Welcome to the States!
The first night in the US for a family of Japanese tourists unfamiliar with local traffic laws ended with the parents being yanked from their rental car at gunpoint while their young son wailed in fear after a high-speed chase in southern Utah.
The drama began at 1 a.m. Saturday on Interstate 15 near the Utah-Arizona border when the couple’s car was spotted going just 37 mph and swerving between lanes, said Lt. Brad Horne, Utah Highway Patrol’s DUI unit commander.
More than a dozen cops were working a special DUI operation, and Horne figured there was a drunk behind the wheel and turned on his lights and siren to pull the car over.
But instead of pulling over, the woman driving sped up to 75 mph and began weaving across lanes and into the shoulder.
Soon, three patrol cars were in hot pursuit with other cops closing highway exit ramps and setting tire spikes miles ahead, Horne said.
“It was literally red and blue lights in every direction,” Horne said.
The couple’s car skidded to a stop about 7 miles north of where the frightening chase began after three of the tires blew out after hitting the spikes.
A patrolmen bellowed commands from a loudspeaker in his patrol car, telling the couple to get out and walk backward.
Both directions of I-15 were closed as officers prepared to encounter what they thought could be hardened criminals.
Instead, a Japanese woman in her early 40s emerged.
“She would walk forward, backward, spin around — obviously she had no clue what we wanted her to do,” Horne said.
Still bracing for the worst, officers approached the car with guns drawn and pulled a man from the car.
That’s when they saw the couple’s 7-year-old son in the back seat and realized the family didn’t speak English.
The boy was crying, and the parents appeared nervous and confused, Horne said.
“I think they were terrified,” he said.
Realizing they were dealing with language and cultural barriers, and not a drunken driver or fugitive, officers changed their strategy, Horne said. One officer consoled the boy and reunited him with his parents as others worked to get a Japanese-speaking officer on the phone.
They found one in northern Utah who spoke to the couple and learned they had arrived from Japan on Friday morning and rented a car to drive from California to Bryce Canyon in southern Utah.
The woman said she had no idea what she was supposed to do when the patrolman put on his lights and siren, so she sped up to get out of the way.
She kept apologizing for crashing the car, not realizing they ran over tire spikes, Horne said.
And there was a happy ending.
Patrolmen took the family to a motel and wished them safe travels, declining to press any charges.