American incarceration in Mexican Jail - my
story. Aug 28th,2008
Pictures start here
This can happen to you if you travel via
vehicle in Mexico and have an accident, so understand all that happened here.
A vehicle accident in the US is handled like this. You both fill out an accident
report, the police gives you a ticket if he thinks you are at fault or both if
fault is shared, you contact your insurance provider, you pay the fine or show
up in court to explain your position and let the judge decide guilt, and your
insurance company handles all the rest. Unless you are drunk, no one is hauled
off to jail. That's not the way an accident works in Mexico. In Mexico you are
guilty until proven innocent and, as in my case, much of the time no one even
bothers to get to the details regarding your guilt or inocense.. I was never ever questioned as to what happened
by my insurance company or by my lawyer or by the judge, even though I was finally
permitted to tell what I felt happened and it was noted by the judge after
sentencing had already occurred.
Essentially upon coming to Mexico from the
states, I came upon an improperly marked existing accident scene late at night
under adverse conditions stopped in my lane and I plowed into it, creating a
second accident.
We were returning from our home in the US to our other place in Mexico just
outside Guadalajara where we do unofficial
missionary work from. We belong to no particular affiliation nor work for any
particular church directly. I like it that way because then no one can tell
us what we can and cannot preach and we can preach what the Bible says and not
man's doctrines. All affiliations come with doctrinal errors in their
theology. I had slept while the wife drove from Culiacan
to Mazatlan, more than a three hour drive. I took over at Mazatlan while
she slept for a while but I don't let her
drive at night. Too many cows, donkeys, and horses and hazards in the road
you have to watch out for. You DO learn defensive driving in Mexico if you want
to survive. But sometimes, as on this night, even defensive skills are
inadequate. We were driving the libre (free) road because the tolls from just
Mazatlan to Tepic are over $50 US now. The libre roads are good roads,
just single lane in each direction and getting behind slow trucks can be a time
consumer. Many big trucks were passing me as I chose a slower speed for this
section, locked in by cruise control based upon the C550 Garmin satellite
reading which is more accurate than our speedometer. We were within about
45 minutes of Tepic when we came upon an existing accident scene and didn't
recognize it as such until it was too late to stop and lowed into it. The cold windshield from the air conditioner operating was
condensing the moisture in the outside air and fogging up the outside of the
windshield. I had just turned on the heater to put some warm air on the front
windshield to try and eliminate the fogging up problem. The windshield wipers
were on low but after each swipe the moisture was replaced making visibility
less than perfect. The drive from
Mazatlan to Tepic takes about three and half hours. The wife had slept for a
couple of those and was wide awake and rides good shotgun, telling me whenever I
am an inch too close to the vehicle in front of me. I was not the least bit sleepy
at the time as I was excited about seeing my dog, Cubby again upon our return. The accident was not caused by blanking out, but by
a car in front of us blocking view of an existing accident in front of him and an inadequately
lighted pre-existing accident scene with no warning lights showing. Traffic was
very light, no one had passed us in quite a while and few were coming from the
opposite direction at that time of night. We were following a car or van which
was ahead of us about 10 car lengths doing about 60-65km/hr. That's about
20 feet per second. 200' feet only takes a couple seconds. This vehicle was
blocking our view of what was in front of him. He changed lanes rapidly to go
around the mess in front of us but without putting on brake lights or anything.
It was only then that we became aware of what looked like a truck in front of us
he was passing but which in reality was stopped vehicles in front of us. He must
have narrowly missed a car coming in the other direction as we could not follow
suit without doing a head on. 10 car lengths is not enough time to stop for
something in front of you that is stopped. All that was showing when we became
aware something else was in front of us were two tail lights mounted high which
appeared to be a big truck moving down the road. We assumed he was just passing
a truck, not an accident stopped in the middle of the road. There were
no 4 way flashers going , no reflective
triangles put out in the road, no flares, and no guy with a flashlight several
hundred yards upstream to warn people of an accident ahead. The police car
was at the other end of the existing accident scene so no one in my lane could
see his flashing light bar, only the cars coming towards me could see him from
the opposite direction and they could pass by as the existing accident scene was
in my lane not theirs, and the wrecker beacon of the wrecker facing in the
same direction as we were traveling had his rotating beacon hidden by his boom in the back.
