“Woman commutes 20 miles to work on foot. Cop follows and uncovers terrible secret. For the past 6 months, she had been walking to and from work every single day. She wished for a better alternative, but she knew that this was the best way forward. At first, the 10 miles to and back from work had been a challenge for her, but after doing it for over 6 months, it had become a lot easier. Soon, she had grown accustomed to it. But one day, everything changed when she discovered that a police officer was trailing after her.
Mandy Jean Beasley was your average 40-year-old American living in Chicago, Illinois, a mom of two beautiful young boys. Mandy had raised them by herself, doing everything she could to give them the best lives they could ask for. She was working as a waitress, then comfortable with everything she had, but all this changed in the bat of an eye.
In the first quarter of 2021, Mandy’s company laid off several employees, including her. The exercise came as a surprise to her and her colleagues, with the company stating it needed to downsize in response to the dwindling economy. The blow found Mandy off guard, and she dipped into her savings to support her two boys. She knew she had to look for a new job as soon as possible or end up on the streets.
The search for a new job was more challenging than Mandy thought, with many prospective employers passing her up for other candidates. But she didn’t lose hope, scouring job forms and websites for months until she found a good position. But as much as the job description matched everything she knew and could offer, there were a few big issues that would deter her from applying. The job Mandy was applying for was akin to her last position, but sadly, it was paying less. The company offices were also 10 miles away from her house. She didn’t have any money to spare for the commutes, and she was deep in debt after being unemployed for almost a year.
Despite the odds stacked against her, Mandy settled for the job. The interview day came, and Mandy attended the meeting. She got accepted, but as she was commuting back that afternoon, she noticed that she could walk the distance to and from work to pay some of her bills and debts. Mandy bought a pair of walking shoes, and each morning and evening, she walked to and from work. The journey was challenging at first, but as the weeks went by, she realized she wasn’t only saving a lot of money but enjoying the walks.
Then, one day, everything changed. Mandy took her usual route to work on a gloomy Tuesday morning. It had rained the previous day and throughout the night, and the streets were covered with flowing rainwater. Mandy was about 3 miles away from work when she realized a car was trailing her.
At first, she didn’t think much about it, but then she noted something that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand. Sergeant Scott Bass from the Nash County Sheriff’s Office was driving along in his cruiser when he noticed a familiar figure appear on the road ahead. He was passing The Stonegate mobile home community, and he had hoped to find her there. He had some business with her today; he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
Mandy realized how close to the curb the car was. It was also driving slowly, as if to let her know it was following her. ‘Oh Lord, not today,’ Mandy whispered as she got a closer look at the vehicle, seeing it was a police cruiser. Although she’d never been in trouble with the police before, she knew such occurrences were inevitable.
Suddenly, it began to rain harder. Mandy tried to open her umbrella, only for it to be whipped out of her hands by the freezing wind. She still had a long way to go, but she plotted on through the torrents of water, stepping carefully over the pools that swirled, conspired to break her footing. The last thing she wanted was for the cop to stop her today.
Mandy was tired from trying to walk faster than the cop car that was so obviously tailing her. Her feet were wet and aching, and even though she’d been careful to wear her most comfortable pair of sneakers, she could feel her blisters starting to rub wrong. The surge of annoyance went through her; she was just minding her own business. Why couldn’t the cop just leave her alone?
Mandy hissed out of breath as she continued walking, trying her best not to blatantly sprint off. Although she knew she had done nothing wrong, she peeped over her shoulder and saw that the car had turned its red and blue light on as it neared her. She slowed down, hoping for the best.
The cruiser drew closer to the curb and stopped. Throughout her life, Mandy had been stopped by the police only a handful of times. The situation had never been tense in all these cases since the officers had only stopped to ask her a few questions before leaving. But something deep within her told her that wouldn’t be the case here.
He slowly pulled up alongside her and rolled down his window. The cruiser’s window rolled down, and a male officer stuck his head out the window. ‘Come over here,’ he barked. There was nowhere to run; she couldn’t ignore him any longer. Mandy never trusted cops; she immediately feared the worst, and her head started to spin. Was she really in trouble just for walking to work? But there was no getting out of it this time.
Mandy sucked in a deep breath; she let it out in a slow exhale and stepped toward the car, noting its license plate with the Ws ‘Sheriff Nash County’ and blazing on its side. She heard the words entering her brain, but she couldn’t quite grasp what Sergeant Scott Bass was saying. Then, the words slowly assembled themselves into meaning, and her eyes widened with disbelief.
Sergeant Scott Bass asked her to get into the vehicle and told her that she shouldn’t be on the street. In a flood of stuttering and panic, she tried to explain to him that their livelihood depended on her getting to her office, but he didn’t seem to be listening. While she was in the vehicle now, she thought, and she wasn’t about to argue with him; her fate now rested entirely in his hands.
Mandy sat in silence in the officer’s car, wondering where he was taking her. She entwined her fingers and placed them over her chest protectively, and then let them fall into her lap with a sigh. Appearing nervous wasn’t going to help anything. Was he taking her in for questioning? She glanced at him shiftily, but he continued to drive through the rain, his eyes on the road ahead.
