Читать книгу Newhall Shooting - A Tactical Analysis - Michael E. Wood - Страница 9

CHAPTER 1

Prelude

Bobby Augustus Davis and Jack Wright Twining were violent, career criminals who had recently been released from prison. They had befriended each other in prison, and in the wake of their release, they traveled to California, where they began to plan a series of crimes, including the takedown and robbery of an armored car.

On the evening of April 5, 1970, Davis and Twining were in the coastal mountains of the Angeles National Forest, between the towns of Gorman and Castaic, California. (Fig. 1) They were there for several purposes, all of which related to their planned crimes. Their primary objective was to locate and steal explosives from a construction site, those explosives intended for use in their attack on the armored car. Additionally, they wanted to troubleshoot and test-fire some weapons, as well as perform an operational test on some portable radios (five-watt CB transceivers) that they planned on using during the heist.⁷

At one point, Twining was away from the vehicle in search of the explosives, while Davis remained behind to safeguard it and the cache of weapons in the rear seat and trunk of the two-door, 1964 Pontiac Gran Prix. Davis parked the vehicle on the shoulder of the northbound side of the interstate (Interstate 5, formerly Highway 99), but attracted the attention and suspicions of some stranded motorists ahead and felt compelled to leave quickly. He made a large, sweeping U-turn across the highway and headed southbound, cutting off another southbound motorist in the process, who had to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision. The time was approximately 23:22.⁸

The motorist who’d been cut off by Davis was Ivory Jack Tidwell, a U.S. Navy sailor returning home with his wife, Pamela, after a family reunion. Tidwell became irate with Davis and sped up to catch him. To Tidwell’s surprise, the reckless driver pulled over to the shoulder and stopped, allowing Tidwell to pull up alongside him. Through the open window on his wife’s side of the vehicle, Tidwell cussed out the errant driver.

Davis responded by pointing a two-inch .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver at Tidwell and his wife. Desperate to escape, Tidwell tricked Davis by claiming that a vehicle approaching from behind was a California Highway Patrol car. Davis fell for the ruse and told Tidwell to “Git!” Tidwell sped away down the highway and was relieved to see he had not been followed. He soon found a phone at a service station on Violin Canyon Road and reported the incident to the Highway Patrol at 23:36, giving the license plate and description of the car and driver. One minute later, Officers Roger D. Gore and Walter C. Frago, Unit 78-8, were notified by dispatch about the misdemeanor brandishing incident.⁹

In the meantime, Davis located and picked up Twining, and they proceeded southbound on Interstate 5 towards the town of Castaic and their home further south in Long Beach. Davis relayed the details of the incident to Twining as they drove.

Officers Gore and Frago established an observation position south of Castaic at Castaic Junction (Fig. 2) and picked up a visual on the suspect vehicle less than 20 minutes later, at 23:54. They radioed to dispatch that they were behind the Pontiac, southbound at the semi-truck scales, and asked for assistance with stopping the vehicle.