JEFFERSON/SALINE COs.—A July 8 incident in Jefferson County involving a Harrisburg man has created a situation wherein the man is stating his rights were violated, and the police are stating that the whole thing has been overblown.
Who will be proven correct, however, may be a matter for a Jefferson County judge to sort out; and Terry Henderson, 58, of Harrisburg, has stated for the record that he intends to follow through with a jury trial to prove that he was not in the wrong.
Blowout on the interstate
At about 6:40 p.m. on that date, Henderson, accompanied by his son Kody, was driving his truck and hauling a trailer south on Interstate 64 just south of the I-57/I-64 split when a tire blew out on the left side of the trailer’s front axle. Unfortunately, he realized that he had everything with him to change the tire except a lug wrench.
He said that knowing the Ina exit was approximately four miles ahead, they decided to limp the truck along and call his girlfriend, Bonnie Rister Mahan, to bring the proper tools for the tire change.
Driving easy with flashers on, they proceeded on to Ina; however, the truck developed problems, and quit running. Over the course of the two miles, and after coming to a stop on the shoulder of the interstate, the truck stopped and started several times until they made it to the truck stop in Ina. There, they gassed up and assessed the situation: the truck stop was extremely busy and congested; they didn’t have the lug wrench yet; and they determined that because the trailer was a tandem axle and drivable with three of the four wheels intact, they believed it was drivable. To save Mahan some time, Henderson told her they would head south on Illinois 37 and meet her somewhere between Ina and Whittington.
Driving cautiously because of the blown tire, Henderson said they were pulling through the little village (which literally only still exists because of its proximity to Big Muddy Correctional Center and the funds that prison brings in to city coffers for infrastructure and a few perks), and, to his detriment, did a slow-and-roll through one of the few stop signs in town, at the intersection with Route 37. As they did so, Henderson said they saw lights flashing; the village’s police officer on duty had seen the whole thing and was stopping Henderson.
Tearing up my streets
The officer, Anthony Amato, advised Henderson he had stopped him because he was “tearing up my streets and ran a stop sign.”
Henderson said he acknowledged the stop sign disobedience, and began to try and explain the situation. However, Amato wouldn’t have it.
“There are no excuses for what I saw,” Amato told Henderson, and proceeded to write out citations, explaining to Henderson that he really shouldn’t move until help arrived.
Henderson got out and began to try to jack up the trailer. However, the traffic had grown heavy and with vehicles passing by closely, one almost running over the jack handle and a second coming so close that Henderson had to grab his son and pull him toward the vehicle, he felt they were in an unsafe environment, so they removed the jack and returned to the truck.
In the meantime, Amato drove by, then turned northbound on 37 and drove away “like a bat out of hell.”
Still feeling like they were in a poor place to be stopped, Henderson decided to proceed onward to locate a safe spot to remove the bad tire. They proceeded south on 37, hoping to get to the area of the prison or just beyond, where the road widens, making it a safe place to change the tire.
About a mile and a half south of Ina city limits, they noticed flashing squad lights coming upon them.
“I said ‘Here he comes again,’” Henderson told Disclosure. “So I attempted to pull the truck over and back the trailer into the wide shoulder area when he pulled up behind me and blocked me ON the highway…preventing me from safely backing the trailer onto the wide shoulder.”
Using a bullhorn while still inside his squad, Amato shouted for Henderson to “STOP NOW!”
“I yelled back for him to at least let me get out of the highway,” Henderson said.
Amato replied that if Henderson hit his squad, he was under arrest.
“At this point he’s still moving the squad car forward, preventing me from getting my trailer off the highway,” Henderson said. “I again tell him to give me room to back the trailer onto the shoulder, but he used the loudspeaker again to tell me to ‘get out of the truck with your hands up, you are under arrest.’”
Bad shoulder noted; Mahan arrives
Despite Henderson advising Amato that he’d had a severe shoulder injury some time back that resulted in a total shoulder replacement last May, Amato, Henderson said, cuffed Henderson behind his back and placed him in the squad.
With the July heat, and even with the squad running and air on, the inside temperature, Henderson reported, was “unbearable,” as was the pain from sitting with hands cuffed behind his back.
