ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. – Contracted road workers say they are facing felony assault and kidnapping charges after claiming they were the ones assaulted by a mystery driver.
It’s a secret case sealed by the courts, and authorities won’t say the name of that driver, who turns out to have been an off-duty police officer. FOX 2 was trying to determine that driver’s identity when two of the road workers were arrested.
The incident happened in south county Thursday, Sept. 26, where road crews are repaving sections of Lindbergh.
The reported assault was at the corner of Lindbergh Boulevard and Lemay Ferry Road, where a left turn lane was coned off and there was a temporary sign in the middle of the road saying “no left turn” due to paving work. A safety worker said an angry driver assaulted him in that blocked lane, yet he was arrested right before our interview and charged as the aggressor.
23-year-old Garrett Gibbs was working for a different contractor nearby.
“I noticed the argument for probably 10 to 15 seconds, and then I noticed the door was open and the guy was outside his vehicle, and that’s pretty hefty—you know, a guy getting out of his vehicle in a work zone like somebody coming into your office and causing a problem,” Gibbs said. “He wanted to turn, and he kept saying that he was a police officer so he could make that turn.”
Gibbs snapped a picture of the driver’s car with a temp tag that appears to have expired a few days prior. The picture shows the car inside their work zone. You can see the “no left turn” sign to the right of the car.
“You know, in case this dude does something crazy, drives through the work zone, hits somebody…I’ve got something,” he added.
Allegedly, the off-duty officer “took a swing at one of the workers” when he missed him and hit Gibbs instead. He described he and two other workers holding the driver until police arrived.
“He caught me right in the mouth here,” Gibbs said.
Gibbs said arriving officers then, “cuffed him and proceeded to—we had to go back to work, but they proceeded to–talk to him in our work zone because this happened around 10:30 p.m. They kept him inside of our work zone until 3 a.m., whenever we picked it up.”
After four and a half hours waiting in that work zone, Gibbs said St. Louis County Police let the man drive off.
“I don’t believe he was breathalyzed. I don’t know if the car was searched or anything, so the police officers were informed that we believed he was drunk,” he said.
Police won’t say who that off-duty officer was—or if he was breathalyzed. Gibbs says he and his co-workers were never questioned.
Ten days after the incident, police arrested two of the workers—Matt Devlin and Donnie Hurley. They’re now charged with assault, kidnapping, and armed criminal action.
The record is sealed, despite the fact two road workers are now in the St. Louis County Justice Center facing decades in prison.
The employer for Gibbs and Devlin, N.B. West, wrote, “We are deeply concerned about the work zone incident that transpired on the evening of Sept. 26. In response, we initiated a comprehensive internal investigation to thoroughly understand the circumstances surrounding the events. Our commitment is unwavering to maintain a safe, respectful, and supportive work environment for all our employees and the traveling public.”
“Almost every day it seems like there’s a road worker getting killed,” Celeste Malick, wife of Devlin, said. “There’s all sorts of laws that (the officer) broke prior to the altercation even happening. You know he went through all the traffic cones, all the safety devices that these people put up; he went through them.”
Over the last week, she had been hoping to hear news about the mysterious driver.
FOX 2 sat in on the court appearances for the two defendants. Devlin is being held on a quarter of a million dollar cash-only bond, and Hurley is being held on $100,000 cash-only. They’ll each have bond reduction hearings on Oct. 15, which are court dates in which we expect to hear more details about the secretive charges.
