when he heard the failed message…put there was no response from Knowers. This was highly unusual and Officer Currans knew that something was wrong…terribly wrong. Once he was on I-71, Officer Currans flipped on his blue lights and quickly flying through the night chill at over one hundred miles per hour. He flew past the Sparta exit, and then he saw his partners’ cruiser going east at a high rate of speed…and the horse van was following.

      “44” Currans snapped into the police radio!

      “4” Was the response from the base operator.

      “Switch to channel 8” He requested of the base.

      “Roger that,” was the response.

      “I have been unable to reach Officer Knower, and I have just past his cruiser headed east at Sparta and there is a horse van following the cruiser?”

      “Copy 44,”

      “I am requesting back-up at Sparta, immediately!”

      “What is your ETA to the van?”

      “Three minutes, over!"

      “The OIG recommends that you lay off the cruiser and the van until the split at I-75, operative will either go south or north, advise direction of flight at that time and support will respond appropriately… copy!”

      “4”

      The occupant in Knowers cruiser listened to the radio and heard the conversation, and then the radio went silent. He had seen the other cruiser with pulsating lights on the west side of I-71. Fortunate for the horse thieves and now the murderers of Officer Knower, the Sparta exit loomed as an escape route and the driver cut the blue lights, taking the exit and then made a quick left hand turn. Now he was headed due north with the van following at a reduced rate of speed he saw truck traffic zipping beneath him under the overpass at Sparta.

      The horse van followed suit, cutting his lights and following the cruiser. In a quarter mile there was a convenient gas station on the east side of the road and across the road to the west there was a mammoth parking lot and entrance for the Kentucky NASCAR track. The driver of the СКАЧАТЬ