Police delay man's visit with Obama

Officers had received a call from the man advising that he was a federal employee conducting a speed survey on Interstate 85 and that he would allow no one doing 80-85 miles per hour to pass him.

A Jefferson officer pulled the car over, and a Commerce officer took over the investigation.

They asked if he worked for the federal government.

“In a sense, yes I do,” he replied.
The man, from California, asked if he could show “Willy” to the officers.

They consented.

The man retrieved a three-foot-tall male ventriloquist’s dummy from his vehicle “and proceeded to perform a ventriloquist show along the side of the road,” the Commerce officer wrote. The officer did not provide a critique of the show.

Asked where he was going, the man said he was headed to Wofford, SC, but “was going to see President Obama on the way.” He further told police that he’d been detained at the Atlanta airport after advising a flight attendant that if the plane he was on caught fire “to let him burn with it.” Police later learned he’d had issues at both the Houston and Los Angeles airports en route to Atlanta.

The Jefferson found a “large bottle” of pills, all but one of which he was able to identify through the Poison Control Center. When police asked the man what it was, he replied “that he did not know, but we could taste it and see for ourselves,” the report said.

The report also indicated that the man’s family members said he had “mental issues.”

Police impounded the man’s car while he was evaluated at BJC Medical Center, which released him — but not before the man rehearsed his speech for President Obama in front of the hospital security camera.

The man picked up the car and resumed his journey.