Skirmish in Kentucky puts couple in trouble with the law

BY SARA PITZER
SALISBURY POST

One minute Barry and Rae Ann Lorenz were excited about heading home to Spencer after 14 days on the road. Next thing, they were being arrested, handcuffed and locked in the Shelby County Jail in Shelbyville, Ky.

A Kentucky officer says they resisted arrest, but they say he didn’t follow traditional rules of the road and threatened and assaulted both of them. And they’re preparing to go to court in Kentucky to state their case and get the charges thrown out.

Rae Ann and Barry started driving as a team almost four years ago, about a year after they were married, so they could be together and share experiences, but this wasn’t what they had in mind.

At first glance, they’re an unlikely couple. Barry stands 6-foot-6 and weighs 285 pounds. Rae Ann doesn’t measure much more than 5 feet tall.

And at first glance they have an unlikely relationship. They’ve both been married twice before and weren’t really looking for mates. They met by CB radio as they passed each other every day, Rae Ann in her car and Barry in his truck, she on her way to work at State Farm, he headed wherever his load had to be delivered. Eventually they got together for a soda in the truck stop at Exit 52 on Interstate 85, but Rae Ann wouldn’t date Barry for a long time because he was a truck driver, and had been for 25 years.

Barry has hauled all kinds of loads, worked for several trucking companies, taught at Charlotte Diesel School and trained for the Cardinal truck line. Pulling tankers is demanding, he says, because the liquid follows the movement of the truck. Not too many women do it. Rae Ann says a tanker is “like a thermos bottle on wheels.” If you are stopping, for instance, you can apply the brakes only once, because if you do it twice the liquid will slosh against the front of the tank and knock the truck.

Once, when Rae Ann was sleeping, Barry made a mistake and hit the brakes a second time. “I knocked her right out of bed,” he said.

“What hit us?” she asked him.

“The load,”Barry said.

When they were married and decided to drive together, Barry wanted to buy his own truck so he could train Rae Ann himself after she’d finished her basic truck driving course and earned her commercial driver’s license. New drivers are usually trained by the company they go to work for. “Whatever truck you want, I’ll buy,”Barry said.

Now the Lorenzes are owner-operators with a 2000 International 9400i 72 Hi-Rise Pro-sleeper. It’s easy to recognize their white tractor because it’s covered with drawings of Winnie-the-Pooh characters, to please their grandchildren. Rae Ann wears Winnie-the-Pooh T-shirts to match.

Hard hats and items you need to transport hazardous materials are tucked into pockets around the bunk, along with hand lotion, tissues and snacks, and most of the time, their three black cats are curled up in favorite spots in the cab, too.

The Lorenzes are under contract to pull tankers for Liquid Transporters, in Louisville, Ky., owned by Trimac Transport-ation, working out of the Charlotte Trimac terminal.

At about 8 p.m. March 8, after loading in Morris, Ill., they were eastbound on I-64 in Shelby County, heading for Kernersville. Rae Ann was driving and Barry was in the sleeper. It was dark. Just before passing the eastbound scale, which was closed, she pulled into the left lane to avoid rough spots at the entrance and exit of the scale.

That’s when the trouble started. As the Lorenzes tell it, a car came up fast behind her, moved to the left and then to the right and flashed high beams. Rae Ann said she didn’t do anything right away, to avoid making a sudden change with the loaded tanker and because she wasn’t sure what the vehicle behind her was going to do. She was going 60 mph in a 65 mph zone.

When the car stayed behind the truck in the left lane, she signaled a return to the right lane and the vehicle behind her turned on blue lights. That’s when she woke Barry.

After she eased onto the right shoulder and stopped, she sat in the cab with her hands in plain sight on the wheel, as she’d been taught at Charlotte Diesel Driving School, waiting for someone to approach the truck, offer identification and explain why she’d been stopped. She knew it couldn’t be for speeding.

Next, Rae Ann says she saw a flashlight waving up and down at the rear of the truck, but she didn’t know what it meant. Then a male voice on the CB radio said, “Trimac, do you have your radio on?”

Rae Ann said yes.

The voice told her to bring her paperwork back to the car. The Lorenzes say the person still had not identified himself.

Barry took the CB mike and said his wife would not go back to the car, the paper work is available in the truck.

Then, as the Lorenzes tell it, a person jerked the driver’s door open and screamed that he will arrest Rae Ann for not following orders and refusing an inspection.

Barry said he told the officer they were not refusing anything. (Barry didn’t say he was yelling, but he has admitted he has a quick temper.)

The man said he’d arrest Barry, too.

Barry demanded to see the officer’s supervisor.

The officer then sprayed him with pepper spray and tried to pull Rae Ann out of the truck head first.

Barry grabbed her right arm.

The officer pushed her in between the seats and sprayed Barry twice more. According to the Lorenzes, the man still had not identified himself.

In the scuffle that followed, the Lorenzes say the officer jumped into the cab, hitting Rae Ann in the head and breaking her glasses.

They say he tackled Barry, still in his underwear, in the bunk area and handcuffed him. Then he ordered Rae Ann out of the truck and back to his car, where he handcuffed her, too, saying she was under arrest for resisting arrest and put her into the back of his car.

The arresting officer was Martin Mettingly, Unit 432 of the Kentucky Division of Motor Vehicle Enforcement.

