If You Want Something Done Right…

The Felony Saga part 4

So, I’m left standing there. The DA just walked out, what do I do now? I never gave a plea. I’m just waiting to get arrested. Now what? I go over to my attorney, “Ma’am? What do I need to do now?”

She says, “Well, it says here that you already have an arrest number, so you are free to go. Just take my email down and keep in touch with me. Send me whatever information you have.”

I reply with, “Ummm? I can’t have an arrest number ma’am; I’ve never been arrested. That doesn’t make sense.”

 She tells me, “Yes, it’s right here. You are free to go.”

Have you ever thought that you must be in a dream because none of this is making sense? I was just standing there, trying to figure out what was going on. How in the heck do I have an arrest number? Is this some messed up joke? Am I being punked? Ashton? Where’s Ashton? Wait… am I gonna try and leave and then they’re gonna swarm me? Is this how they decided to arrest me? A sneak attack? “Ma’am, really, I’ve never been arrested; I don‘t want to go and still have an arrest warrant out for me.”

My attorney walks over to the gal who works with the judge and has all their information for them. She talks to her, they go back and forth, and then they both look at me. Then they look at the paperwork, then back at me. My attorney walks back over to me. “We don’t know how it was done, but before your original judge went home sick, she set you up with an arrest number. Technically, you have been arrested. I have never seen a judge do this before, but on paper, you were arrested, you just didn’t have to go through the actual process of being arrested, if that makes sense?” Ummmmm… no, that makes no sense at all.

It took a bit of convincing me, but apparently the judge I spoke to the week before, that knew I was flying out here for this, before she went home ill, made up some “official” paperwork showing that I was arrested, but didn’t make me have to go through the process of being arrested. So, no handcuffs, no fingerprints, no processing, no sitting in a cell, no one trying to buy me for a couple of packs of cigarettes, nothing. Tell me you don’t believe in miracles.

So, we leave. We walked right out of the courtroom, the lobby, past security, and out of the courthouse. Nothing. We are looking all around as we leave trying to see when I get attacked, but nothing happened. We breathe a heavy sigh of relief and walk to the parking lot to our rental car. Kimberly still decides to drive, just in case, so I go to open her door for her, because she’s a lady and what is that on the windshield? How, in all that is holy did we get a freaking parking ticket, in a parking garage that charges $40 for the day? Aight Ashton… enough is enough. Where you at? The ticket was for EXPIRED TAGS-ON A RENTAL CAR!!!!!! Like I said, you can’t make this stuff up. Now, we have to call the car rental place, listen to their apologies, and go get another car. As we drive to the rental place Kimberly starts to “notice” that the brakes aren’t working right so she was glad we were getting a new car anyway. We get another car and as we are driving back to the hotel, the brakes on this car start to “mess up” too. We don’t have the energy to go back, we keep going to the hotel.

Have you ever had an adrenalin dump? This was like that, just times a thousand. We had been in ultra-survival mode for several days without knowing if I was coming home or not, without knowing what this was all about, and both of us trying to be brave for each other. All of that stress starts to take its toll on you, mentally, emotionally, and even physically. It felt… exhausting. We try to get a decent night’s sleep, cause tomorrow, we got to figure some stuff out. I also called the regional director and told him what was going on. His reply, “Well looks like you got everything in order man, I’ll be in touch.”

Neither one of us slept well at all. Kimberly drives us to the storage place across town and continues to struggle with the new rental’s brakes, “they just aren’t working right”. When we get to the storage place, we go in and ask to speak to the manager. There was a young lady who was the assistant manager and asked if she could help us. I didn’t want to give too much information away, so I asked, by name, if the guy worked this week. She said, “No, he had been fired. My ears perked up. “Fired for what?” I ask. She said that she can’t really talk about it. I gently pressed for a bit more information. She told me that he had been fired on integrity issues having to do with some of the units. Got him!

I asked for the district manager’s number, and we left to the U-Haul place. When we got there, I asked if they still had records of my rental. I needed to prove that I had rented the white truck and the pod on the trailer. I got all of that information, which had exact times from when I rented it and took it back with mileage. Today is looking better.

We were heading back to the hotel and Kimberly tells me that we need to take the rental back because of the brakes. I ask her to let me drive to the hotel because for all intents and purposes, I should no longer have an arrest warrant out for me. I start to drive away, and the weirdest thing happened, no issues with the brakes at all. I’m not telling her that right now though. What, am I new here?

