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Pullman, Washington

Damn! Again!

He pulls over and sits there as WSU police officer Isobel Luengas gets out of her cruiser and approaches him.

Bryan rolls down his window, looking as calm as possible even though his heart is racing.

“Hello, Officer.”

Officer Luengas politely greets Bryan. Wearing a body camera, she starts by telling him that the stop is being audio and video recorded. Then she says, “I think you know why I stopped you. You ran the red light.”

“What actually happened was, I was stuck in the middle of the intersection,” Bryan answers. “So I was forced to turn left.”

“Yeah, I was behind you the whole time,” Luengas says a little skeptically.

She explains that she watched Bryan enter the intersection illegally. She asks for his license, registration, insurance.

Bryan hands them over. He’s cooperative. He apologizes profusely.

Luengas seems receptive, so Bryan plows on, getting in deep. All that practice being verbal in class is paying off.

He tells the cop that he’s from a rural part of Pennsylvania, as his vehicle registration shows, and when it comes to pulling into an intersection like he just did, it “never even occurred to me that was actually something wrong.” Back home you could drive like that with impunity.

His performance works. He gets away with it, just like he did back in August.

The officer lets him go with a warning.

For Bryan, it’s likely an empowering moment.

Back at DeSales, in Professor Ramsland’s class, he learned that a month before the day of retribution, Elliot Rodger was paid a visit by police officers—they left with no clue that he was planning a mass murder.

It’s possible that Bryan, too, can get away with anything he wants.