Originally Posted by
The Pocono Record
Police searching for Eric Frein have questioned James Tully so many times that he started carrying his driver’s license and work identification on a neck lanyard to prove his identity.
But that wasn’t enough to keep him from being forced to the ground by gunpoint Friday on Route 447, and being held there, face down in the gravel, by a law enforcement officer driving a knee into his back, Tully said.
Tully, 39, lives off Snow Hill Road in Canadensis which has been a key area in the search for fugitive Eric Frein, the man accused of ambushing the police barracks In Blooming Grove on Sept. 12, fatally shooting a state trooper and injuring another.
Tully does not own a car. The five-mile walk takes two hours each way. He walks to work in the early afternoon and walks home from midnight until 2 a.m. It hasn't been easy, Tully has a bad knee and sometimes walks with a brace and a limp.
The walk takes him along Route 447, a hot spot in the search for Frein. Since the search began, Tully has been stopped well over 20 times and questioned by law enforcement officers. Tully says he's been questioned as much as seven times during a round-trip walk to and from work.
Until Friday, it has usually been the same. Law enforcement rolls up and asks for his name and identification, where he is coming from, where he works, and then they move on. Some have asked him to keep his eyes and ears open for Frein and Tully did report a suspicious person to police once, since the search started.
Tully left work around midnight Friday and about 25 feet from his job’s driveway, police stopped and questioned him as usual.
A co-worker saw him and gave him a lift off Spruce Cabin Road to Route 447 where he walked for five minutes before another routine police questioning. He continued on for 10 more minutes and was near Brinkers Bridge near the intersection of Route 447 and Mill Creek Road when a silver SUV stopped.
"The driver jumped out screaming like a lunatic,” Tully said. He was dressed in camouflage and a tactical vest and had a rifle held high, pointing at Tully.
He did not see a badge or words on clothing. The man did not identify himself.
“The only I.D. I saw was the barrel of the gun,” Tully said.
“He yelled at me to get down on the ground with my arms out wide and he demanded my name.”
Tully says he complied immediately and that the man drove his knee into Tully’s back and continued to ask his name.
Tully told him his name over and over and explained that his identification was on the lanyard on his neck but that he was laying on it.
The law enforcement officer removed the bandana from Tully’s head and then grabbed the lanyard and yanked it off his neck.
“Good thing it had a break away clasp or he would have choked me.”
He continued to badger Tully.
“I will break you right here. What is your name?” the man asked, while still driving a knee into his back, Tully said.
Tully did not know where the gun was but he was afraid the man would shoot him.
“From the minute I saw him with that gun I thought, let me survive this.”
This went on for what seemed like 15 minutes or more when a state trooper who recognized Tully from previous questioning arrived and told the other officer that Tully was telling the truth about his name.
The trooper held out a hand and helped Tully stand up and helped him gather the items he had been carrying, which were scattered on the ground.
No one apologized.
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