Sgt. John Edmondson arrived, helped Barry get his clothes, shoes and glasses and said he would drive Barry to jail.

At the jail, Rae Ann was processed and placed in a drunk tank; Barry was processed and put in a separate drunk tank. The Lorenzes say he was not allowed to wash his eyes out or call Trimac.

They spent the night in jail.

Next morning, the desk sergeant allowed Barry to call the company, and the Lorenzes were released to the custody of a Trimac official about 1 p.m. March 9.

Barry Lorenz is charged with refusing to comply with a police officer’s orders. Mettingly’s arrest report reads, “Mr. Lorenz would not permit his wife to obey my orders and would not return to the sleeper berth as I ordered.”

Barry is also charged with resisting arrest. The arrest report reads, “Mr. Lorenz stood up and started toward me in a threatening manner when I told his wife that she was under arrest. Use of force was necessary.”

Rae Ann Lorenz also is charged with holding the left lane and refusing an inspection.

The Lorenzes’ lawyer in Shelbyville, Gilmore Dutton, urged the couple to accept a plea bargain for reduced charges and a fine of $100, but the Lorenzes refused.

They are scheduled for a jury trial in Kentucky District Court on Sept. 7. Dutton said this is the least serious court for criminal matters in Kentucky, where misdemeanors are tried.

“I don’t feel I was guilty of anything, and it would be on my record that I was,” Rae Ann says.

And Barry says he doesn’t want this kind of thing to happen to anyone again. He says the experience has traumatized them both.

For several weeks, Rae Ann couldn’t drive and only recently can drive through Louisville. She cringes, shakes and cries at the sight of law enforcement men, even neighbors she knows, in uniform, and has been in therapy. A letter from her psychiatrist says she is rational, has above-average intelligence and understands the nature of her reaction. The psychiatrist is treating her for post traumatic shock syndrome.

As the Lorenzes see it, the issue is not that they were stopped on the interstate, but the way they were stopped. The usual procedure is for a law enforcement officer to signal for a stop with blue lights, then approach the cab of the truck with identification and ask for paperwork.

But Mettingly used what is known in Kentucky as a KIT stop, a Kentucky Intervention Traffic stop. Neither Sgt. Edmondson, nor Captain Joe Scott, in the Shelbyville DMV office, knew exactly what KIT stood for, but they said it could be used “at the discretion of the officer,” especially where a felony was suspected.

Trimac Safety Manager Steve Burns said officers sometimes use a KIT stop at night on interstates for the safety of officers and drivers. Drivers are supposed to leave the truck and go between its right side and the guard rail, away from traffic, back to the patrol car.

But, speaking as a driver not as a Trimac representative, Burns said, “I wouldn’t get out unless they come to me. I have always been taught to just sit still and wait direction.

“If everything Barry tells me is true, I don’t see the actions of that state trooper for being appropriate. I’d be very upset if a police officer behaved as this one did and pushed my wife out of the seat. But I don’t know because I was not there.”

He said the Lorenzes have always been good drivers for the company and have never had any trouble or incidents.

Sgt. Edmondson acknowledged Barry Lorenz’s complaint about the way the arrest was handled.

“It was looked into. According to the division, the officer did nothing wrong,” Edmondson said.

“They are trying to cover this officer’s butt,” attorney Dutton said. “This case is about the interpretation of the responsibilities of a truck driver.”

Law enforcement officers don’t have any reason to stop people with a commercial drivers license (CDL), Dutton said. “They can stop and search for any reason or no reason, just to check your paperwork.To retain your CDL in the United States, you have to waive your right to contest them. You can contest, but you will lose your license for one year.”

Dutton said the normal process is for officers to get out of the vehicle and approach the truck, identify themselves, ask for paperwork, log books, etc.

“This officer chose to implement a different kind of stop,”Dutton said. “Nobody around here has ever heard of KITs.

“It’s a citizen’s right to count on a set of rules,” Dutton said, “and you can’t change the rules without telling anybody.”

The two issues are whether or not Rae Ann and Barry Lorenz had justified reasons for not getting out of the truck because the officer was behaving contrary to typical protocol, Dutton said, and whether or not there was “an appreciable sense of harm or danger to the driver and any passengers.

“We’ve got a female driver going down the road, not from Kentucky, with no visible passenger. Who is more vulnerable on the road late at night than that?”

Capt. Joe Scott said blue lights and full dress uniform should identify an officer.

The Lorenzes say blue lights are not hard to get. They also say they could not see the officer’s uniform because he was behind the truck, shining his flashlight into the the cab’s rear view mirror, blinding Rae Ann.

Dutton questions the charge of holding the lane. The arrest report says Mettingly followed the truck in the left lane for one mile, which at 60 mph, is just one minute.

Capt. Scott said Rae Ann could not have known what agency was stopping her until she had some contact outside the vehicle, but he also said communication on the CB radio in the situation “is normal.”

If the Lorenzes are convicted during their trial, Rae Ann will lose her commercial driver’s license for a year. Barry will have to pay a fine and could be sentenced to jail, although Dutton said, “Mr. Lorenz will never go to jail.”

“They ought to dismiss the charges, and in fact, they may. I am working hard to convince them. From a pure constitutional standpoint, I agree with the Lorenzes and little farts like this ought not to be throwing their weight around.”