The lights high and to the side of his beacon were not flashing either. Look at
the wrecker pic below and you even can't see his single beacon. The wrecker we
ran into only had two lights showing, like taillights of a truck moving down the
road; nothing flashing, in fact
he had no brakelights or 4 way flashers at all low and in the back of his truck,
they were all broken and missing. Look at the pics. At any rate by the time
either the wife or I registered that those taillights weren't a truck
moving down the road , it was too late to stop. The road was heavy with moisture
and a vehicle was coming in the opposite direction which prevented me from
pulling out and going around like the vehicle ahead of us did and our only choice was to slam into the back of the
parked wrecker in the lane we were in ahead of us. Braking didn't do much good
on the moisture laden highway in the couple seconds had to stop in. There was no shoulder to turn out into. Most
Mexican roads have no shoulder which results in a lot of bicycle/pedestrian
accidents.
As we hit the wrecker both airbags inflated. We both had our seatbelts on. It was all over in an instant. I asked if the wife was hurt and she said no, I asked if the daughter was hurt and she said no. She had been laying down sleeping in the back seat (the pickup was a quad cab) and the heavy luggage bags from our Russian trip roped to the top of the steel storage box in back came through the rear window but passed over the top of her and stopped short of the front seats. The only injuries we discovered later was a black and blue mark across our shoulders where the seat belts held us back. It was nothing short of miraculous that we were not injured. God's protective angels were absolutely with us that night. For those who don't believe in a higher power, I am here to tell you, God protects His people.
I wasn't in shock for some reason and crawled out the driver's side window and went to help the other people who were injured, either from the previous wreck or from when I slammed into the one wrecker which then damaged the second wrecker facing it as well. Having been a volunteer fireman for twenty four years, I was accustomed to such a scene. I never got accustomed to death as the paramedics did though. A total of four people went to the hospital that night but we weren't any of those four. The state patrol equivalent then put me in his car, took my name and phone number and would not allow me to call my insurance company. They took me off to jail and left my wife and daughter at the scene, who stayed until yet another wrecker took my pickup to the state patrol office 20 km back up the road. I told my daughter to get the insurance papers out of the glove box and call the insurance company, which she did. My wife also called Andy from across the street here where we live in Mexico and he brought his enclosed trailer and suburban to where the wife and daughter were to start taking all our belongings out of the pickup. The next day the AIG insurance rep showed up and told Jana they would take care of everything, that we had adequate coverage, but he didn't speak English, never asked me what happened and hired a lawyer that didn't speak English either and she never asked me what happened either. Now in the US, when the insurance rep says they will take care of everything, if you were in jail for some reason , you would be let out. Not here. I could see this wasn't going to be quick. Meanwhile Andy and the girls went back home, unloaded everything and connected to my trailer to come back and rescue the peripherals on the truck; the overhead rack I built, the motorcycle carrier on the back, the bed rails, the step rails, the steel plate I made for the winch and what was left of the winch - things that didn't come on the truck that we had added. The truck itself was totaled as you can tell by the pics below.
Meanwhile I was getting to know the other inmates
in
jail, about a dozen in all. One had murdered someone, another had sold his house
twice without doing the paperwork properly, others doing time for grand theft,
one for a hit and run, another for getting caught packing a pistol ( don't get
caught with a gun in Mexico unless you want to do years of time) ,there was a
homosexual and three locos; guys that were just not here, as in out to lunch,
and a couple for doing exactly what I had done, got in a wreck, but they didn't
have insurance to cover their mistake. For one guy a semi was involved and it
was either $120,000 or 6 years and since he didn't have the $120,000 he was
doing his 6 years. For another it was only about $32k but may as well have been
a million because he didn't have the money either. The duration of the sentences
didn't seem to fit the crimes. Two guys spoke English a little so I had some help
but I had to come up with a lot of Spanish to communicate. But hey, since Satan
didn't get me, I figured God put me there for a reason, so I may as well
capitalize on it.
Honestly, I didn't find a bad person there. They were people just like you and
I.
And, I always look at a glass as half full
instead of half empty, so I started asking who knew Jesus. One guy had a Bible
there, the murderer, and the rest were just weeds and thorns. I sat them all
down and asked them if they knew about hell, and then about heaven. We had some
good discussions about the parachute ( www.detailshere.com/saveme.htm
) and I let them know Jesus had already forgiven them all their sins, even
killing someone. Then we talked about grace and that they had to accept the
gift. It was a freebie but they had to accept it. And then we talked about
forgiveness and how they had to forgive others if they wanted God to forgive
them. Then we talked about helping others and how God would look hard at that
issue on judgment day. The need for a savior was an easy one to get across. I
started with the example of the black slaves in the south in the 1800's and
ended with why I was going to get out and they weren't.
