by Cliff Yates
As I approached the driver’s door of the VW Bug, I saw the left side cheek and hair of a girl. About the width of five feet were the pole, windshield, steering wheel, girl’s face, seat, and back of the car. All that was visible from outside the driver’s window was a young woman’s hair, left ear and cheek. The rest of her body was somewhere lost under the steering wheel which was against the front glass which was up against the telephone pole. As I leaned toward the young lady, I heard her moaning. I tried talking to her, but she could only respond with moaning. Over forty one years later and I can still remember the sound of her moaning. The fire department and ambulance arrived and were able to remove her with the jaws of life. She was transported to the hospital. I finished up the accident scene while another deputy responded to the hospital to check on the young lady. She had packed up her belongings from attending a summer program at S.U.N.Y Geneseo. She was on her way home to the Buffalo area when she apparently fell asleep at the wheel, drifted off the road and struck the telephone pole. I removed a set of golf clubs from the car before it was towed away.
A few minutes after the car had been towed away, I was notified that the young lady had been pronounced dead at the hospital. The next morning a very distraught dad came to the Sheriff’s Office to pick up his deceased daughter’s golf clubs. I was not at the station, but I was told the look of despair and grief on the dad’s face was a very sad sight.
Working the midnight shift on back rural roads, I came to see too many fatal car accidents involving people who fell asleep at the wheel and hit a pole, tree or oncoming traffic. Whenever I have come close to being sleepy while driving, my brain floods with all these images and sounds of those fateful nights.
On another warm summer weekend night at about 2 am, I received an MVA call over the radio.
“109 a car into the guardrail on Route 5 and 20 in the town of Lima.”
I arrived first on the scene, and it was a large white car that had been traveling east on Route 5 and 20 that had crossed the westbound lane and struck the guardrail, coming to rest. There was hardly any damage to the left driver’s side of the car that hit the guardrail. As I approached the car, the fire and ambulance units were just arriving. The lone male driver was unresponsive, but he did have some blood at the top of his head. They transported him to the hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. He was on his way home from work when he apparently fell asleep and drifted across the opposite lane of traffic. It was a very hot night and he had his driver’s window open. When the left side of the car hit the guardrail, his head swung out the window and struck the guardrail, killing him instantly.
The accident was about five miles from his home. I finished the accident scene and then had the task of notifying the man’s wife that her husband had been killed. The desk advised me that I would have to transport her to the hospital so she could make an identification. The desk had a local clergyman and a neighbor meet me at the door of the couple’s house. She answered and I gave her the news. It’s one of the worst things about our job. Such a sad, sad thing. I transported her to the Noyes Memorial Hospital in Dansville NY and I remember riding with her in the elevator down to the morgue of the hospital. It was just like you see on television. They pulled the body out of a compartment. As we stood at his head, the sight that stays with me is when she reached out and touched the cheek of her husband. That was a significant emotional event for me, and that memory comes to me from time to time, her reaching out and touching his cheek.
I will never fall asleep while driving.
FAMILY OF BLUE BLOODS
MY DAD WAS a cop starting his career with the Livingston County Sheriff’s Department. He became the Chief of Police at the Village of Caledonia. He spent the last ten years of his career as a patrol officer and crime scene technician at the Greece NY. Police department.
My dad’s brother and my uncle, Ted Yates, was a police officer for the Villa.ge of Geneseo Police Department. Not only was he an amazing cop, he also was a champion trap shooter. When I say champion, I mean champion. He garnered many titles and was inducted into the New York State trap shooters hall of fame.
While I was a deputy for the Livingston County Sheriff’s Department my cousin Fred Yates, Ted’s son, was a police officer for the village of Geneseo. Fred was also a legendary local softball player. Like Babe Ruth he would stand at the plate and point to the fence he was going to hit the homerun over. Fred and I bowled together on a league for many years. I may have gone on years later to get my PBA (Professional Bowlers Association) card and compete in professional events. But Fred was the better bowler, gathering numerous sanctioned 300 games.
When I left the Livingston County Sheriff’s Department for California, I was twenty six years old. Another of Ted’s boys who was also my cousin, Sherman Yates, was about sixteen. A few years later and Sherman would join the Livingston County Sheriff’s Department. Sherman left Livingston County to be the Chief of Police for the Mt. Morris Police Department. Sherman left Mt. Morris for the Palmyra NY. Police Department where he rose to the rank of Chief.
On my dad’s side, we had quite a tradition of policing.
FRIENDS REUNITED
I WAS WORKING the day shift for some unknown reason. It must have been an overtime shift. I hated the day shift. I continued to hate the day shift throughout my 35 years in Law Enforcement. I love the midnight shift: 12 midnight until 8 in the morning. But here I was working the day shift, and I received some type of report call at a car dealership in Avon N.Y. When I arrived I was met by one of the car salesmen, Jim Chiverton. I told you about Jim from my high school Criminal Justice class who I had lost touch with after high school. While I was going to Monroe Community College for Criminal Justice, Jim had gone into the service and worked as an MP. He caught me up on his world travels. I remember he had great stories and fond memories from his time in the Azores. Jim said he wasn’t happy working as a salesman for the car dealership. He said that I was living the dream, and there would be nothing he would like more than working full time as a Livingston County Sheriff’s Deputy. He thought it would be great if he and I could work together at the Sheriff’s Department like our dads.
