Max Bernardo

During the early 90s, Southern Ontario was gripped in fear of a psychotic rapist named Paul Bernardo. Before people knew who he was, he was known only as ‘The Scarborough Rapist’ and because of him people were genuinely afraid to leave their house.

During the first few days of September, 1991, Justin Miller, Jennifer Ward and I traveled up in my mother’s car to London, Ontario to help move me into my off-campus house to begin my second year of engineering. Justin was driving, I was in the passenger seat and Jennifer was in the back seat.

We were just outside of the Kitchener/Waterloo area when Justin first noticed we were being followed by a police car. Justin checked the speedometer to ensure he wasn’t going over the speed limit and we all had our safety belts on. We couldn’t figure out what the cop’s problem was…and so we just waited for him to pull us over. But he didn’t.

After 10 minutes of the police car following us very closely we were starting to get a little paranoid; but we kept going.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, we were surrounded by cop cars. Three cruisers going in the opposite direction on the 401 came screaming across the grass median and cut us off; forcing us to the side of the road just like we were in an action movie. Two other police cars raced up from behind with their sirens wailing. The policeman who had been following us parked his car directly behind ours, got out of the car and started walking towards us.

I looked around. There had to be 7 cop cars surrounding us. I then looked over at Justin, “Just how fast were you going?”

Justin had a look on his face of absolute, total shock. I also had a look of absolute, total shock. Jennifer was humming a tune and checking her nails.

The cop came to the driver’s side window with his hand touching his gun and asked Justin to slowly get out of the car with his hands up. He brought Justin to the front of the car and had him bend over the hood with his hands spread while they frisked him.

Suddenly I’m thinking this has something to do with the fact that this isn’t Justin’s car. Perhaps my father wasn’t aware that my mom had lent us the car and had reported it stolen. I knew I needed to help Justin. He was my best friend after all, my brother. I got out of the car to tell the officer that I was the owner’s son. The cop frisking Justin suddenly grabbed his holster, as if getting ready to draw his gun, and yelled, “GETTHEFUCKBACKINSIDETHECAR!!!”

As I dove back into the car, I gave Justin a look that told him he was on his own at this point.

Soon after, another cop came over to my window and asked me to place my hands on the dashboard where he could see them and proceeded to look around the inside of the car. Jennifer was still humming to herself and was now checking her cuticles. The cop asked me if I had dropped anything out of the window a few kilometers back.

I gasped, my voice quivering, “this is over littering???”

While I wasn’t trying to be funny, in my fear I wasn’t able to figure out that they thought I had thrown a weapon or something equally as bad out of the window. Instead, I was frantically trying to remember if I had thrown my gum or maybe a piece of paper out of the window a few miles back. The cop, not liking my littering comment, opened the door, slammed my face into the dashboard and then grabbed me and pulled me out of the car and brought me to the front of the car. The cop screamed at me to stand beside Justin with my hands spread on the hood of the car.

A woman officer went to the back of the car and opened up the back door to talk with Jennifer; who was still humming and didn’t look to be having that bad of a time.

The female officer kept asking Jennifer again and again, “Miss, are you okay?”

Jennifer responded, each time with a big smile, “Fine. How are you?”

The policewoman raised her head with a confused look. She turned to the other cops with a shrug…she had no idea if Jennifer was drugged or not. She tried again.

“Miss, are you okay?”

“Fine. How are you?”

This went on for what seemed like eternity.

I had a breakdown; I couldn’t it anymore. I screamed, “Jennifer! Tell them we’re friends! Tell them you’re okay!”

Although my scream to Jennifer caused the male officer behind me to grab me and smash my face into the hood of the car the message to Jennifer had apparently gotten through to her as she told the female officer that everything was fine. She explained who we were, how we knew each other and said that we were going to London to move me into my house for school.

They checked Jennifer’s identification. They looked it over, gave it back to her and told us to get back in the car.

As we were getting into our car, we saw that most of the officers were already in their cars and were driving away. No explanation of what just happened. Nothing.

Justin got in front of the last police car to leave and demanded to know what was going on from the cop inside. The cop explained that a truck driver had called in a report of seeing two guys in a car with a shotgun pointed at a girl in the backseat and the cops had mistakenly thought it was us.

Now things started to make sense. When they asked if I had thrown anything out of the window they wanted to know if I had gotten rid of a gun. I was happy to know that police weren’t beating up people for littering crimes.

Apparently the truck driver didn’t get the license plate number of the car, but his description of the vehicle was similar to the one we were driving and so when the first cop spotted us he followed us until his backup team had arrived.

This whole experience was truly terrifying, even more so in knowing that my life was in Jennifer’s well-manicured hands. I’m glad that Justin had the sense to find out what was going on…imagine what kind of a nervous wreck I would have become if I thought this is what happens when somebody litters.

Justin and I were still shaking, sitting quietly in the car staring off to nowhere as we remained parked on the side of the road. We were still sitting there ten minutes after the cops left us.

We just sat there staring ahead in disbelief until Jennifer finally proclaimed; “That was really awesome! It was just like an episode of ‘Cops’! And did you see that one young cop? He was so cute! Maybe they’ll stop you guys again on the way home and I’ll get to talk with him”.

I would have thrown her out of the car at this point, but I was still afraid of the litter police.