Besides Jesus, my saviour for my mistake was my insurance company, who did for
me what I could not do for myself; pay my bill, that's what a savior does.
We went through the ten commandments and showed that we had all broken every one
of them, myself included. They understood that they couldn't stay out of hell on
their own good deeds, and that Satan had each and every one of us by default if
we did not rely on the righteousness of Jesus to bail us out. Then we all held
hands in prayer and laid hands on the three locos and did healing prayers over
them. I'm just getting into that phase of my ministry. I've seen Andy and Scott
do it in front of my own eyes. I saw a woman at the Jocotepec crusade get her
sight back and a tumor removed, I saw a paraplegic get up out of his wheelchair,
I've seen a Parkinsons disease man who could barely inch forward with his
walker, give up his walker and walk. I've seen these things; Jesus performs
miracles and heals today. I just haven't been able to do it much yet myself
probably due to lack of sufficient faith that as His disciple I am empowered to
heal in His name. Anyway one of
these locos never speaks. The next day, one of the guys comes up to me and says,
"Berry, Jorge is talking. I've never heard him talk before". I
certainly wouldn't say he was completely healed but he was talking up a storm, mostly to
himself, and did answer some questions and totally ignored others.
Healings by Jesus are a fascinating subject. He doesn't heal everyone, He
doesn't heal on the same day you ask sometimes, sometimes He doesn't heal
completely, and besides the many people who
come to crusades and leave without their wheelchairs, just as many come in their
wheelchairs and leave with
their wheel chairs also. Why some get healed and others don't is a big mystery.
The problem with bringing people to Jesus by sowing in rocky soil and amongst weeds and thorns can be found
in the parable of the sower, Luke 8 :4-5 and in Mathew 13: 16-33. Saving them for a day or a short while is the easy
part, but keeping them saved because they have no foundation or background to rely on is quite
another story. I can't just walk away from them and leave them as they were. They have
to have periodic visits where I bring them needed things and reinforce that they
keep their parachute on every day. It's another case that little things can make
a big difference in people's lives.
As I was required to come back there in the first week of every month for the next four months , I had a chance to make a difference in those people's lives. I made a bookshelf for them and brought them reading materials, some Bibles, , a checkers and chess set, some DVD's of both Bible stuff and wholesome movies like Narnia, instead of just sex and violence, a small refrigerator so they can have ice and cold water to drink, used flea market pants to replace the torn rags a couple inmates are wearing who don't have outside family to bring them things, a fan in the window to blow air across the 6' x 20' area many spend time in all day, a 3/8" nut with a 1/4" bolt threaded into it to allow the shower faucets to be operated, 8 more plastic chairs so everyone can sit down instead of having to lay on the floor, a few Spanish Bibles, prophecy pamphlets, parachute handouts, Bible lesson literature to attempt to put some foundation under them, and most of all just for them to know that there is someone out there who cares. None of these things cost a lot of money but will make a tremendous difference in their attitudes. As it's a five hour or more trip one way back there, I will probably only revisit them monthly.
I found it quite interesting that the jailkeepers were pinned to the doors listening to the sermons also. All people hunger for the word, just not many pursue it to receive it on their own.
I spent four and half days in jail before I was let out and had to post my own bail then as the judge wanted cash and it was a Saturday and the insurance company would have been Monday or Tuesday before they could get cash. Again, Andy to the rescue. The wife had the checkbook but no bank to cash a check in. Andy, our neighbor, had an evangelism trip to Peru coming up the following week and had taken out cash for it. In June I had spent 3 weeks and a bunch of my own money rewiring his whole church space. But even if I hadn't he would have been there for us, he is that kind of a guy. Those are the kind of friends you want. We have other friends who would have helped too, but they didn't have the trailer Andy had to really do what had to be done.