I arranged for him to go on a ride along with me on the night shift. We had a great time on our shift, and he was more determined than ever to become a full time deputy. I encouraged him to follow the path I did by starting part time, learning the ropes and getting to know the Sheriff so when a full time opening came up, he would be at the top of the list. Jim did get hired part time, and I was able to train him on the midnight shift. Shortly thereafter, Jim realized his dream of becoming a full time Livingston County Sheriff’s Deputy.
One afternoon shift I was working alone driving south on Route 15 at a high speed. Up ahead I saw a large black cloud over the road. Just before I reached the cloud, I realized it was a swarm of bees. I was able to maintain my speed as I leaned over to the passenger door with my left hand on the steering wheel while I rolled the window up with my right hand. I got the window up just as my police cruiser slammed into the swarm of bees. I turned around and drove back toward the swarm and saw the hive boxes on the west side of the road. Yes, this was before the days of power windows, when you had to actually crank the windows by hand.
A few nights later, Jim and I were working together. It was about two in the morning. I had forgotten about the bee incident until we drove by the hive boxes. I didn't say anything, but Jim said, “Hey, what are those colored boxes we just passed?”
I knew what they were, but I didn't tell Jim. I just said, “Let’s go back and take a look.” I did a couple U-turns and stopped on the side of the road about thirty feet from the boxes.
Jim got out and walked up to the boxes. As he got close to the hive boxes, I hit the siren a couple times. The siren must have got those bees a buzzing, because all of a sudden Jim was in a full sprint back toward the Sheriff's car. Jim was not gaining any ground on our patrol car, as I had put it in reverse and was backing up at
about the same pace that Jim was running. I know, that was mean. Well, I had to make sure he wasn't going to be bringing a swarm of bees into the car with him. I only let him run about a hundred yards before I stopped, and he jumped into the car. I found out he had as big a fear of bees as I had. He was so happy to be safely in the car, he couldn't even be mad at me.
I was laughing so hard, I had tears rolling down my face, and Jim soon joined in, and it was a while before we both could stop laughing. Jim was usually the one playing the jokes on other deputies, so I was happy to get one in on him. Jim was the kind of guy that enjoyed the joke even if it was played on him. He just enjoyed life and enjoyed laughing. We had a great time working together on the midnight shift over the next four years. For a time my friend and roommate Larry Tetamore, Jim and I were the core of the midnight shift. Sometimes after our shift was over we would all get breakfast together and then go over to Jim’s and listen to music. I remember one morning Jim couldn’t wait to show us a music video on MTV from Meat Loaf, “Bat out of Hell.” I can’t hear that song without thinking of that morning we all spent together.
In 1983 I left Livingston County to join the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. On occasion I would stop by and visit my deputy friends at the Livingston County Sheriff's Office when I was home. Over the next few years, my visits were more infrequent, and I lost touch with my Livingston County family. I’ll get to that part of the story a little later.
In 1987, Jim had a case where one of the witnesses had not been served a subpoena. The witness was crucial to Jim's case, and the case was about to start trial. The court division had been unable to serve the witness. Jim was so dedicated to his job, he decided to serve the subpoena himself. He had to drive to the Rochester, NY area, which is about twenty miles north of Livingston County. Jim was driving north on Route 390 near Henrietta NY when he was hit head on by a car traveling south in the northbound lanes of the expressway.
Off-duty Monroe County Sheriff's Sergeant Tom Vasile was driving north on Route 390. When he noticed traffic was stopped, he got out of his car and saw it was a traffic accident. Tom was good friends with both Jim and I. Tom walked toward the crash scene, and had no idea he would be seeing Jim trapped in the crashed car. Jim did not survive the crash. The other driver was an elderly man, who also did not survive.
Tom went with the other officers to make the death notification to the family of the elderly driver that struck Jim's car. Tom said when they knocked, the man's daughter opened the door, and the first thing she said was, "Please don’t tell me he killed anyone." She went on to tell the officers that she had been trying for a long time to get her father’s driver’s license taken away. She said he was getting confused and in her opinion should not be driving. She feared that he would get confused, and do something like enter the expressway going the wrong way, and kill himself and someone else. Which is exactly what happened. Rest in peace, Jim Chiverton. Please go to the Officer Down Memorial Page and read about Jim.
Tom Vasile is one of my best friends. When my dad was Chief of Police in Caledonia, he had hired Tom as a police officer. That was Tom’s first police job. Some nights Tom would be working the Village of Caledonia and Larry, Jim and I would be working the county cars. So, we all became good friends. It was a weird twist of fate that years later Tom would stop at the accident scene on Route 390 where he would find Jim dead.
