Off-the-Field Heroics : Chargers’ Demetrious Johnson ‘Just Reacted’ in Stopping Hit-and-Run Suspect

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

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

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

Another driver, whom police say was James Garner, 29, was apparently racing away in his sports car from the spot where Noland had been run down.

Carl Noland’s father, LeRoy, was begging Johnson to chase down the sports car and subdue the driver until police arrived.

It was June 28, less than a month before Johnson was to get what would probably 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 he didn’t make the Chargers’ 45-man roster at strong safety, Johnson’s 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 onto the highway, raced to the driver’s side and motioned him to pull over. The driver refused. So Johnson swerved, forcing him off the road at high speed. Just as they do in the movies.

Johnson: “I got out of 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 he was the one who was crazy, risking his life in a high-speed chase.

“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 the driver 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. Garner’s bail was set at $30,000.

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

According to a police report, LeRoy Noland claimed 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.

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, police said. Police say they found one empty beer can and six full ones in Garner’s car.

Johnson found himself in 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 that 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.”

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 a distinguished college career at Missouri.

Eventually the coaches in Detroit decided Johnson wasn’t fast enough to be a National Football League safety. There was no question about his toughness or ability to come up from the secondary and support against the run. Coverage, they thought, was the problem.

He didn’t agree. They let him go. He played with the Miami Dolphins last year before the Chargers signed him to compete against 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,” Charger Coach Al Saunders said.

Johnson is a longshot. The back injury that forced Dale to miss the 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 making the team.

You can’t argue with his instincts.