Uber and a 'US Marshal'

David Stanley Hubbard has issues.

Severe issues.

The 58-year-old Goose Creek, South Carolina man was recently in court...for a second time...on charges of impersonating a law enforcement officer. To be exact, for impersonating a United States Marshal.

The first incident occurred about a month ago when, while operating his 2007 Honda Pilot in the capacity of an Uber driver in Charleston, Hubbard told several riders that he was, in fact, a US Marshal.

"He pulled out this Marshal badge out of his center console", passenger Chris Boldt said. "He turned on the lights and sirens, did a u-turn to grab a parking spot." That wasn't all he showed them, either; Boldt said Hubbard carried handcuffs and a handgun. "He put them ( cuffs ) on my friend and we took pictures", she stated. Hubbard then withdrew a semi-automatic pistol from his car to display, complete with two extra magazines of ammo.

When Hubbard started telling the women stories of killing people and chasing murderers as he transported them to the Folly Beach area, they became suspicious and jumped out of his car while stopped at a red light. Boldt and her friends notified police, who stopped Hubbard and found his firearm and Marshal accoutrements, including a plug-in, magnetic blue strobe light. Hubbard was charged with impersonating a law enforcement officer and carrying a concealed weapon, among other charges. He was released on bond.

My thought was, wouldn't the fact that someone claiming to be a Marshal, while operating a 2007 Honda Pilot and working in the capacity of transporting people under the Uber title, be enough to trip the alarms in the first place?

The second incident occurred a week or so later, when Hubbard was stopped for making an improper lane change in Charleston. As he was being cited, Hubbard told the officer "that, as a US Marshal", he didn't take his driving lightly. As the issuing officer walked away, Hubbard stated "Thanks for citing a fellow officer!". He was charged, again, for impersonating a law enforcement officer after the issuing officer checked with the local US Marshal's office and discovered that Hubbard was not, and never has been, a member of that agency.

The crazies are out there, folks.

                                                           David Stanley Hubbard

Another 'What Were They Thinking?' - The Loyal Dog Edition

A dog can be man's best friend; it can also lead police to your hiding place.

Back in early November of last year, two parolees and a German shepherd inside a vehicle were stopped around 7:30 a.m. by a State Trooper in the state of Oregon. As the officer approached the Chevy SUV occupied by the parolees and the dog on foot, the vehicle took off.

It was a stolen car.

A short pursuit followed, halted when the fleeing SUV endangered morning commuters in Ontario, a border city about 35 miles northwest of Boise, Idaho. Law enforcement later learned that the vehicle, now abandoned, was in a ravine in the foothills of an area under control of the Bureau of Land Management. During a ground and air search, suspect Jerry Boatman was located walking a short distance away and taken into custody. Other officers, following foot and dog tracks leading away from the stolen Chevy, observed a German shepherd and attempted to catch it. The dog ran straight to a badger hole in the side of a hill and went inside. As officers were extracting the dog, they heard faint cries for help coming from deeper within the hole.

Those cries for help were from the other parolee, Greg Morrow, who had decided to scramble into the badger hole to hide from approaching officers; it seems Morrow, wanted for a parole violation and burglary charge, had crawled so deeply into the hole that his shoulders were now pinned tightly against the sides of the hole, eight feet deep, and was unable to move, complaining that he was quickly losing feeling in his arms.

Law enforcement  personnel, using shovels, freed Morrow from the hole ninety minutes later, only to lock him up in a very different kind of 'hole'...a jail cell. Had it not been for Morrow's loyal dog, officers said it would have been very unlikely that they would have found Morrow and that Morrow, in turn, would probably have died due to exposure over the coming days.

Greg Morrow should probably count himself lucky on two points: that his dog led officers to him and that the burrow was unoccupied while Morrow had been crawling inside. Badgers are very ferocious animals and the trapped Morrow's face would have been fully exposed and defenseless.

Gregory Morrow

Officers working to extract Morrow from the badger hole