CONESUS DRIVE IN
IT SEEMS MOST of my memories are of incidents that happened on warm summer nights. I was working the east side of the county one warm summer night. When you worked the east car on a weekend night, you knew you were probably in for a busy night. Conesus Lake, one of the finger lakes, is in east area which has several restaurants and bars along its shores. There is a drive-in which back in the 1970’s and early 80’s was really hopping on the weekends.
It was about 1 am when I received a call to respond to the drive-in along with fire and an ambulance, and they didn’t give me any other details. I pulled into the drive-in and it was a weird scene. There was nothing showing on the screen, all the lights were on, and the drive-in was still packed. Groups of people were outside their cars, and there was no noise. All the cars were in the position they were in while they were watching the movie, except for one car that was in the roadway area between the rows of cars. There was a large group gathered around that car in the roadway, so I drove right up to it. The front of my police car was facing the front of the car. When I stepped out of my patrol car, a lady ran up to me and grabbed my arms yelling, “I killed him, I killed the boy, the little boy is dead!”
The ambulance people arrived, and they took the lady to their ambulance to try and calm her down. I walked to a group of people who were gathered at the rear of the brown car in the roadway. They directed me to the left rear tire of the car, and someone pointed toward the rear tire saying, “He’s under the car, deputy.” I got down lying flat on my stomach and started crawling in the dirt with my flashlight under the car. As I got under the car and started shining my light, I saw that a little boy was severely mangled in the rear end universal joint of the car. His head and shoulders were wedged up on top the of universal joint. Closest to me was his left arm and hand laying down in the dirt, palm up. I grabbed his wrist to feel for a pulse, and I remember his watch coming off, and I put it in my pocket. I don’t know why I grabbed his wrist for a pulse; he was so badly mangled it was obvious that he was dead.
He turned out to be a 12 year old boy from Pennsylvania visiting friends on his summer vacation. I think a part of me was in shock of this scene like everyone else. No time for that. On this night I couldn’t be like everyone else, I was the cop who had to make decisions and get things that needed to happen going. This one took a little bit to piece together.
The boy was staying with a family in the area when they decided to go to the drive-in. I remember they had a van. It was a couple, their three children and the visiting boy. They invited a neighbor lady, a single mom and her two boys to go to the drive-in also. The couple and their three with the visiting boy drove in their van while the neighbor and her two boys went in a different car. They arrived at the drive-in and parked side by side so the kids could hang out during the movie.
One of the neighbor lady’s boys and the visiting boy laid down in front of her brown car on blankets during the movie. When the movie ended, the neighbor lady’s two boys got into the car. The kids and couple in the van were gathering their things. The lady said her goodbye and pulled out of the spot over the hump, turning left. As she slowly drove along the roadway for about one hundred feet, a lady was running alongside of her car banging on the driver’s window yelling, “You ran over a boy! You ran over a boy!” The neighbor lady immediately stopped the car and got out. She looked under the car, and seeing the boy started running and screaming.
When her two boys got into her car, she didn’t know that the visiting boy was still asleep on the blanket in front of her car. As she pulled out, she ran over top of him. As her car went over the hump of the drive-in space, she mangled him in the universal joint of the car and dragged him under until she was stopped by the lady pounding on her driver’s window. Her boy got up when the movie ended and didn’t realize that the visiting boy was still asleep.
I handled the investigation, towing of the car, interviewing of the witnesses and writing the report. No other cars showed up for assistance, which was not unusual. It just seems weird when I look back after joining the L.A. Sheriff’s Department. A similar call in L.A would have commanded a response of probably four or five cars back up, and at least one supervisor. There would have been homicide detectives even though it was an accident and crime scene technicians. But this was Livingston County in 1978, things were different. As our Sheriff in Livingston county once said, one call one deputy.
I remember going back to the Sheriff’s Office to call the Pennsylvania State Police to make the death notification to the boys’ parents. While on the phone, I remembered the watch and pul
led it from my left front pants pocket. I still see that black watch with the LED display and the broken band on the desk in front of me as I was on the phone talking to a Pennsylvania State Trooper.
CRAZY WAS GOING TO SHOOT ME
ONE NIGHT AT about 1 am I was patrolling the north end, traveling west on Route 5 and 20 between East Avon and the Village of Avon. I saw a car traveling toward me east weaving across the center lines of the road. When I made a U-turn, the chase was on. I radioed that I was in a high-speed chase. We got up to 100 mph when the car turned its lights out and turned right into a strip mall in East Avon. When I turned into the driveway of the large parking lot, I saw the car slowly moving forward with the driver's door open. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a person running from the parking lot into some backyards.
The car came to a stop at the corner of the empty parking lot. I looked inside and saw there was nobody else in the car. I ran to where I last saw the person running. I went around the corner of a large shed and couldn't see anything. I tried a bluff, pointing my gun toward some bushes I yelled, "Come out, or I'll blow your fucking head off!"
About ten yards from me, a male came out from behind a tree with his hands up and said, "Ok, I give up." I ordered him down on the ground where I handcuffed him. He was extremely intoxicated, and I arrested him for Driving While Intoxicated.