MonkeyPants

Drama! On! Broadway!

“I love the rubberneckers in Vancouver.” Dave is from Derbyshire, and has a way of commenting on our Canadian foibles.

We are standing on Broadway, where a silver 2-door car has just jumped the curb and crashed into the pole outside the dollar store. Everyone asks everyone else, “Was anyone hurt? What happened? Did you see it?”

Those in the know answer, “Yeah, some guy just leaped out and ran down there (they point to Trutch Street) and the cops followed.”

Kathryn and I were walking home at that point, so we decided we’d walk down Trutch because a) We both live that way, and b) We are noseybonks.

We see the lights around the corner on Eighth, and surreptitiously walk past. There’s a guy sitting on a low wall, cuffed, with a bloody cheek. Cops are talking to him. There are a few people watching, so we decide we will watch from across the street. Not obviously, obviously. Just…quietly. We get snatches of the tweaked-out guy in handcuffs as he raises his voice.

We piece together that: His name is Justin, he’s had a record since 18, he’s got a problem with crack, the car is stolen, and he thinks he’s in the right somehow. We don’t think he’s drunk, because he’s not slurring. But he’s talking a mile a minute, and we guess he is on crack.

A cop wanders over. “Did you see anything?”

We shake our heads no, and he tells us the story. Our boy Justin was driving a stolen car. A dog car noticed him and started tailing him. Justin went around the block and then, all of a sudden, leaped out the sunroof! While the car was still moving! The cop following him bashed the empty car up onto the curb and other cops chased Justin. Meanwhile, our crackhead hero leaps up onto a fence and then onto the low roof of a house. he crashes in through a skylight, and terrorizes the older woman inside. The helicopter shines the light on him so he scrambles out again and starts looking for other windows to break, but slips off the steep roof and onto the pavement below, where the cops nab him.

An exciting night for us, but a sad one for this particular crackhead.