Vehicular Assault in Kelowna B.C.

I was almost run down by a pickup truck in the parking lot of our local grocery store. I don’t mean that I walked in front of a truck or they didn’t see me coming. I’m talking about a woman who got behind the wheel, checked where I was in the mirror and gunned her engine at me. She only stopped after the corner of her truck had hit my chest hard enough to bump me back a few feet.

This is a true story. Let me explain.

My wife and I were shopping for groceries. When we walked outside to our car, a woman was loading her items into the side door of her pickup truck. The problem: her door rested against our car, marring the paint. We made her aware of this as politely as we could and we asked twice if she would close her door to assess the damage to our vehicle.

“If you don’t want your car touched, go park over there,” she said as she gestured to the empty far end of the lot.

“That’s not the point,” I replied. “People are usually conscientious when it comes to another person’s property.”

The woman gave my wife and I quite a dirty look and jumped into her truck. By the time she fired it up and got her seatbelt on, I had surveyed the damage and determined it was going to cost me. I dove into my car and opened the glove box in search of paper and pen.

I resurfaced and ran around behind her truck. As I did this, my wife sat in the passenger seat of our vehicle.

While standing behind the woman’s truck, I got the first two digits of her plate number written down when the backup lights came on.

I edged around a little to look in her side view mirror. Our eyes locked. I raised my arms and asked loud enough for her to hear, “Are you going to hit me?”

She gunned her engine and raced at me. In that second I tried to dodge. I wasn’t fast enough as only three feet separated me from her bumper. The woman applied her brakes but not before hitting me in the chest and knocking me back. It wasn’t hard enough to knock me down. I stayed on my feet. The one thing I did lose was my temper. I mean, I have kids, and a wife. People that depend on me. The woman had scratched our paint deep. We were being nice about it. And she thought this justified hitting me or worse?

I felt like Sarah Roberts in Dark Visions for a minute and how she would’ve lost it on the woman.

I ran to her window, pulled out my cell phone to call the police and ordered her out of her vehicle. She refused. I demanded it, explaining that I was calling the police. I told her that if she left, she would be leaving the scene of a crime.

She pulled her vehicle out and drove away. The police listened to my complaint on the phone and said they’d send someone out. An hour went by with no officers showing up so my wife and I left the parking lot intent on meeting the police at our home.

The police finally met up with me two weeks later to take the report. No joke. Then I was told that it had been too long since the incident took place to lay charges. Whether that was true or not, or I was talking to a lazy cop, I have no idea.

But just like Sarah Roberts and the violence she experiences while attempting to help victims of crime, the police aren’t there when you need them. Would Sarah have jumped in the back of the truck? Would she have taken this further to hold the woman accountable? I thought I did all I could at the time but thinking back, maybe I could have demanded charges be laid.

After all, I was a victim of vehicular assault and I had witnesses.

Jonas Saul

P.S. As a reminder, my main site is at www.jonassaul.com. Thank you.