James Tully of Canadensis, who has to walk to work in the heart of the Eric Frein search area, has been stopped by police more than 20 times, including an encounter Friday night when he says he was roughed by an officer.
Posted on 10/21/2014 1:47:36 PM PDT by Bettyprob
James Tully of Canadensis, who has to walk to work in the heart of the Eric Frein search area, has been stopped by police more than 20 times, including an encounter Friday night when he says he was roughed by an officer.
Police searching for Eric Frein have questioned James Tully so many times that he started carrying his driver’s license and work identification on a neck lanyard to prove his identity.
But that wasn’t enough to keep him from being forced to the ground by gunpoint Friday on Route 447, and being held there, face down in the gravel, by a law enforcement officer driving a knee into his back, Tully said.
Tully, 39, lives off Snow Hill Road in Canadensis which has been a key area in the search for fugitive Eric Frein, the man accused of ambushing the police barracks In Blooming Grove on Sept. 12, fatally shooting a state trooper and injuring another.
A father of two, Tully has held a job at J.A. Reinhardt on Spruce Cabin Road, in Mountainhome for more than a year. He keeps up on his child support payments and barely makes the rest of his bills.
Tully does not own a car. The five-mile walk takes two hours each way. He walks to work in the early afternoon and walks home from midnight until 2 a.m. It hasn't been easy, Tully has a bad knee and sometimes walks with a brace and a limp.
The walk takes him along Route 447, a hot spot in the search for Frein. Since the search began, Tully has been stopped well over 20 times and questioned by law enforcement officers. Tully says he's been questioned as much as seven times during a round-trip walk to and from work.
Until Friday, it has usually been the same. Law enforcement rolls up and asks for his name and identification, where he is coming from, where he works, and then they move on. Some have asked him to keep his eyes and ears open for Frein and Tully did report a suspicious person to police once, since the search started.
Tully left work around midnight Friday and about 25 feet from his job’s driveway, police stopped and questioned him as usual.
A co-worker saw him and gave him a lift off Spruce Cabin Road to Route 447 where he walked for five minutes before another routine police questioning. He continued on for 10 more minutes and was near Brinkers Bridge near the intersection of Route 447 and Mill Creek Road when a silver SUV stopped.
"The driver jumped out screaming like a lunatic,” Tully said. He was dressed in camouflage and a tactical vest and had a rifle held high, pointing at Tully.
He did not see a badge or words on clothing. The man did not identify himself.
“The only I.D. I saw was the barrel of the gun,” Tully said.
“He yelled at me to get down on the ground with my arms out wide and he demanded my name.”
Tully says he complied immediately and that the man drove his knee into Tully’s back and continued to ask his name.
Tully told him his name over and over and explained that his identification was on the lanyard on his neck but that he was laying on it.
The law enforcement officer removed the bandana from Tully’s head and then grabbed the lanyard and yanked it off his neck.
“Good thing it had a break away clasp or he would have choked me.”
He continued to badger Tully.
“I will break you right here. What is your name?” the man asked, while still driving a knee into his back, Tully said.
Tully did not know where the gun was but he was afraid the man would shoot him.
“From the minute I saw him with that gun I thought, let me survive this.”
This went on for what seemed like 15 minutes or more when a state trooper who recognized Tully from previous questioning arrived and told the other officer that Tully was telling the truth about his name.
The trooper held out a hand and helped Tully stand up and helped him gather the items he had been carrying, which were scattered on the ground.
No one apologized.
It is unclear what agency the other officer is working with because Tully does not recall seeing any identification on the vehicle or the man’s clothing, and state police did not answer questions about this incident in time for this report.
The FBI, ATF, and US Marshall service are helping state police in the search.
“The trooper took a photo of me and my I.D. and said he would show it to searchers in the morning briefing,” Tully said.
Then, with scrapes and bruising on his bad knee, and pain in his back, Tully limped the rest of the way home.
He walked to work the next day, and was stopped three times. A trooper strongly advised Tully to find a different way to work, but the only other route for Tully is to walk through the woods. That would be even more suspicious. He cannot afford to give anyone money for gas and his parents, who live in Bushkill, cannot drive at night. He is out of options.
Tully did not finish his shift because he started to notice pain while breathing. He was taken to the hospital and learned that his ribs are bruised from the encounter.
He hopes police will pay for the time he had to take off work and for the X-rays and other medical expenses.
“We understand they have a job to do. Bur there are certain protocols,” said Bob Tully, James Tully’s father. “This guy apparently had delusions of grandeur that he would be the one to catch Frein. We completely commiserate with the police but this guy went full commando on my son.”
His mother, Linda Waddington Tully, bought a reflective vest, hat and gloves which he will now wear during the walk.
“Frein isn’t going to be wearing that,” she said. “I believe if not for that state trooper, he could have killed him.”
