A Scary Thing Happened on the Way Home : For Chargers’ Johnson, an Act of Highway Valor

SAN DIEGO — Next to him, in the front of his Jeep, Demetrious Johnson’s wife was screaming hysterically. In the back, his two daughters were wailing with fear.

Not more than 50 yards away, a 21-year-old man named Carl Noland, whom Johnson had never seen before, was lying flat on his face and near death in the middle of Interstate 70 just north of St. Louis.

“Blood was splattered everywhere,” said Johnson, who had been driving home from a family barbecue, minding his own business. “They say every bone in his body was broken.”

A 29-year-old man named James Garner, whom Johnson had never seen before, either, was racing away in his sports car from the spot where he had just run down Noland at a speed that witnesses later estimated at 55 m.p.h.

And Carl Noland’s father, LeRoy, was begging Johnson to chase Garner’s car and subdue him until police arrived.

It was June 28, less than a month before Johnson was to get what probably would turn out to be his last chance to salvage a professional football career that had turned sour two years earlier when the Detroit Lions released him. If Johnson didn’t make the Chargers’ 45-man roster at strong safety, his life after football probably would be starting at age 27.

And now this. It looked as if one man was dead and another had gone mad. A third was begging him to do something about it.

Johnson pulled back onto the highway, raced up to Garner’s side and motioned him to pull over. Garner refused. So Johnson swerved, forcing him off the road at high speed. Just the way they do in the movies.

Johnson: “I got out of the car and walked around and got him out of his car. I put him down on the grass and waited for a police officer to get there.

“The bizarre thing about it is when I pulled the guy over, the thing that stuck in my mind was the guy that was hit, his boot was still stuck in the windshield of the car. I mean he had his boot stuck in the windshield. That has hung with me for a long time.”

Johnson’s friends later told him that he was the one who was crazy. They said Garner could have had a gun. He could have been drunk, or on drugs, or both. Anything could have happened.

“But,” Johnson said, “when you see somebody’s life practically taken right before your eyes--if you have any compassion for a human life--you’re just going to do what you think you have to do spontaneously. I just reacted and did what I had to do in that situation. I didn’t plan it out.”

The police were astonished at Johnson’s actions. After thanking him, the best they could figure to do was cite his valor. They will do so formally the next time Johnson returns to St. Louis.

They charged Garner with one count of first-degree assault for hitting Carl Noland and another count of first-degree assault for attempting to run down LeRoy Noland. They fixed Garner’s bail at $30,000.

A wire service report the next day described the younger Noland’s condition in a nearby hospital as critical but stable.

The police report said LeRoy Noland subsequently claimed that Garner had cut in front of him and his son while entering I-70. The elder Noland reportedly honked his horn and made an obscene gesture at Garner. Garner returned the gesture.

According to the report, Garner then signaled the Nolands to pull over into the emergency lane, which they did. The Nolands got out and Garner drove straight at them. Garner later admitted to having been drinking. Police found one empty beer can in his car and six full ones.

People drink. People get angry. It happens all the time in the middle of the summer in Missouri and a lot of other places.

On this particular night, the anger escalated into ugly violence, and Johnson found himself in the middle of a situation he decided he couldn’t ignore.

“I don’t want to call what I did being a hero,” he said. “I just call it something that I felt was best at the time.”

Johnson’s two daughters are 8 years old and 18 months. The older daughter, he says, “is smart enough to know something happened.” So he tries not to talk about the incident with her.

“I don’t want to bring it back to her memory,” he says. “It was like something you couldn’t believe. I mean, it happened so fast.”

It seemed that way in Detroit, too, where he had started 37 of 62 games after the Lions made him a fifth-round draft choice in 1983 after distinguished college service at Missouri.

Eventually the coaches in Detroit decided that Johnson couldn’t run as fast as an NFL safety should run. There was no question about his toughness or ability to come up from the secondary and support against the run. Coverage, in their eyes, was the problem.

He didn’t agree. They let him go. He caught on for a while with the Miami Dolphins last year before the Chargers signed him to compete with Jeff Dale and Martin Bayless at strong safety. Both Dale and Bayless are established Chargers.

“Demetrious Johnson’s coverage ability will be the determinant on whether he makes this football team,” says Charger Coach Al Saunders.

Johnson is a long shot. The back injury that forced Dale to miss the entire 1987 season may be Johnson’s only hope. If it flares up again, Johnson may have a chance. Johnson is neither hoping nor planning for that eventuality.

“I try to just be smart and understand my responsibilities,” he says when asked about the new job he’s hoping to land.

Maybe he wasn’t so smart back on I-70 in St. Louis. You could even argue that Johnson acted irresponsibly toward his family when he chased after Garner’s car that night last month.

You can’t argue about Johnson’s instincts.