Life in jail is what you make of it. For most it is extremely boring. No games to play and no reading materials made available. They just vegetate for most part. That drove me nuts. I've never had that much free time on my hands in a long time. I don't even watch TV normally. Studying the word or keeping up on internet programs and conspiracy stuff takes precedence. Each small cell contains three stacked concrete slabs for beds and they lock you up in them at night. Each small cell has a 30" x 4' enclosed section with no door and a hole in the floor for the bathroom; no toilet to sit on. Just a 4" hole in the slab like a Russian outhouse. You shower in the same place, trying to figure out how to open and close the faucets because all the faucet handles are broken and non functional. All the small cells are located in a larger cellspace that is locked all the time. No matresses to speak of; some had foam pads. It was so hot you would sweat too much to try to lay on anything cushionable. Some inmates had fans but not all, some inmates had TV's but not all either. I watched a lot of Mexican shoot'em ups. The old Hatfield McCoy theme where one family kills everyone in the other family. Guns, guns, guns. Drugs, drugs, drugs. In four days I never saw one wholesome movie. How do people expect to have good output if their input is so immoral? Garbage in, garbage out is one of the biggest reasons for the degradation of our youth today; found in improper TV programming, satanistic computer games, and time wasted on computer chatting and cellphone messaging instead of learning. Kids don't read anymore.
It is clear from Scripture that your spirit, soul, and body are very closely linked. The computer term "GIGO" (garbage in, garbage out) may be the best equation to describe the human condition. You and I are not computers, but the formula really does apply to virtually every area of human existence. If I allow garbage into my body, mind, or spirit, I can expect to expel garbage. I have it on the highest authority:
"For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee." (Proverbs 23:7)
"For whatever is in your heart determines what you say. A good person produces good words from a good heart, and an evil person produces evil words from an evil heart." (Matthew 12:34–35)
Food is interesting in prison. We got 6
corn tortillas and a scoop of beans (with what looked
like scrambled eggs in the mornings) or 6 tortillas and a scoop of chicken
guisado in the afternoon; and they only feed you twice a day. The guisado was
pretty good and I never got hungry on so little food. Couldn't figure that one
out. One of the inmates had an electric burner and a pan and made everyone
quesadillas in
the evenings whenever someone brought him cheese. Electrical wiring inside the
cells was really inadequate; an undersized spaghetti mess of extension cords.
There wasn't even an outlet in each cell, they had to use the light
fixture.
Thursdays were family days so the wives that came all brought extra food for
everyone to share in. That was a good food day. On Friday we had a Mexican Luau.
Someone brought in a pig and they stuck it in the heart with a machete , skinned
and cut it up with a machete and boiled the pieces in a tub of hot water. Not as
good as roasted pig, but palatable. I tried to explain to them that pig was not
on God's list of clean foods per Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 and why, but I didn't
get very far with that lecture. I asked them why did Noah put clean animals on
the ark in sevens but unclean animals only in two's to propagate the species but
that didn't sink in either. So we all had pork against God's statutes and
ignored the trichina worms for the moment.
The jailers were courteous and treat the
prisoners fairly well. The inmates weren't being let outside and I had
discussions with the jailers about the necessity to be in the sun in order for
the body to produce sufficient vitamin D and if they didn't do that, many health
problems would result. Plus the inmates need exercise; they should be playing
soccer or basketball out in the courtyard. I'm trying to get permission to mount
a basketball hoop on one wall outside. They finally let everyone outside for a
while on Friday. And finally on Friday (I went in on Tuesday night, Wednesday
morning about 1am) the American embassy in Guadalajara finally called me to ask if I was
being treated alright. They really couldn't do much else for me except put me in
touch with a lawyer but I already had one of those the insurance company had
sent.
Friday finished and the wrecking company people did not want to sign off on the
papers feeling my insurance company had shorted them. They didn't feel they
should have any liability for the accident. Now you tell me why my insurance
company didn't ding the wrecking company for inadequate warning of a preexisting accident
scene? (Because they never bothered to ask me what happened, you
think?) The wrecking company with no warning lights as well as the
state patrol officer who parked his car at the wrong end of the preexisting
accident scene had a lot
to do with why I ran into the back of the wrecker. You just don't
expect someone stopped in the middle of your lane, especially at night, under
conditions of difficult visibilty.
It's hard enough to avoid those kinds of accidents during the daylight hours. On
Saturday a temporary judge came in to force the wrecking company to sign off so
I could get out of jail but when she heard an American was involved she then
didn't want to hear the case. Andy told her it was time to make an international
case out of it and said he was going to call the the American embassy and get
some action. She then decided to do her thing and did the determination of how
much the wrecking company was to receive and set my personal fine at $100. They
took the insurance company for everything they could get and the insurance
company just rolled over and played dead. Only AFTER all
that did she hear me out on what I had to say about the whole thing and noted it
in a special document besides my original declaration I had put in writing.
