A Case of Mistaken Identity in Amherst, Massachusetts

Hard Hat & Steel Tipped Shoes at Kendrick Place in Amherst

Two weeks ago, just a day after the police had removed an offending spider from the auto of a driver paralyzed with fear, Amherst’s finest confronted a second, thornier challenge.

The Daily Hampshire Gazette explains:

After getting a tip that the two escapees from a maximum security prison in New York might be walking on the streets of Amherst at 1:28 p.m. Thursday, several police officers spent about 25 minutes trying to identify the two men who were described by a woman as muscular, tattooed, and wearing dark shirts and shorts. Police said the men, found at a downtown coffee shop, were determined to be construction workers and not the escaped convicts serving life sentences at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York.

With the termination of one convict and the capture of the other last weekend, some Amherstites will no doubt sleep more easily. But they still have their memories of mistaken identities past.

Perhaps the most poignant occurred in November of 2004, when then Town Meeting member Patricia Church, in a fit of pique, removed the Texas state flag from a pole in front of Town Hall. (She was protesting President Bush and his un-Amherstican policies.)  She soon found herself, however, with a lot of explaining to do—especially to Amherst’s Hispanic community. That’s because she had mistakenly pulled down the flag of Puerto Rico.

 Another random act of mistaken identity? Perhaps not quite.