Is speeding a crime of passion? Officer Rusty Martin remembers a time when the label could have applied.
“I was a rookie stationed in a little town called Duncan, Mississippi,” Martin says. “Now, nothing much ever happened in Duncan. The nights were even quieter than the days, and I was working the 6:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. shift. So I was always looking for ways to liven up those long hours.”
One night Martin, who lived about thirty miles on the other end of the county, was headed home down the dark, quiet country lanes. He was in a hurry to get home and had already exceeded the speed limit when he noticed headlights in the distance behind him, closing in fast. Martin didn’t have radar at that time, so he tried to pace the car behind him.
“I clicked it up to about eighty in order to get an indication of how fast he was going. Sure enough, he caught up with me easily. Then he saw the bar lights on my squad car and slammed on his brakes.”
The late-night speedster climbed out of his car and read the officer’s badge. “Please Officer Martin!” he begged. “You can’t write me a ticket. I can’t afford it—I just can’t afford the ticket. Please just let me off with a warning.”
It was very late. Martin was bored and just a little punchy, so he decided to have some fun. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said. “If you can give me an excuse I haven’t heard before, I won’t write you this ticket.”
The speedster didn’t hesitate. “I left home about five o’clock this afternoon, and I told my wife, ‘Honey, I won’t be gone long.’ Well, I got down to Mount Bayou, and we got to gambling, and I lost most of my money, so I had to stay until I could win some of it back.”
Martin just nodded, pen in hand.
“Then my wife called,” the speeder continued. “She said, ‘There’s going to be a whole lot of lovin’ going on in this house in fifteen minutes, and if you want to be in on it, you had better be here.’ That was fourteen minutes ago, and I’m trying my best to get there.”
“The man wasn’t joking,” Martin remembers. “And I had to admit I never heard that one before. I let him go. What happened after that is anybody’s guess.”