James Tully says he is having a hard time sleeping at night and he is nervous to walk to work now. “I’m worried about what is going to happen with the next one. Is he going to shoot first and ask questions later?”
ya, a bum knee and isnt this in one of those parts of the country where five horizontal miles on a map takes 10 miles of vertical walking? I wouldn’t put much value in a reporters determination of distance either.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. Looks like a manufactured “woe is me” narrative designed to squeeze a lottery settlement from the police. Now the poor, delicate flower of a man even has trouble sleeping...
Here’s a thought for the 39 year old who can’t afford a car, says he can’t even afford to pay gas for someone to give him a ride and apparently has no friends or family willing to drive him. Give up your apartment or wherever you are paying rent, move in with your folks in Bushkill which is only a few minutes away from Canadensis, use their car to get to work at night since they can’t drive in the dark anyways, and save the unused rent money to buy a car. With a car, get a better job or a second one, a cheap apartment... set an example for your kids, if nothing else.
You are entitled to your asinine opinion and I am entitled to view it as asinine. Write back when they change your medication. Or don’t.
They'll most likely kill him as soon as ID is made
No Car? Good thing he doesn't have a truck!
Good grief, some of you people will defend the police on anything.
Guess that picture of the blue truck riddled with bullet holes from the Dorner search was another attempt to hit the lawsuit lottery.
Good grief, some of you people will scrape the bottom of the barrel to try to paint any and all police as butchers.
I live here in the search area, darlin, and have yet to see a single bullet hole in a single vehicle... but you go ahead and talking about a blue truck shot way out in California a couple of years ago and pretend it has something to do with the Poconos search today.
By the way, welcome to Free Republic. You’ve been here a whole month now, way to go...
Your post should be framed in gold. Top of the box.
So, you're a good little Fascist who has no problem with a knee in the back & "Papiers Bitte" for the occasional limping peasant unfortunate.
Heil Obola!, Gauleiter Tamzee.
Well said.
How does not a single bullet hole here equal “a knee in the back” in your mind?
I’m dealing with facts and the reality of what is happening around us here.... you’re apparently insisting on some twisted, dark fantasy world in your head. Careful, the Unabomber thought his twisted fantasy world was real, too.
Given the odd circumstances you’d think that the troopers would just arrange to have somebody drive him from the edge of the woods to his workplace, and then back, so as to stay out of the way of the investigation.
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What an opportunity for a nearby car dealer! Just donate a reliable, inexpensive used car to the man and give him a clear title. ...That would help this man who is obviously a loyal worker (walking 10 miles a day on a bad leg) AND would generate a lot of community goodwill for the dealer.
I’m dealing with facts and the reality of what is happening around us here.... you’re apparently insisting on some twisted, dark fantasy world in your head. Careful, the Unabomber thought his twisted fantasy world was real, too.
Gosh, you're right! I must have gotten confused by actually reading the article:
"Tully says he complied immediately and that the man drove his knee into Tully’s back and continued to ask his name." - from the article
I think your "twisted, dark fantasy world" was in the head of the jack-booted government gunthug. Thought he was gonna be a HE-ro...
Kid's lucky he didn't get shot.
” “I will break you right here. What is your
name?” the man asked, while still driving
a knee into his back, Tully said.”
This is how cops think they can treat people, LE sees no wrong, and I’m called a badge hater as though there is no reason to be angry? Boot lickers need to get a clue.
Thanks. I have great respect for you in the way you handled my post. I live in the area. We have many low income, hard working people with old fashioned values.
People like tam want us to forget every example of LE idiocy and LE unwillingness to address it. And they hate anyone challenging it.
Thank you! My thoughts exactly!
Ahhh, because a 39 year man who can’t support themselves and afford a vehicle or even afford gas money and are so tender that they suffer from sleep anxiety and want the police to pay for his financial damages would NEVER be exaggerating his story.
Try scrounging up just a teeny bit of common sense. If he is similar in looks and build to Frein and has been trudging along the woods in the search area in the middle of the night on a regular basis and if the hundreds of cops covering the area for weeks were “government gunthugs”, then how is he still alive? And not shot at a single time?
You guys keep posting that picture of the blue truck shot in California 2 years ago and the situations are so different it is ridiculous.
” Try scrounging up just a teeny bit of
common sense.”
Common sense says that a guy walking on the side of the road in front of God and everyone is highly unlikely to be the suspect. Common sense says they are far more likely to encounter an innocent thanthe suspect. Common sense says this cop over reacts.
HISTORY shows cops do behave like this. As for the blue truck? Maybe if pigs learned from such idiotic incidents, people might let it go. Until then, we have to realize we could be the next blue truck incident.
And as has already been pointed out, this cop probably was just trying to be the hero and went overboard.
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