Kimberly: Just as a bit of information, I have never struggled with driving and BOTH cars had horrible brakes, and they weren’t working right, they were extra sensitive and then hard to press all at the same time. LOL…Nope they were fine, it was just my brain processing everything, and my physical body was no longer working right. It’s weird when you have to keep it together and then you can finally breathe just a little bit, your body starts doing strange things. Breaking out in hives, which has NEVER ever happened in my entire life and then not being able to drive. I learned two very important things during this trial: 1. You can’t control how your body reacts to stress & 2. I’m not as tough as I think I am.

Back to North Carolina we go. Ok, now a lot of the details get kinda jumbled at this point. I don’t remember the exact order so I will just break it down as best as I can.  The following took about 6-8 weeks. I can say with the utmost sincerity, up to this point in my life, this was my absolute lowest. There were so many pitfalls and I’m sorry, but you will never be able to tell me that the District Attorney’s Office is interested in the truth. During this time, I couldn’t sleep well because of the stress. Most nights I laid in bed praying, begging Heavenly Father to just take me in my sleep. There was no way I would do it myself, I couldn’t do that to Kimberly, but I didn’t want to be on this earth any longer. I’d given up. I was broken. I thought, beyond repair.

I called the district manager of the storage company and left a message. When he called me back, I asked him about the manager and why he was fired. The DM said that it was due to performance, not integrity. He did seem very uncomfortable talking to me. I’ve been a DM before and in retail management for most of my career, I know that you can’t talk about why someone was fired, and I also know that you have to do things in the best interest of your employer.

I emailed my attorney all that I had. Receipts for airline tickets, showing that I was in North Carolina when the first break in occurred.

A receipt from U-Haul itemizing everything, which contradicted the time frame that he said that I was there arguing with the manager and what I drove. A receipt from the rental car place proving that I had rented a white Dodge Charger. What more could I do? I did all of the leg work, I had all of the evidence supporting me. They should throw this out, right? That’s a negative Ghost Rider. The DA said that all I had was a “receipt” for an airline ticket, not proof that I was on that plane.

Seriously?!?!? Like I had this mastermind of a plan that involved unused plane tickets all just so that I could break into a couple of storage units? Yeah… sure.

I called the airline I used, they told me that customer service only had access to one year back. That sucks. Then they said that the escalation department might have further access. I call them, they have two years’ worth of information. YES!!! Finally, a break! The time is up in a few weeks. I just made it!!!

“Do you have proof that I was on that flight?”

“Yes sir, here you are, on our manifest.”

Sigh of ultimate relief! “Awesome, will you email that to me please?”

“Sorry sir, this is proprietary information. I can’t give this to you, I’m terribly sorry.”

Son of a biscuit eater!!! “Can you send me an email on your letterhead stating that you do have it please?”

“Sure, no problem.”

I forward that to my attorney and ask her to subpoena the manifest, but we need to hurry because it will be erased within a week or two. Yeah, we were cutting it that close. I also asked her to talk to the DA and ask about getting this thrown out. When she got back to me she said that the DA said that he would take a plea deal, I would just need to payback the people who had their items stolen for the value of the items.

What the what? How do these people sleep at night? Hell no, I’m not taking a deal. I didn’t DO anything.

 My next court appearance was creeping up. My attorney had every bit of evidence that I could find. She told me that I didn’t need to be in Vegas for this one, that she would be there to represent me. By this time, I had lost faith in our justice system. Then a little bit after 5:00 pm Vegas time, 8:00 pm my time, the night before my court appearance, I get a call from my attorney, all charges have been dropped.

Seriously? Are you sure? Can you send me proof of that? It was difficult to believe they were finally dropping the charges. Thank goodness!!! Now we can breathe again! Finally, this nightmare was over.

The VERY next day…

I received the offer letter from Dollar General.

This chapter was now over.

Kimberly: These are the moments in life that make me remember that our Heavenly Father is very aware of us, and timing matters, and He knows that. If my dream didn’t happen when it did, if Jason had not listened to me, or if we had not left right away, or the Judge had not called him back, or any other tiny little piece of this had been delayed by just a week or two, this would have ended VERY differently.