It began with an errand so ordinary that Richard Mather almost did not bother. A car wash voucher was about to expire. His three children were already asleep. It was a clear, balmy Sunday evening, a little after 9 p.m., and the Mobile attorney decided to drive his 1999 white Volvo sedan around the corner from his South Georgia Avenue home to the Griffith Shell station at Government and Ann streets.
Within minutes, Mather said, he had been pulled out of that ordinary evening entirely and into a situation with mortal stakes.
Three men, one revolver
The 45-year-old lawyer, whose decade-old practice concentrated on divorce and personal injury work, had finished the wash and stayed on to vacuum the interior. The layout of the station, he noted afterward, left him effectively alone: the pumps and service bays sit at the west end of the property, while an employee lot, a customer storage area and landscaping separate the station proper from the car wash.
He was leaning over the console, tidying a floorboard, when he heard a voice tell him to hold up. Three men were running toward him from about 15 feet away. The man in the middle carried a .38 revolver, pointed at him.
Mather grew up hunting, has taken firearms courses and said he ordinarily carries a weapon almost everywhere he goes. That night he did not have one, and he has said repeatedly since that he is grateful. Given how quickly the men closed the distance, he believes an attempt to draw a gun would have gotten him shot.
The men demanded his keys and his wallet, which held about $40. The keys were in his lap. Digging the wallet out of his pocket took longer, and the gunman pressed the barrel harder into his ribs. Then they ordered him out of the car.
The trunk
While two of the men searched the Volvo, Mather began edging backward toward the lighted station, where he knew other customers would be. He was spotted. Told he was going with them, he protested that they already had the car and the money. The answer was an order to get into the trunk.
He refused, until he felt what he took to be a gun barrel against his back. He made a calculation he has defended ever since: resisting at that instant offered no guarantee, while getting in bought him minutes, and minutes were something he could work with.
The lid closed. The car reversed, then pulled forward and turned. Lying on his right side in the dark, Mather realized the men had never taken his cell phone. He dialed 911.
The call was difficult. Road noise forced him to speak louder than he wanted to. The dispatcher pressed for landmarks. He explained, more than once, that he was in a trunk and could see nothing. He asked her to pass along one instruction to officers: if a white Volvo was spotted, there must be no high-speed chase, because he was inside it.
When the car finally stopped and the trunk opened, the men demanded the phone and found the 911 call in the log. Their alarm was immediate and profane. One asked why he had called the police. Mather told him he had been put in a trunk at gunpoint and assumed he was going to be killed. He was struck twice, once on the forehead and once near the left eye, and the trunk was slammed shut again as the men fled on foot.
Getting out
Mather waited about half a minute, wary that a shot might come through the lid. Then he went to work. There was no interior release on the 1999 model. He opened the pass-through to the back seat to be sure of air, discovered his leg was resting on a case of bottled water, and kept at the latch. All told he was in the trunk 15 to 20 minutes before the lid gave and lifted.
He had been left behind an apartment complex at Charles and Palmetto streets. He knocked on the one door with a light on and identified himself through the wood, telling the residents they did not have to open it, only to call police. A man he later knew as a coach at Williamson High School came out armed, in case the robbers returned, while his wife was already on the phone. Three police units arrived within minutes.
Aftermath
Mather said the investigating detective was initially skeptical of the account, a reaction he took no offense at, reasoning that officers field a great many bogus complaints. A Mobile Police Department spokesman said at the time that there had been no arrests and the case remained under investigation.
One of the owners of the Griffith Shell said the station was extremely disappointed the crime occurred and was glad Mather was unhurt. A surveillance camera was to be added over the car wash area within 60 days, joining five already on the property. Additional lighting was not an option, he said, because the station was already at the maximum permitted within the historic district.
Mather and his wife were moving their family to Baldwin County, a decision made well before the carjacking after she accepted a teaching job at Daphne East Elementary. He said he was not angry, and he rejected the armchair verdict he heard often afterward, that he never should have gotten into the trunk.
People play out scenarios in their heads, he observed, and in those scenarios they always leave themselves an exit. Real life is rarely so accommodating. His own proof was simple enough: he was standing there telling the story.