We are not new
to driving at night in Mexico. We know it's dangerous. We have come upon many
accident scenes in Mexico at night just like this one, except there was always
lights flashing and markers out and people with flashlights telling us to slow
down and move over. This scene had none of those aspects. It's as if Satan
had prepared the whole thing including the vehicle in front of us to block our
view of what was transpiring until we were right on top of it. When I did the
exorcism on Angelica a year ago, a possessed woman in our development , ( www.detailshere.com/exorcism.htm
) the demons told me I was on Satan's hit list for what we were doing to him and
he was going to kill me as well as my family. But remembering the story of
JOB from the Bible, God only lets Satan go so far. When Satan failed to sever
JOB's relationship with God, God told Satan he failed, the test was over and He
returned to JOB more than he had before. If you have Jesus, and you work for
God, Satan just isn't allowed to wipe you out. There is no point in fearing
Satan when you don't have to. I will continue to steal his road kill at every
opportunity I get, including preaching to inmates in jail and handing out tracts
to everyone in my path who will take one. Satan gets most people simply by
default; they never learned about Jesus or wrote Him off as a myth, nor accepted
God's gift of grace. Angels were in that truck that night to protect us from
Satan's attempt to kill us. God will deliver me another truck just as He did
that one. Perhaps the ten prisoners were more important to Him than my truck
was. You never know what God has in store for His stewards. Our only scars are
black and blue sections where the seat belts held us. Luckily Jana was laying
down in back, otherwise she probably would have been killed when the suitcases
on the steelbox came through the back window.
The steel box in the truck bed was all deformed from all the heavy stuff in it
trying to move forward on the impact. Some of the glass jars of pickles
and relish broke when they hit against each other and they were all stacked
right next to one another tightly in the white food cooler behind the steel
box. I still find it hard to believe we are alive. I didn't even get
a chance to have a near death experience out of it. Personally, I think Satan
set the whole scene up it until we were right on top of it to cause
our accident, but Yahweh stepped in and said, "good try, but you don't get
this family. They belong to me." Just my thoughts as of now because I
have no other logical explanation for us totally escaping injury.
What should you learn from my incident?
1. Never drive in Mexico without adequate liability insurance. In six
years of living part time in Mexico I could write a book on how many ways there
are to get in a vehicular accident here. The many horses and cows and donkeys
with lime on them as they decay away alongside the roads are testimony to
just the animal problem here. My next policy will have increased coverage
on it. When you can't pay, you will serve a long jail term for your accident.
Your insurance company is one of your saviours when you drive here. Make
sure you are always covered.
2. Don't travel at night. Night driving is dangerous. It's hard enough to stay
out of trouble during the daylight hours. Roads are not well marked. Many have
no white lines or even dividing lines on them. Many have no reflective paint to
show you where the road edge is. Most have no shoulders, which is why the road
edges are in such bad shape.
3. Travel the cuoto roads (toll roads) even though the cost is high. It will
cost you about $150 in toll fees to travel the cuoto roads from the border down
to Guadalajara. I thought I had developed sufficient defensive driving skills to
travel the free (libre) roads safely. I have to say I was wrong. If you can't
afford the cuoto roads don't drive. At least do not drive the free roads at
night. The cuoto roads also have some insurance as part of your toll payment
that the free roads don't. In the United States I would have counter sued the
wrecking company for inadequate marking of the existing accident scene and won
and got my truck replaced. Here, my insurance company will pay me about $6000
for my $20,000 truck as was specified in my full coverage policy I accepted and
walk away from it.
4. Never drive anywhere without a cellphone you can use to call your insurance
company if you happen to break down or get into an accident. And have friends
and neighbors who will come to your rescue when the need arises.
5. Make sure your airbags and seat belts are always functional and on. I would
hate to imagine our injuries if we had not had functional seatbelts on at the
time and if the airbags had not inflated. Both literally saved our lives.
5. Lastly, keep your parachute on ( www.detailshere.com/parachute.htm
), all the time and trust in Jesus to watch over you through all your journeys.
Berry Ball
berry@detailshere.com