Henderson said he then began banging with his foot on the inside of the door to get Amato’s attention and tell him this wasn’t going to do.
“I again told him about my shoulder surgery and the artificial joint,” Henderson said, “and he then moved the cuffs to the front.”
Mahan said she had received the message about the tire tool first; then about 20 minutes later, the citations.
But within about ten minutes, she got a text from Kody stating “The cop is putting dad in a squad car” while she was en route to the scene.
She was told upon arrival that Henderson had “disobeyed a direct order not to move his trailer,” but Mahan was more concerned with the condition she observed Henderson to be in in the squad car: while he was cuffed in the front, he was sweating profusely.
Mahan said Henderson was sitting calmly in the back of the car; she asked Amato about giving Henderson his medication and was told she couldn’t do so.
Asking if she could drive the truck/trailer on home or have some friends come to load it on their trailer to tow, Amato told her the “situation is way beyond that,” and that a tow truck had been called, this at around 8 p.m.
Tow truck was going to do what Henderson was cited for
The tow truck arrived at 9 p.m. The driver loaded Henderson’s truck onto the flatbed and proceeded to hook the trailer to the rear of the tow truck.
When Mahan saw this, she asked Amato the obvious: Why was it okay for the wrecker to pull the trailer with the bad tire when it was NOT okay for Henderson to pull it?
At that point, Amato approached the wrecker driver, telling him he couldn’t pull the trailer without first changing the tire…what Henderson was trying to do all along.
And of course, the wrecker driver said there was “no reason why he couldn’t” pull the trailer without changing the tire, as it was safe to drive with the other tires intact.
Amato told the wrecker driver to change the tire, but that couldn’t be done without the proper tools; the lug nuts wouldn’t come off.
At this point, Henderson began kicking at the door to get Amato’s attention again. Mahan asked Amato to please open the door and advise Henderson what was going on with his trailer; Amato admonished the man for “trying to damage the car.” Henderson said he wasn’t damaging anything; only trying to get the officer’s attention about the proper tire tool.
And at that point, with the proper tire tool available, Kody was able to change the tire.
Terry Henderson was taken to the Jefferson County jail and charged with Obstruction of a Peace Officer, a misdemeanor. His bond was $168. He was out of jail and back on the road to Harrisburg at 10:10 p.m. The wrecker service charged almost $200 for almost doing what Henderson was cited for: pulling the trailer behind a truck. The wrecker service itemized “changing a tire” on the bill when in fact Kody had been the one to do so.
Speakerphone convo; chief’s take
While at the jail, Henderson said he overheard a speakerphone conversation between Amato and someone he referred to as “boss.” In this conversation, Amato was being questioned about Henderson’s arrest and stating that someone had already reported the arrest might not be valid. Amato assured “boss” that he “only arrested people when he had good reason and this time he really did have it, with proof on his dashcam.”
Whether or not what’s on the dashcam is “proof,” or only a spinning of what appears to be “proof,” is unknown at this time…but dashcams are FOIA-able in Illinois, a fact Ina police chief Travis Allen was reminded of when Disclosure contacted him about the situation two weeks after the incident.
Allen’s recitation of events nearly matched up with Henderson’s until the point where Amato pulled Henderson back over at the vicinity of the prison.
Allen characterized Henderson’s backing up of the truck and trailer on the shoulder as “deliberately backing toward my officer’s squad car while the officer was yelling at him to stop,” not mentioning the fact that the backing, a tedious task at that moment, was for safety purposes and Henderson might not have been aware that Amato’s car was in any kind of “danger” of being struck…due to the officer’s positioning of his own car.
Allen also reported that Henderson was kicking the door and window of the squad while seated in it, characterizing that behavior as not something done to try and get Amato’s attention, but as possibly a deliberate attempt at damaging the vehicle.
Henderson was given a first court appearance on the Obstruction misdemeanor of August 15 in Mt. Vernon.
There are no citations nor misdemeanors listed on Illinois’ electronic court records service, judici, so it’s unclear whether the alleged violations have actually been filed in the court system, as traffic tickets are fairly routine to post…unless there’s a problem with them.
Henderson and Mahan have advised that they are seeking the services of a good attorney to take this case through the court system, and have mentioned McLeansboro lawyer Alan Downen as one they intended to contact.