Mandy had not been at all comfortable with the situation. This man had just ordered her into his car, after all, and she had stupidly complied. She should have run, she thought; that way she could have avoided this trouble and gone to work like she was trying to do to begin with. But it was too late now. Her heart pounded in her chest as she forced herself to settle in. For Mandy, being in a cop car usually meant one thing: trouble. A grown woman, she’d had her
fair share of brushes with the law, most of which weren’t for the best. She’d been through it all, from getting arrested because of mistaken identity to profiling. Her mind started racing as she wondered why the officer had picked her up. She wondered if she’d ever see her little boys again.
‘Once bitten, twice shy,’ for Mandy, getting bitten had happened so many times that a situation should have been routine. She had spent a chunk of her life getting cuffed for reasons beyond her control. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t done anything wrong; the circumstances always seemed stacked against her. Seated in this cruiser, she knew she wouldn’t be able to sweet-talk her way out of this.
Sitting in the cruiser’s back seat, Mandy’s life flashed before her eyes. She remembered growing up in the local projects where crime and violence were the norm. Although her mom worked at a government job, she had so much on her plate that they couldn’t move to a less hectic neighborhood. In a place like this, trouble was never too far away.
Mandy came from a house of 12 kids. Among that number were her two siblings, the rest being her cousins, whose parents were either incarcerated, in rehab, or had passed on. She watched as her mom cared for them, never complaining even once. But although the woman did her best to keep trouble at bay, it would only be a matter of time before it came bursting through her front door.
Mandy was seven when it happened. She saw the blue and red lights flashing down the street one dark evening before her 20-year-old cousin burst into the house. ‘Trouble’s here,’ he was covered in sweat, panting like a parched dog. He threw Mindy a heavy duffel bag that tipped her back and raced out of the house through the back door.
Mandy didn’t know what was going on; she was still trying to wrap her young mind around everything when the front door flew off its hinges. She heard the command to throw her hands up and immediately obliged. She watched as the two men in navy blue marched into the house, searching everything before stopping before her. ‘What’s in the bag?’ they asked. Mandy couldn’t answer; she was too young to understand what was happening. This was her first brush with a first of many that would slowly inform her understanding of how the world around her worked.
By the time she was in high school, she’d already been in many cruisers and cells, even though she’d been innocent. She knew she had to get out of this vicious cycle. The best way to do this had been to focus on her schoolwork and to ensure she graduated with a good enough GPA to make it to college. She needed to ensure she made it out of the state her family was in. She wanted to help change everyone’s life, hoping they’d never find themselves on the wrong side of the law, either by their own doing or some unfortunate misunderstanding.
These thoughts pushed her to work hard in school. But even though she made it to college and even graduated among the best in her class, she soon learned that the world was very unkind. By the time she was 25, she’d seen the inside of a cruiser more than she could count, yet she couldn’t remember a single time where she’d done anything to warrant an arrest.
She thought she’d have gotten used to it by now; this was the reality of her hometown, after all. But each time she saw a cruiser, her insides would wither as her breath caught in her lungs. She hated how her being reacted, but how could she blame it when nothing good had emerged from such situations?
‘If only, if only I knew how getting arrested would end for me this time,’ Mandy started trembling where she sat. She couldn’t think of a reason why the officer would ask her into his cruiser. The rain was still pouring outside, which made her wonder, was the officer doing this to protect her from the downpour? That thought alone changed everything.
Although something within her screamed that there was more underfoot here, Mandy looked down at her watch as her anxiety got the best of her. She had an hour to get to work and hoped the officer would let her go by then. If he even was an officer. How many cases had she heard of criminals impersonating officers for nefarious reasons?
Slowly and slowly, she realized that the issue was more dangerous than she thought. The minutes had been ticking by, and Mandy found it hard to see where the man was taking her. The windows were fogged up, and the clouds hung low. The rain had started the moment she entered the cruiser; now it had reduced to a slight shower, spraying her window with hundreds of droplets. Were these ominous signs a representation of her future?
Mandy didn’t know; regardless, all she could do now was take heart and prepare to defend herself. More than anything, she hoped that this man was truly an officer. He was quiet as he drove, his eyes fixed on the road, which meant that Mandy had nothing to do but think.
And she couldn’t help but wonder what she should be expecting. Each second that dragged by pushed reason out of Mandy’s head. Again, she found herself wondering if this man was an officer of the law or an impostor. If he was, where was he taking her? Why hadn’t he said anything since she got into the vehicle? Was she under arrest, and if yes, what was she being arrested for?
Mandy was starting to feel a little down. She was wondering why this was happening on that specific day. Couldn’t it have occurred on a day when she didn’t need to be at work? She hated being late and would have no idea how to explain a situation such as this to her boss. She didn’t even know what the situation was. Why did this have to happen to her? Why couldn’t this man pick on any other woman that was walking in that area? These were just some of the questions that were crossing her mind.
She barely started her new job and could only imagine trying to explain why she was already late. That was not going to make a good impression at work. If only she knew where the man was taking her and that she’d soon end up on the news. Mandy’s lips dared to curl as she realized that she was worrying about her work amidst all the stress and pressure. She had so much riding on it that her very life slowly took a back seat. She needed to get her head back in the game.
Among the questions she had, the most prevalent was whether the man really was a cop or not. If only Mandy knew what she had gotten herself into. Mandy couldn’t deny that the man had the air of an officer about him. He seemed confident behind the wheel and even fiddled with a laptop at his side, checking what seemed like reports among other documents. He turned on his scanner and listened in for a few minutes before turning it off. But all this didn’t mean he was an officer. Even if he was a cop, could she trust him? And where was he taking her?
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